HERALD PUBLISHES HALF-TRUTH ARTICLE ON LAWSUIT

By Juan Montoya
A satire published and distributed in the mid-1980s poking fun at the Brownsville, its slogans and also at the  Brownsville Herald pointed out inconsistencies in planning, street layout and its newspaper coverage.
For example, its authors pointed out that some of its streets were named in sequence based on the presidential administration only to skip several and then continue.
One of its most pointed barbs at the Herald was the logo of the corporation which owned it at the time, Freedom Newspapers. The daily had just introduced its new, improved, even better logo of a torch with a flame. The wags noted that the logo only pictured half a flame. This meant, the authors said, that the newspaper was letting its readers know that it was printing half-truths.
Anyway, no one ever knew who the authors were, but they made their point.
This morning it happened again.
The newspaper published a story letting its dwindling readership know that a state district judge in Nueces County had issued a summary judgment in its favor regarding an ad that ran in 2008 involving the race for Cameron County district attorney.
The story goes on to say that Judge Robert Blackmon stated that allowing the case against the newspaper to go forward would "stomp" on the newspaper's right to free speech under the First Amendment.
That much is true as far as that goes.
What the story fails to mention is that the newspaper's co-defendant in the case was local attorney Peter Zavaletta, who was challenging then-district attorney Armando Villalobos for the position. It was his political ad that the newspaper ran that caused four men to file the defamation/invasion of privacy lawsuit. Convicted district judge Abel Limas has admitted in federal court that he accepted an $8,000 bribe to rule against Zavaletta and the newspaper.
However, reading the Herald's article this morning, Zavaletta is never mentioned in the article. Below, for those who want the full story, is the docket entry for the judge's order.

04/26/2013			Journal Entry Deft Zavaletta's Motion for summary judgment and deft Freedom communications' second renewed Motion for summary judgment were granted....RB/es
04/26/2013			Document Filed Fax from Judge Robert Blackmon- Defendant Zavaletta's Motion for Summary Judgment and Defendant Freedom Communications' Second Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment were Granted

And that, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.