Charleston Attorney Clay Hopkins takes issue with a freelancer who distributed news on our new aggregate platform.
633,000 S.C. voters (93%) demanded S.C. Judicial Reform this past Saturday by ballot referundum.
Meanwhile, Charelston based Attorney Clay Hopkins reached out to our news team today, threatening to sue us for distributing Ms. Granade’s article entitled Charleston is a Judicial Hellhole. He claims he was defamed.
MyrtleBeachSC News is choosing to enter a newly evolving digital age, much like Yahoo News is choosing to do with the Myrtle Beach Sun News or the Hilton Head Island Packet. Other news outlets, including Newsbreak and Substack, are doing much the same.
ISLAND PACKET EXAMPLES 2024 NEWS PLATFORMS
For distribution purposes, many freelance writers and news publications are sharing their news on other news platforms such as NEWSBREAK, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It has become a common practice.
The article just above published today by The Island Packet was also distributed on Yahoo News.
Question: What happens when a person takes issue with an Island Packet article? Should he sue the Island Packet? Should he sue Yahoo? Or should he sue all of the above?
Clay Hopkins is a Charleston County attorney who took issue with an article written by a Freelance Journalist named Lee Granade, who published an article called Charleston is a “Judicial Hellhole”. This was distributed on the MyrtleBeachSC News aggregate platform which is in its infancy.
You can read a portion of Clay Hopkins’ statement below.
Lee Granade is a Freelance court reporter, who has redistributed articles on our news platform since late 2023.
HOPKINS STATES HIS ISSUE WITH THE ARTICLE
From: Clay Hopkins
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2024 10:54 AM
To: MyrtleBeachSC
Subject: RE: Granade Article
“In our (YOUR) December 1, 2023 article, titled, Charleston is a “Judicial Hellhole” this week…, we (you) referred to a pending Charleston County family court action and reported that a former attorney who was subjected to discipline by the South Carolina Supreme Court was, or is still, practicing law and employed by the law firm actively handling the case.
The author of the article did not reach out to the former attorney or the current attorney handling that matter, and upon review (according to Hopkins), it does not appear that information was, or is, true.”
________
MyrtleBeachSC News reached out to Lee Granade and she stands behind her story. She informed us,
“I did reach out – to court and on his website and clarified that, but also clarified that an attorney cannot comment on a pending case. I took it up with Clay on email send at 6:55 p.m. tonight.”
As we are now moving into a new operating model, like Yahoo and Newsbreak, MyrtleBeachSC News chose to remove the article from our platform. For reference, on February 8th, platform redistributor Newsbreak removed one of our articles for supposed Graphic Content after it was reported by an associate of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.
The details of that Newsbreak article removal can be found here: https://myrtlebeachsc.com/recent-censorship-of-local-news-in-myrtle-beach-elevates-concerns/
As Newsbreak is an aggregator, we made little of the removal.
Rarely do courts find the law up to date with new technology changes. The law is, in fact, reactive. Case law appears not to exist here.
On Tuesday, Speaker Murrell Smith’s “S.C. House Judicial Reform Committee” will come back with what is expected to be an overhaul request of the JMSC, the Family Court System, and the Criminal Court system in S.C.
This is a developing story.