The National Football League is stepping up its aggressive campaign to counter a New York Times investigation last week that questioned the league’s concussion research and claimed it had ties to the tobacco industry. “By publishing the story, fully aware of the falsity of the underlying facts, the Times recklessly disregarded the truth and defamed the NFL,” according to the letter from attorney Brad S. Karp of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Sports editor Jason Stallman said the Times sees "no reason to retract anything." Spokesman Joe Lockhart published a 2,500-word rebuttal on the league's website, arguing that "the paper published pages of false innuendo and sheer speculation based on a mere handful of anecdotal and cursory references, twisted and contorted out of context, from a smattering of documents out of millions found on the tobacco litigation website." Additionally, the NFL ran ads on nytimes.com to promote the steps it says it has taken to advance player safety; at least one of the ads appeared in a banner placement directly above the concussions story. The article also claimed there are connections between the NFL and the tobacco industry that included shared lawyers, consultants and lobbyists. The NFL attorney argued in his letter that the Times piece was based on a "grand total of five pieces of circumstantial evidence, none of which—taken together or individually—comes close to establishing any meaningful 'tie' that reasonably can form the basis of the Times's knowingly false and incendiary charge."
– Last week, the New York Times published an article claiming the NFL's much-touted concussion research was wildly flawed while simultaneously linking the league's methods to those of the much-reviled tobacco industry. Now, Politico reports the NFL is demanding the Times immediately retract the story, which it calls "false and defamatory," and insinuating it may take legal action against the paper. The NFL claims it gave the Times evidence disproving the story before it ran, according to the Wall Street Journal. “By publishing the story, fully aware of the falsity of the underlying facts, the Times recklessly disregarded the truth and defamed the NFL,” a letter from an NFL attorney states. Monday's letter to the Times' legal team was just the most recent step in the NFL's campaign against the Times' article. The league ran a 2,500-word rebuttal on its website that accused of the Times of "false innuendo and sheer speculation." It also covered the Times' online sports section in ads touting its new player safety measures. However, it appears the Times is standing by its story, with the paper's sports editor saying it has "no reason to retract anything."