Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard law professor who is also a member in good standing of the Democrat party's Progressive wing.  He is not the type you would assume would be slimed by the New York Times.  That, however, is precisely what Lessig is charging the New York Times with doing.

It all started when it emerged that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepted $850,000 from Jeffrey Epstein, after he'd already been convicted as a pedophile:

Three top administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology knew about donations from Jeffrey Epstein to support an MIT lab as early as 2013, according to a new report, and approved his money even though they were aware of his sex crimes.

A new internal report released Friday by MIT found "significant errors in judgment" in accepting $850,000 in donations from Epstein from 2002 through 2017. The donations included 10 payments overall and nine after the wealthy financier's 2008 sex crime conviction in Florida. 

The report found most of the post-conviction donations, totaling $525,000, were made to support the work of MIT's embattled Media Lab, led by former director Joi Ito, while $225,000 went to Seth Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems and physics.

Once the story broke, Lessig wrote an essay in which he argued that, if an institution is going to take dirty money, it would be wise to make sure the donor stays anonymous.  In a blog post about his lawsuit, Lessig made clear what he'd written in the essay and what he discussed with the New York Times:

My essay was clearly not "defend[ing] soliciting donations" from Epstein. My essay said — repeatedly — that such soliciting was a "mistake." And more importantly, it was a mistake because of the kind of harm it would trigger in both victims and women generally. 

[snip]

So: I did not defend taking money from Epstein. I didn't say it was ok to take money from Epstein "if in secret." I said it was wrong to take Epstein's money, "even if anonymous." The assertion — in the tweeted headline and lede — to the contrary is thus flatly false. (Emphasis in original.)

Despite the clarity with which Lessig wrote his essay, the New York Times, as is the media norm today, went for a clickbait headline, which Lessig reproduced in his blog post: "A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein's Money, Do It in Secret: A conversation with Lawrence Lessig about Jeffrey Epstein, M.I.T. and reputation laundering."

The obvious implication was that Lessig was encouraging institutions to take dirty money and advising them about best practices to do it.

Deeply offended by that implication, Lessig has filed suit against the New York Times in a federal district court in Massachusetts accusing the Times of deliberately publishing false and defamatory information using a clickbait headline about him.

This is just the latest in a wave of people fighting back against out-of-control Leftist institutions, including the media.  Currently, the most famous example is the series of suits Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student who was grossly maligned by the media for the sin of wearing a MAGA hat, filed against several media outlets.  CNN just entered into a secret settlement with Sandmann, and word is that the number was very, very good.  Academics are also pushing back, as was the case with a professor who sued the University of New Mexico because it suspended him after a student tried to blackmail him.

Lessig makes much of the fact that he really loves the New York Times ("I love the Times"), but the reality is that even Leftists are realizing that the media have become a Frankenstein's monster.  It needs to be cut down to size before it destroys not only conservatives, but the Leftist village as well.