Conservatives demand Georgia newspaper drop ‘hate group’ smear

YES. King, an immigration activist whose defamation suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center is in court, sent a legal demand letter to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asking it to correct the newspaper’s labeling of his organization as an “anti-immigrant hate group.” » The liberal newspaper published a correction Friday and acknowledged King’s legal victory in court, although it did not cover it when it happened.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a prominent newspaper in and around Georgia’s capital, mentioned King’s group, the Dustin Inman Society, in an Oct. 7 article about Katie Stamper, who won the Democratic primary in Georgia’s 11th Congressional District. Democrats are now backing a write-in candidate, arguing that Stamper won the primary under false pretenses.

“A review of activities under her birth name, Karen Sakandi, which Stamper legally changed in 2019, revealed that she was previously associated with a Marietta-based anti-immigration hate group,” wrote The Journal-Constitution’s Washington correspondent Tia Mitchell. Mitchell went on to include links to the Dustin Inman Society’s website without mentioning the society or explaining why the newspaper characterized it as an “anti-immigrant hate group.”

The Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for immigration enforcement and fights illegal immigration, has three legal immigrants on its advisory board: Mary Grabar (from Slovenia); Maria Litland (from Austria); and Sabine Durden-Coulter (from Germany). The society was named after a 16-year-old Georgia boy who died in a car accident in 2000 caused by an illegal immigrant.

King’s sent a letter of demand on Oct. 18, and the newspaper published a correction on Friday.

“The left-wing AJC could have saved themselves a lot of time and trouble if they hadn’t been so zealous in their attempts to insert a smear against the Dustin Inman Society into an unrelated story about a congressional candidate they don’t like,” King told The Daily Signal in a written statement. on Friday. “Today’s lengthy retraction/correction shows that AJC reporter Tia Mitchell understood almost nothing of her lead paragraph.”

King noted that when a federal judge allowed his lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center to continue in 2023, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not cover the story, but a correction to the article mentions this legal development.

“In their amendment, the editors had to explain the fact that we have a libel suit against the SPLC because they chose not to cover the story when the court argued our case in early 2023,” he told The Daily Signal.

“Enforcing compliance with American immigration laws is not ‘anti-immigration’ or ‘hateful,’” King added.

“This defamation is a persistent and punitive habit for AJC employees,” King previously told The Daily Signal. “They know this is false, and over the years they have had to make corrections many times, telling readers that we are targeting illegal immigration rather than being somehow ‘anti-immigration.’

Where did AJC get this idea?

King is already fighting to restore his reputation in court after one left-wing organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, called the Dustin Inman Society a “hate group.”

The SPLC, which regularly labels mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as “hate groups” and places them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, in 2018 labeled the group an “anti-immigrant hate group.” Back in 2011, the SPLC told The Associated Press that it did not consider the society a “hate group.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which advocates easing immigration restrictions, has registered a lobbyist opposing the public-backed bill. Around the same time, the SPLC designated the society a “hate group.”

King sued the SPLC for defamation, and a federal judge allowed the suit to proceed.

As I explain in my book Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a terrorist used the organization’s “hate card” to attack a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and a former SPLC employee called accusations of “hate” is a “highly profitable scam.” However, many defamation suits against the SPLC have failed, in part because few plaintiffs before King were able to prove that the organization had reason to suspect that the “hate group” label was false.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not mention the SPLC in its attack on the Dustin Inman Society and did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this article.

Competition with SPLC?

King previously told The Daily Signal that the newspaper echoed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attacks but positioned itself as a separate arbiter of “hate.”

“Since we started fighting illegal immigration here in 2005, the AJC has gone from being merely partisan, liberal and politically driven to being in apparent competition with the despicable SPLC,” he said. “Now they appear to have taken it upon themselves to bypass the establishment left’s detractors and classify pro-enforcement political opponents who speak back as running an ‘anti-immigration hate group,’ including those who are immigrants.”

King said the newspaper had a double standard, condemning his organization as a “hate group” while celebrating leftists who advocate amnesty for illegal immigrants. He referred to the Georgia Association of Elected Officials, which goes by the acronym GALEO and describes itself as an organization dedicated to “increasing civic participation in the Latino community and developing outstanding Latino leaders throughout Georgia.”

“Meanwhile,” King said of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “they are calling far-left anti-enforcement groups like the notorious GALEO that publicly protest immigration enforcement “civil rights groups.”

King also noted that the AJC paid to sponsor the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund gala in 2004. Mario Obledo, co-founder of MALDEF, suggested that non-Hispanic white Californians move “back to Europe.”

When then-President Bill Clinton presented Oledo with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, a man in the audience asked, “You also made the statement that California would become a Hispanic state, and if anyone doesn’t like it, they should leave. Did you say that?

“Yes,” Obledo replied. “They should go back to Europe.”

“AJC openly advocates for open borders and is helping this far-left anti-border group raise funds,” King told The Daily Signal. “Just because MALDEF founder Mario Obledo called out Americans who disagreed with his plan for California and said those who did not “should return to Europe” did not stop AJC from serving as a “dinner chair” for MALDEF. charity gala is here.”

“There was once a time when I could have posted a pro-law enforcement guest column on their opinion page,” he lamented to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Letter

Todd McMurtry, a defamation lawyer representing King, sent a demand letter to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week.

“Using Internet links, the AJC article falsely characterizes the Dustin Inman Society as an ‘anti-immigration hate group based in Marietta,’” McMurtry wrote. “This characterization is false, defamatory, and published with actual malice.”

“The Dustin Inman Society is pro-secure borders, not anti-immigration, and its owners do not hate anyone,” McMurtry added in the letter. “Rather, DIS advocates for compliance with U.S. immigration laws and actively opposes illegal immigration. This distinction is critical and well known by your publication staff.”

McMurtry outlined the society’s position on immigration, stating that “it supports a steady level of legal immigration through established channels”; he “opposes illegal immigration due to various social issues”; and he “defends legal immigrants when the media tries to blur the difference between them and illegal aliens.” He also noted that legal immigrants serve on the society’s board.

McMurtry demanded that the newspaper immediately retract the “defamatory statement,” publish a “prominent apology” and “cease further defamatory characterizations of the Dustin Inman Society.”

The letter warned that “failure to comply with these requirements may result in further legal action.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include a disclaimer and to correctly identify the nature of the society’s governance.