Of the 24 minutes Gov. Jim Justice spoke during his COVID briefing Monday, before taking questions from the press, he dedicated at least 10 minutes to complaining about — and threatening to sue — the Charleston Gazette-Mail and its reporter/columnist Phil Kabler for a “Statehouse Beat” column that published Sunday. (And an additional four minutes after Kenny Bass asked what Kabler had done to warrant being sued. The answer to which included that Kabler “negatively impacted God.”)
So what was in this infamous column? Titled “Justice and Legislature’s opposition to masks and vaccines bear responsibility for many COVID-19 deaths in WV,” the column broke down West Virginia’s death rate as compared to California’s — a larger state that took stricter measures to combat COVID-19. West Virginia’s death rate per capita is one of the highest in America at nearly 354 deaths per 100,000 people, and if California had the same death rate, it would have over 140,000 deaths, instead of the 86,000-plus deaths it has recorded.
Kabler leads into his pandemic math by noting that, of West Virginia’s 6,440 deaths (at the time), more than 5,000 occurred after vaccines were available — the vast majority of which were among the unvaccinated. Kabler wrote: “For all of Justice’s braggadocio, through a combination of ignorance, misinformation, and Justice’s wishy-washy ‘get vaccinated — unless you don’t want to’ messaging, West Virginia has had one of the highest COVID-19 death rates per capita in the U.S. …”
The thing is, Kabler is right.
The Mountain State has been awash in ignorance and misinformation since the start of the pandemic, despite the best efforts of reputable news organizations locally and nationally. And Justice has been wishy-washy on his messaging. He has “encouraged” people to get vaccinated, but he’s also made it clear there will be no repercussions for not doing so, even when being unvaccinated in certain settings (e.g., health care) can be dangerous to others. As the top ranking elected Republican in the state, Justice could have and should have done more to push back against fellow Republicans who willfully spread misinformation about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines and undermined local public health measures.
Justice can’t say one thing (“get vaccinated”) and do another (work with the attorney general and Legislature to ensure there won’t be consequences), then get mad because someone called him out on it.
Also during his off-topic tirade, Justice referenced letters he claims to have received from Kabler. Since we don’t know what the letters actually contained, we’ll withhold judgment on them. Instead, we’ll just say this: If Justice can’t handle letters from his constituents criticizing him, no matter how uncouth, then he needs to get out of politics. If he wants to talk about vulgar, he should see some of the letters our staff receive.
Public figures — especially elected officials — are fair game. That’s why the standard to prove libel in court is so high for anyone in the public eye. If you put yourself out there, anyone can say virtually anything they want about you, short of threatening bodily harm.
In a libel case, the burden of proof on the public figure is greater than in a usual civil suit. According to Cornell Law School, “the Supreme Court held that for a publicly-known figure to succeed on a defamation claim, the public-figure plaintiff must show that the false, defaming statement was said with ‘actual malice,’ ” meaning that “the defendant said the defamatory statement ‘with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.’ ”
And what Kabler said wasn’t false. Reinstituting statewide mask mandates when delta and omicron struck, as well as fighting against anti-vaccine policies would have decreased West Virginia’s death toll.
Will Justice even file a lawsuit like he threatened? That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, Justice has done more to damage his own reputation than Kabler ever could.
