The following Washington Post story blows a hole in the FOX vs. Dominion defamation lawsuit and proves again, as if we didn’t already know, FOX News is anything but “fair and balanced” and certainly they are pitiful when it comes to reporting any news for the general public just to keep the MAGA sort of people in tow.
That story
has this headline (Note: Very long
post but worth the read):
“Incredibly damning: Fox News
documents stun some legal experts”
The disclosure of emails and texts in which Fox News executives and
personalities disparaged the same election conspiracies being floated on their
shows has greatly increased the chances that a defamation case against the
network will succeed, legal experts say.
Dominion Voting Systems included dozens of messages sent internally by Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch and on-air stars such as Tucker Carlson in a brief made public last week in support of the voting technology company’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network.
Dominion claims it was damaged in the months after the 2020 election after Fox repeatedly aired false statements that it was part of a conspiracy to fraudulently elect Joe Biden.
Dominion said the
emails and texts show that Fox’s hosts and executives knew the claims being
peddled by then-president Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney
Powell weren’t true — some employees privately described them as “ludicrous and
mind blowingly nuts”— but Fox kept airing them to keep its audience from
changing channels. If so, the messages could amount to powerful body of
evidence against Fox, according to First Amendment experts, because they meet a
critical and difficult-to-meet standard in such cases.
Ronnell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah professor who specializes in media
law, said: “You just don’t often get smoking-gun evidence of a news
organization saying internally. We know this is patently false, but let’s forge
ahead with it.”
Under the New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) case, the Supreme Court ruling that has guided libel and defamation
claims for nearly 60 years, a plaintiff like Dominion must show that a
defendant like Fox published false statements with: “Actual malice: That it was done with
knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false
or not.”
Laurence Tribe, a
former Harvard law professor said: “Based on the messages revealed last
week, I think that Dominion both will and should prevail. If anything, the
landmark this case is likely to establish will help show that New York Times
v. Sullivan” (7-2 for the NY Times) is not an impossible legal hurdle to
clear, as some critics have claimed.”
Sonja R. West, a
First Amendment scholar at the University of Georgia law school said: “While
it’s true that the Supreme Court [in Sullivan] has set a high bar for
plaintiffs, a high bar doesn’t mean no bar. What we’re seeing in this case
looks an awful lot like the exception that proves the rule. The First Amendment
often protects speakers who make innocent or even negligent mistakes, but this
does not mean they can knowingly tell lies that damage the reputation of
others. The messages are incredibly damning.”
In fact, Fox has cited the
ruling in its defense, arguing that its reporting and commentary on Dominion
were legitimate newsgathering activities that Sullivan was designed
to protect.
Fox went on to say
that “Dominion has used cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and
spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter
principles of defamation law.”
Fox’s lawyers argued:
“In the network’s own brief seeking summary judgment, it is plain as day that
any reasonable viewer would understand that Fox News was covering and
commenting on allegations about Dominion, not reporting that the
allegations were true.”
Fox’s attempt to
defend itself with Sullivan notably clashes with efforts by some prominent conservatives
to undo the ruling:
· Trump has said numerous times it should be
easier for people to claim libel against the news media.
· Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has backed state legislation to do just that.
· Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Neil
M. Gorsuch have also suggested the Sullivan standard should be revisited.
The “actual malice” standard makes it hard to win defamation lawsuits because of the difficulty in demonstrating a reporter or publisher‘s state of mind before publication.
It
places the burden on the plaintiff to prove that the reporter was not simply
just wrong, but knew it and proceeded regardless.
Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox has already progressed further than many defamation suits, said Charles Harder, an attorney who has represented Trump and his wife, Melania, in libel cases.
He said judges often
dismiss such suits before the start of discovery (the process of collecting of
internal documents by the plaintiff that resulted in Fox texts and emails being
made public last week).
Dominion’s representatives
spent months obtaining the emails and text messages and conducting depositions
with the Fox hosts and executives who were cited in the brief disclosed last
week.
Harder also represented professional wrestler Hulk Hogan in an invasion-of-privacy action that resulted in a $140 million verdict against Gawker Media in 2016 went on to say: “The key here is that Dominion was allowed to take discovery and obtain the internal communications at Fox. Too many plaintiffs, likely with meritorious cases, have their cases dismissed early and are denied the opportunity to obtain evidence to prove their claims, and unless Fox can persuade DE Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis to dismiss the case, or strikes a settlement agreement, it will probably have to face a jury. That could prove perilous. In my experience, juries have no sympathy for media companies that knowingly cause harm to others.”
For example:
1. Last October, a jury in CT ordered Alex Jones to pay $965 million to the
families of children killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre, whom he
had repeatedly lied about on his shows.
2. Amid a jury trial
in 2017, Disney-owned ABC News paid a beef producer more than $177 million
to settle allegations that it had slandered the company by describing
one of its meat products as “pink slime” on-air.
Fox wrote in a brief questioning
Dominion’s claim to $1.6 billion in damages, arguing that the figure is many
times greater than Dominion’s net worth, adding: “The record confirms that
Dominion has not suffered any economic harm at all. Its financials are better
than ever.”
Yet some legal scholars are stunned by the behind-the-scenes
statements collected by Dominion, and how blatantly Fox’s insiders expressed
doubts about what their company was putting on the air.
Anderson Jones said: “Those of us who study these sorts of defamation claims against the media are much more accustomed to cases that have a variety of pieces of circumstantial evidence of reckless disregard for the truth. This filing is different. Internal messages show key figures at Fox casting aspersions on Fox’s own decisions, and they also show an unusually clear timeline and motivation noting that Fox continued to broadcast allegedly defamatory statements even after Dominion had alerted the network that the claims were false. There’s evidence that Fox executives decided to keep broadcasting the false statements because they feared losing viewers if they didn’t. We just don’t have examples of major media cases with this kind of evidentiary record.”
My 2 Cents: In my view Dominion will win their case against
Fox and rightly so. The evidence against Fox like the documents, broadcasters’
own words, and such are overwhelming.
I have never been a Fox news fan or viewer to any degree for their denial and support of Trump's “Big Lie” about the 2020 election is the icing on the proverbial cake.
News should inform with the truth and facts of actual events for the general public
as a whole and not for personal gain or profits from false reporting by Ads and
such with string of documented lies.
Hopefully Fox will go down
since they have earned it and brought this disgrace on themselves.
My earlier related posts
this same subject here,
here,
and here.
Thanks for stopping by.
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