Talib Kweli Is Suing Jezebel for Emotional Distress Due to 2020 Article

justjared.com:

Talib Kweli is filing a lawsuit. The 46-year-old rapper is coming after Jezebel, claiming that they caused emotional distress and partial financial ruin due to an article from 2020 detailing his alleged “harassment campaign” against a Black woman on Twitter.

The star filed the 34-page suit on Monday (August 9) against parent company G/O Media and the piece’s author, Ashley Reese, and claimed the outlet failed to fulfill its “duty” to fully include his perspective in the story, which is still up, called: “Talib Kweli’s Harassment Campaign Shows How Unprotected Black Women Are Online and Off.” The article explored his social media interactions involving a then-24-year-old student and activist named Maya Moody, which eventually caused Twitter to permanently suspend him from the platform.

He is asking the court to award him $300,000 in damages, plus legal fees. “The defendant negligently breached that duty by taking all the facts that the plaintiff stated and publishing them on the articles for 11 million plus to witness as they tried every angel [sic] to prove his facts were false, then attacked everything about his career, life, age, family,” he wrote in the filing.

He claims the article cost him both nearly $1 million in revenue since its publication two years ago plus 50% of his salary, which he estimated at $600,000. “The defendants are a women’s magazine, and Talib Kweli was the target to impose…The publications didn’t consider the reaction that would affect Talib‘s career with the attempt to harm his reputation,” his suit alleges. “Jezebel’s article fairly reported on the controversy which led to the permanent suspension of Talib Kweli’s Twitter account.