The AP Settles Over NBA Twitter Lawsuit, Pays $20,000 Fine

The Associated Press has settled a lawsuit with an NBA referee who felt he was defamed by a tweet from one of their writers.

The AP has agreed to pay $20,000 in damages to the referee to cover his legal costs, as well as remove the tweet from the writer’s account.

As we reported when this lawsuit came to light in March, AP reporter Jon Krawczynski tweeted the following after a call that NBA referee William Spooner made during a January 24th game:

“Ref Bill Spooner told Rambis he’d ‘get it back’ after a bad call. Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That’s NBA officiating folks.”

And that tweet ended up costing his organization $20,000.

Read more of the story here, and see the court filings here.