Lawyers for al-Jazeera filed a motion on Friday to dismiss the defamation suits filed in early January by two Major League Baseball players over the network’s late December investigative story on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports.

Titled The Dark Side, the al-Jazeera documentary relied on undercover work by British hurdler Liam Collins, who networked his way to prolonged discussions with Charlie Sly, a Texas pharmaceutical genius. In secret recordings, Sly can be seen in the documentary boasting of his transactions with professional baseball and American football players, including Ryan Howard (Philadelphia Phillies), Clay Matthews (Green Bay Packers), Michael Neal (Green Bay Packers), Ryan Zimmerman (Washington Nationals). He speaks of sending them an array of performance-enhancing substances.

In early January, Howard and Zimmerman filed suits against al-Jazeera America. From Zimmerman’s complaint: “Due to defendants’ defamatory statements, Mr Zimmerman has been at the centre of a media storm speculating as to his alleged use of Delta 2 and other performance-enhancing substances. Mr Zimmerman’s reputation for honesty, both generally and as a competitor, has been called into question, not only in front of the athletic community, but in front of the public at large.” Howard’s complaint levelled the same charges. In Friday filings in both cases, lawyers for al-Jazeera issued motions to dismiss the proceedings. Although the Zimmerman and Howard cases are separate, the motions are pretty much the same, with the exception of certain details specific to how the al-Jazeera documentary treated each of the two athletes. The al-Jazeera lawyers argue essentially that the documentary placed the allegations before the viewing audience without taking a position on them. “The documentary simply relays Sly’s recorded assertions about plaintiff, which al-Jazeera characterises as a ‘claim’ by Sly. Al-Jazeera does not endorse the truth of what Sly said; it does no more than state that Sly’s claims raise questions of importance. The viewer is left to decide those questions for herself.” In a more naked assertion of this defence, the motion reads: “Nowhere in the documentary or follow-up articles does al-Jazeera endorse Sly’s or Robertson’s claims or take a position on the truth of those assertions. Moreover, context is key,” reads the motion, which was prepared by attorney Andrew Deutsch of DLA Piper LLP.

“The overall documentary is not about plaintiff or other athletes. It is about ‘the dark side’ — the medical and pharmaceutical professionals who act as a pipeline for drugs that are banned in sports. The only conclusion that al-Jazeera reaches in the documentary has to do with the suppliers of [performance-enhancing substances], not plaintiff, stating: ‘as our investigation has proved, there are plenty of doctors and chemists taking doping to a whole new level’.”

To further cement its neutrality, al-Jazeera’s lawyers cite carefully worded fudge language inserted in the documentary’s script distancing the news organisation from its reporting. The motion includes the following four examples (italics are in the original):

“Medical professionals who say they work with top athletes.” (Ex. A at 1.)

“We catch the chemical mastermind and hear about players he claims he’s doped to fame.” (Ex. A at 1-2.)

“Chad Robertson ... claims he’s already worked with top athletes.” (Ex. A at 9.)

“Back in Texas, the pharmacist Charlie Sly named more sportsmen he claims are linked to Delta 2 — in baseball and football.” (Ex. A at 26.)

Another plank in the news organisation’s defence stems from Sly’s alleged credibility as an apparent peddler of performance-enhancing substances. “Sly showed in-depth knowledge of the uses and administration of PES; created a regimen for Collins that included PES and told him how to hide this use from authorities; offered a syringe apparently containing PES to Collins; had a refrigerator full of drugs; actually supplied PES to Taylor Teagarden, an MLB player, who talked openly with Collins about his use of PES; and made a number of specific statements about PES that al-Jazeera was able to verify,” reads the complaint. Sly issued a recantation of his statements to Collins/al-Jazeera before the documentary aired. It was recorded and uploaded to the internet:

“My name is Charles Sly. It has come to my attention that the broadcaster al-Jazeera has somehow obtained recordings or communications of me making statements concerning a number of athletes and that al-Jazeera plans to air a programme about them. Any recordings of me were made without my knowledge or consent. It is my belief that an individual named Liam Collins secretly made those recordings. Liam is a reputed fraudster who was banned in his native United Kingdom from running any investment businesses. The statements on any recordings or communications that al-Jazeera plans to air are absolutely false and incorrect. To be clear, I am recanting any such statements and there is no truth to any statement of mine that al-Jazeera plans to air. Under no circumstances should any of those statements, recordings or communications be aired.”

The al-Jazeera motion calls this statement “self-serving” and notes that during the video recording, Sly was “visibly pale, swallowing nervously, and apparently reading from an off-screen cue card.”

That’s a fair and eloquent description.

“Al-Jazeera did not act with actual malice when it decided to believe the truth of what Sly said in the hidden camera footage and to disbelieve his later self-serving denials,” reads the motion. The term “actual malice” is critical to the outlet’s defence. In both the Zimmerman and Howard cases, counsel for al-Jazeera argues that the athletes are public figures. To quote from the Howard dismissal motion, “As a famous sports hero and local idol, Howard has the legal status of a ‘public figure.’ He cannot prevail on his claims unless he plausibly alleges and proves that the defendants published Sly’s statement about him with ‘actual malice’ — that is, with subjective knowledge that what Sly said was false or with reckless disregard of indications of likely falsity,” reads the document. Were Howard shown to be merely a private individual, his lawyers would need to prove only that al-Jazeera acted with negligence — a much easier legal case. Proving actual malice, as the motion notes, is an “onerous” proposition.

To establish that al-Jazeera fell far short of the actual malice standard, the motion notes that the news outlet included “candid disclosures” of the denials of the athletes — that they had taken performance-enhancing drugs — as well as of Sly, that he had supplied them. Towards this end, the motion cites a US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit opinion stating, in part, “Where a publisher gives readers sufficient information to weigh for themselves the likelihood of an article’s veracity, it reduces the risk that readers will reach unfair (or simply incorrect) conclusions, even if the publisher itself has.” In its concluding section, the motion reads, in part, “The Dark Side is an important story on a newsworthy subject, and is in the best traditions of investigative reporting. Defendants performed a public service by exposing hidden wrongdoing. The documentary deserves the full protection of the First Amendment as embodied in the actual malice standard.”

Media outlets striking back at libel suits rely on some combination of their raw reporting and First Amendment protections. In this case, al-Jazeera’s defence rests heavily on the “public figure” standard to defend reporting whose veracity al-Jazeera can’t, and hasn’t, established beyond its faith in some guy whom it found in Texas. However the courts view al-Jazeera’s legal rebuttal, its journalistic footing is slippery. The motion, after all, makes explicit the organisation’s admission that it doesn’t “endorse the truth of what Sly said,” even though it allowed him to run off at the mouth through much of the documentary. Contrary to the motion’s assertion, the “best traditions of investigative reporting” favour nailing down tough-to-verify facts before putting them anywhere near the public realm.

•Erik Wemple is a media critic at The Washington Post