Los Angeles – An indigenous tribe of the Brazilian Amazon has sued The New York Timessaying the newspaper reports on the tribe First Internet Exposure It led to its members were widely portrayed as addicted to technology and pornography.
The Marubo tribe of the Javari Valley, a sovereign community of approximately 2,000 people in the tropical jungle, filed the demand for defamation that was looking for hundreds of millions of dollars in damage this week in a Los Angeles court.
He also appoints TMZ and Yahoo as accused, claiming that his stories amplified and sensationalized the reports of the times and stained the tribe in the process.
The demand says the history of Jack Nicas of June of Times, on how the group was handling the introduction of the satellite service through Elon Musk’s Starlink “portrayed the Marubo people as a community that could not handle basic Internet exposure, highlighting the accusations that their youth had been consumed by pornography.”
“These statements were not only inflammatory, but were transmitted to the average reader that the Marube people had descended to moral and social decline as a direct result of Internet access,” says a modified version of the lawsuit filed on Thursday. “Such representations go far beyond cultural comments; they directly attack the character, morality and social position of an entire people, which suggests that they lack discipline or values to function in the modern world.”
In a statement to The Associated Press, a Times spokesman said: “Any fair reading of this piece shows a sensitive and nuanced exploration of the benefits and complications of the new technology in a remote indigenous village with a proud history and a preserved culture. We intend to strongly defend against demand.”
The theme of the history of Nicas was that after less than a year of service, the community now faced the same types of struggles with the widespread internet effects and the proliferation of smartphones that much of the world has treated for years.
Nicas listed a wide range of these challenges: “teenagers attached to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; strangers online; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors who watch pornography.”
He later wrote that a tribal leader “is more restless for pornography. He said young people shared explicit videos in group chats, an impressive development for a culture that disapproves kissing in public.”
The piece does not make another mention of porn, but that aspect of the story was amplified and added by other points of sale, including TMZ, which executed a history and a accompanying accompanying video: “Elon Musk’s Starlink connection leaves a remote tribe addict to pornography.”
The demand says that the video segment “falsely framed the Marubo tribe as having descended to moral collapse.”
The messages looking for comments from TMZ and Yahoo were not answered immediately.
The erroneous perceptions caused by the aggregation and replacement of history led the Times to publish a follow -up.
“The Marube people are not addicted to pornography,” Nicas wrote in the The second story. “There was no indication of this in the forest, and there were no suggestions in the New York Times article.”
That did not satisfy the tribe, which says in the demand that “he did not recognize the role that the NYT played in the food of the defamatory narration. Instead of emitting a retraction or apologies, the follow -up minimized the emphasis of the original article in pornography when blaming third -party aggregators.”
Nicas wrote that he spent a week with the Marubo tribe. The demand says that while he was invited for a week, he spent less than 48 hours in the village, “just enough time to observe, understand or compromise respectfully to the community.
The demand was First reported by Courthouse News.
The plaintiffs also include the community leader Antoque Marubo and the Brazilian journalist and sociologist Flora Dutra, who appeared in history.
Both were fundamental to bring the Internet connection to the tribe, which they said has had many positive effects, including the facilitation of emergency medicine and children’s education.
They cited the TMZ video, which shows them by establishing antennas for the connection, since creating the “unmistakable impression” that the two “had introduced harmful and sexually explicit material in the community and facilitated the alleged moral and social decline.”
The demand seeks at least $ 180 million, including general and punitive damage, of each of the defendants.
“The consequences of the publication were not limited to public perception,” says demand, “destroyed culturally significant lives, institutions and projects.”
