The owner of Madison Square Garden has sued Wired over a recent report into the big data hack that occurred at the New York arena venue which was headlined ‘Madison Square Garden kept a list of gay celebrities’.
According to a lawsuit filed by MSG, that was a “false and purposely misleading” report which involved Wired “cherry-picking” from the hacked data to “manufacture a false narrative portraying MSG as targeting the LGBTQIA community for discriminatory purposes”.
“Nothing could be further from the truth”, the lawsuit adds, before insisting “MSG is a fervent supporter of the LGBTQIA community with a long history of inclusion, not exclusion”.
MSG’s lawsuit, filed with the courts in New York, also slams Wired Contributing Editor Noah Shachtman personally, claiming that this is not the first time he has “come under fire for selective and unethical journalism”.
“In an unrelated story at a previous large publication”, the lawsuit continues, “while reporting on an individual described as a personal friend, Shachtman was accused of omitting facts about that individual’s ties to child pornography”.
Which isn’t really relevant, except MSG is very keen to suggest “this is not the first time Shachtman has shaped his ‘reporting’ to fit a predetermined narrative”.
For its part, Wired is defending its article, stating “we stand by this reporting, and we plan to vigorously defend it against this baseless and ridiculous lawsuit”.
Namechecking MSG boss James Dolan, it adds, “We look forward to continuing our coverage of MSG, and on billionaire James Dolan’s use of technology across his entertainment empire. It’s one part of our wider mission and the critical job of journalists, now more than ever: holding power to account”.
The MSG data grab was perpetrated by hacker group Shiny Hunters, which published 45 GB of MSG customer data last month after the venue refused to pay a ransom.
Big data hacks like this often grab the headlines, but the MSG data hack was even more interesting than normal because the venue has been criticised in the past over allegations it uses customer data - in particular biometric and facial recognition tech - to screen and block certain people from entering its venue, including lawyers actively involved in litigation against the company.
In its report on the data released by Shiny Hunters, Wired said MSG assigned a “risk score” to various celebrities who might attend the venue and that about 100 celebrities logged in the venue’s database were given a LGBTQIA tag. The reason for that tag, Wired said, was “unclear”.
In its lawsuit, MSG says that data Wired reported on was the kind of customer data that it’s pretty standard for businesses to store and is used by the venue for entirely legitimate purposes.
And, MSG says, while Wired may have implied the LGBTQIA tag was used for discriminatory reasons, it is - in fact - used for the exact opposite of that. Which is to say, “to further inclusion, including by extending invitations to LGBTQIA support events, identifying sales and sponsorship opportunities, and facilitating charitable donations and community outreach”.
Wired’s “implication that MSG maintains a database with a sexual orientation field for exclusionary, discriminatory, security or risk-based purposes is a lie”, the lawsuit continues.
“Defendants knew there was no nefarious ‘list’ of gay celebrities”, it adds, and that “the stolen data contained dozens of fields per customer - including mundane fields such as address, phone number and dietary restrictions - used for relationship management purposes, not discrimination”.
There’s a relatively high bar to prove defamation in the US in cases involving high profile people or companies, in that the entity suing must prove that the magazine or journalist acted with malice when making the allegedly defamatory statements.
However, MSG insists in this lawsuit, Wired’s article and accompanying headline constitute “shockingly unethical conduct”, and both the magazine and Shachtman have “crossed the line separating protected journalism from actionable defamation, and this action seeks to hold them accountable for that choice”.