Management at New York sports/concert/wedding venue Madison Square Garden has now moved forward with stated plans to sue tech outlet Wired, USA Today reports. Madison Square Garden Entertainment filed a lawsuit today targeting the Condé Nast publication, as well as contributing editor Noah Shachtman, writer Maddy Varner, and Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond, over a story Shachtman and Varner published on July 9, digging into the venue’s recordkeeping on various famous people who’ve passed through its doors. The lawsuit claims that the article was “unethical and inflammatory,” using information acquired from hackers, and saying writers then “cherry-picked fragments of that data to manufacture a false narrative portraying MSG as targeting the LGBTQIA community for discriminatory purposes.”
The Wired article in question (headlined “Madison Square Garden Kept A List Of Gay Celebrities”) dug into MSG records that were released online in recent months by hacking group ShinyHunters— including what’s purported to be a “talent” database the Knicks venue keeps of celebrities who’ve attended games at the Garden. Wired‘s reporting noted, among other things, that these records tracked “risk” levels for at least some of the celebrities in question (in part, purportedly, as a way to track who not to give free tickets to over behavior on social media, and, in at least some cases, over publicly talking shit about Garden owner James Dolan). It also allegedly contained an entry for sexual orientation, with 93 of the 40,000 or so people in the database marked “LGBTQIA.” In the lawsuit, the Garden’s lawyers claim that the entire database, presumably including the fields for orientation, was simply part of the company’s “relationship management” efforts, writing that “Defendants knew there was no nefarious ‘list’ of gay celebrities, and Defendants knew that the stolen data contained dozens of fields per customer—including mundane fields such as address, phone number, and dietary restrictions—used for relationship management purposes, not discrimination.”
Wired has responded to the lawsuit, issuing a statement in which it said “Earlier today, Wired learned that Madison Square Garden was suing us for our accurate reporting. We stand by this reporting, and plan to vigorously defend it against this baseless and ridiculous lawsuit. We look forward to continuing our coverage of MSG, and on billionaire James Dolan’s use of technology across his entertainment empire. It’s one part of our wider mission and the critical job of journalists, now more than ever: holding power to account.”
Per the lawsuit, MSG is seeking a jury trial, along with compensatory, presumed, special, and punitive damages; a correction or retraction of the false and defamatory statements and implications; and attorney’s fees.
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