‘It’s sad that they would use something as grave as the virus that’s killing people to push their political agenda…’
Jerry Falwell Jr./IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said the the school will sue the New York Times if it does not retract a “fake news” story about its response to the coronavirus crisis, the Washington Examiner reported.
In a story titled, “Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too,” Elizabeth Williamson reported that the “evangelical university enraged” Lynchburg residents by welcoming students back after spring break.
“Then students started getting sick,” the story’s subhead eerily warned.
Except that none of that’s true.
Liberty University did not tell students to return, and zero students on campus have tested positive for COVID-19.
“The bottom line is that we have no students with COVID-19, no symptoms,” Falwell said. “And it’s so sad that they want to try to turn this into something political.”
Falwell said other universities followed the same procedures as Liberty but did not attract any media attention.
“We’re an easy target, we’re conservative,” Falwell said. “But it’s sad that they would use something as grave as the virus that’s killing people to push their political agenda, and we decided that enough is enough.”
The university has already begun legal action.
Liberty University obtained arrest warrants for Times freelance photographer Julia Rendleman and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis. They allegedly trespassed onto campus for the story.
The actual story is much less ominous than the Times would have readers believe.
Liberty told students that they could return to campus after spring break if they had “no place else to go or no place safe to go.”
According to an infographic, about 14 percent of Liberty’s students returned to campus.
In comparison, about 20 percent of students returned to UCLA, Texas A&M and Arizona State University. These universities did not garner negative media attention.
Some Liberty students decided to self-quarantine because they had returned from places like New York. One student tested positive for COVID-19, but he is an online student who had not been on campus.
“This libelous story has inflicted substantial harm on Liberty University’s reputation and caused it to expend substantial time and resources addressing,” Liberty University lawyer Michael Bowe said in a letter to the Times.
“LU hereby demands that this story be retracted in its entirety, and that the New York Times and those who worked on this story immediately implement a litigation hold as potential litigation is imminent,” he said.
