Scott Barretto, the social media PR mouthpiece of FUNimation just admitted something he really, REALLY fucking shouldn't have.
As his job as a mouthpiece, he has to keep up on the news, right? The "Head of FUNimation's social media and interaction" just admitted in this affidavit that his sources for news are: Anime News Network, Polygon, IO9, Screen Rant, Newsweek, and Variety.
And just like that, FUNimation's credibility was been reduced to ash in an instant.
It's worse than that once you consider that FUNimation is a named source in some of those articles. However, the biggest problem is that the timeline doesn't make sense on most of them either. If you look at FUNimation's initial TCPA filing (
link), they include the following articles as exhibits:
1/25 Polygon article about Vic
1/30 ANN article about Vic
2/4 ANN article about Vic
2/5 ANN article about Vic
2/5 Polygon article about Vic
2/9 ANN article about Vic
2/11 Polygon article about Vic
2/14 ANN article about Vic
2/19 IO9 article about Vic
2/20 ANN article about Inoue-Harte's bullshit swatting story
2/20 ANN article about Monica
2/25 Screenrant article about Vic
3/24 ANN article about Vic
4/19 Newsweek article about Vic
4/19 Polygon article about Vic
4/19 Variety article about Vic
The problem is that Denbow informed Vic that he had been terminated on 1/29/2019, which predates all but the initial Polygon article. The initial Polygon article (
archive) doesn't even report any of the specific instances that would have been brought up in the FUNimation investigation either. Instead it links to PULL, the since deleted "vicmeggnognahorrorstories" tumblr, and several nobodies on Twitter.
Even if most of the original affidavit doesn't get thrown out, it's completely worthless in that it wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny under deposition or witness testimony during trial. FUNimation needs to settle and get out now while it's still cheap.