libel defam

primary 7 22 on fox oann defam --> MODERATION

prolly neglected, roy cohn toolbox?

is this a major source of correction?!

also trump go to offense = defense copied by palin etc, often bluff/loss

see smartmatic

trump palin fail but

an ah 2 23

During his four years in the White House, former President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the mainstream media as "the enemy of the people" and dismissed any reporting he didn’t like as "fake news." And others in the MAGA movement haven’t been shy about echoing that type of rhetoric.

Kari Lake, the far-right MAGA Republican who lost to Democratic now-Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs in the 2022 midterms, described the mainstream media as "evil bastards" during a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech. And she vowed to be the mainstream media's "worst freaking nightmare" when she was campaigning for governor. Lake’s critics responded that her willingness to threaten journalists underscored her authoritarian mindset.

Now, another MAGA Republican, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and his GOP allies in the Florida State Legislature — including State Rep. Alex Andrade — are hoping to make it easier to sue journalists for defamation. Andrade has sponsored a bill that, according to Politico’s Matt Dixon, would "weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits."

In an article published by Politico on February 23, Dixon reports that Andrade's bill — which he has been discussing with DeSantis’ office — is "being positioned to spark a larger legal battle with the goal of eventually overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits public officials' ability to sue publishers for defamation."

Andrade, a critic of the New York Times v. Sullivan decision, told Politico, "There is a strong argument to be made that the Supreme Court overreached. This is not the government shutting down free speech. This is a private cause of action."

Handed down by Warren Court 59 years ago, Sullivan was very clear about what does and doesn’t constitute defamation. According to Sullivan, defamation must involve "actual malice" — which isn’t easy to prove. Dominion Voting Systems is trying to prove "actual malice" in its defamation lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax TV and others who, in 2020, promoted the false, thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that Dominion’s voting equipment was used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the election from Trump.

Sullivan, a unanimous 9-0 ruling by the late Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues, doesn’t offer protections for outright lies, but it offers considerable protections for edgy commentary — including the type of incendiary comments that are common at right-wing media outlets. Warren was a Republican appointee of GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but his views are detested by today’s MAGA Republicans, social conservatives and far-right white evangelical Christian fundamentalists.

Seth Stern, who serves as director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, views Andrade's bill as overtly authoritarian.

Stern told Politico, "I have never seen anything remotely like this legislation. I can't say I have seen every bill ever introduced, but I’d be quite surprised if any state legislature had seriously considered such a brazen and blatantly unconstitutional attack on speech and press freedoms…. This bill is particularly remarkable since its provisions have the vocal support of a governor and likely presidential candidate."

On Tuesday, February 7, Florida's governor held a roundtable discussion where he railed against the mainstream media and argued that it should be easier to sue publications for defamation.

Dixon notes, "Andrade’s proposal incorporates many of the elements DeSantis called for during the roundtable, including allowing plaintiffs who sue media outlets for defamation to collect attorneys' fees; adding a provision to state law specifying that comments made by anonymous sources are presumed false for the purposes of defamation lawsuits; lowering the legal threshold for a 'public figure' to successfully sue for defamation; repealing the 'journalist’s privilege' section of state law, which protects journalists from being compelled to do things likereveal the identity of sources in court."

Read Politico’s full report at this link.

many msg show bad trinity knew lying

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/they-knew-it-was-lie-behind-scenes-happenings-fox-while-network-pushed-false-claims-about

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-says-dominion-filings-show-keyhole-view-what-fox-inside

https://www.mediamatters.org/2020-election-lawsuits/two-days-after-2020-election-fox-news-chief-political-anchor-bret-baier

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/abc-susan-glasser-details-how-fox-executives-lied-about-their-panic-over-ratings-amidst

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/cnn-contributor-breaks-down-how-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-shows-fox-promoted-lies-led

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/angelo-carusone-there-will-be-serious-business-consequences-fox-news-because

https://www.mediamatters.org/2020-election-lawsuits/fox-news-lied-about-dominion-and-2020-election-compete-far-right-newsmax

https://www.mediamatters.org/rupert-murdoch/rupert-murdoch-told-fox-ceo-suzanne-scott-fox-news-would-concentrate-helping-any-way

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/new-filing-shows:{-tucker-carlson-tried-get-fox-reporter-fired-correctly-fact-checking:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-explains-how-dominions-new-filing-shows-fox-news

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/angelo-carusone-explosive-new-court-filings-prove-crystal-clarity-fox-knew-it-was-pushing

an 2 23

fox News lawsuits will expose the 'dishonest' network and threaten 'alt-reality media': conservative

Sarah K. Burris Raw Story

February 15, 2023

Fox News was denied their motion to dismiss the case by Smartmatic voting systems this week, meaning the case is going to trial and the network can't stop it.

Only one county in the U.S., Los Angeles County, use...

an 2 23

Robert Patrick Lewis, the founder of far-right group 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP), is suing the New York Times (NYT) for allegedly defaming the organization, which played a role in the Jan. 6 attack, Rolling Stone reports.

The lawsuit, filed last month, seeks $100 million from the prominent news outlet for allegedly reporting "egregious lies" concerning the group's connection to the insurrection.

Per Rolling Stone — the first to report on the lawsuit — on the evening before the attack, Lewis was welcomed to speak on the Freedom Plaza stage by right-wing activist Cindy Chafian, whose mission was to acknowledge "people who often go unseen and unknown."

Chafian honored 1st Amendment Pratorian — “a play on the imperial Praetorian Guard that provided security to Roman emperors” — along with the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other ultraconservative groups, although the organization describes itself as "non-partisan."

As Lewis, an ally of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn took the stage, he said to the crowd, “Not far from here, General George Washington — in weather just like this — loaded up a ragtag group of soldiers who crossed the Delaware River,” Lewis said, before shouting: “This is our Delaware!”

He continued, “This is our time… to make sure that we don’t cede this country and have my kids grow up in a communist hellhole." He implored listeners to "fight as hard as you can to ensure that that does not happen!”

Per Rolling Stone, the group's lawsuit falls into a series of "high-dollar defamation suits brought by 1AP that are ostensibly attempting to clear its reputation."

Rolling Stone reports:

Seen in another light, the lawsuits present a vivid irony: They are filed by an organization that presents itself as a _{protector}_ of first amendment rights, against parties who’ve leveraged their own freedom of the press to raise concerns about 1st Amendment Praetorian.

The Jan. 6 Committee tweeted in November of 2021 that it subpoenaed a list of "organizations linked to the violent attack on the Capitol," including 1AP.

According to Rolling Stone, the subpoena letter read:

On January 4, 2021, the 1st Amendment Praetorian _{Twitter account}_ suggested that violence was imminent: “There may be some young National Guard Captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours. Pray with every fiber of your being that their choices are Wise, Just, and Fearless.”

WATCH: Marjorie Taylor Greene 'wrongly' declares her Twitter ban as illegal

The April 2022 transcript from Lewis' meeting with the committee was released in December, exposing the far-right leader's refusal to answer questions such as "Were you involved in discussions with the White House regarding efforts to overturn the election?"

He opted not to respond to the panel "citing his constitutional first and fifth amendment rights," according to Rolling Stone.

Now, Lewis is speaking up with legal action.

According to the legal filing, he alleges four articles published by the NYT "inaccurately paint 1AP as 'a right-wing paramilitary group, like high-profile extremist and far-right nationalist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, that was involved in President Donald Trump’s plot to interfere with the certification of the 2020 vote count and the attack on the Capitol.'”

The Trump-supporting leader maintains in the lawsuit that 1AP is “not a violent, dangerous, paramilitary, extremist group,” fully denying the group's role in the attack.

In the NYT's defense, a spokesperson told Rolling Stone, “We reported accurately and responsibly, and plan to vigorously defend against this suit.”

Rolling Stone's full report is available to read at this link.

an 12 22

When the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down its unanimous decision in New York Times v. Sullivan back in 1964, it established a tough standard that plaintiffs have to meet in defamation lawsuits. Plaintiffs, according to the Warren Court, have to prove “actual malice.” And that is what Dominion Voting Systems is trying to prove in the defamation lawsuits it filed against Fox News, Newsmax TV, One America News (OAN) and others in response to the false claims they promoted about the 2020 presidential election.

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes, many far-right MAGA Republicans at Fox News, Newsmax and OAN promoted the false claim that Dominion’s voting equipment was used to help Democrats steal the election — a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked. Fox News, in response to Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, has maintained that its hosts weren’t saying the claims about Dominion were true, and that they were just asking questions.

Dominion, meanwhile, is trying to show, in its $1.6 billion lawsuit, that hosts at Fox News acted with actual malice and promoted claims they knew were nonsense. And on Wednesday, December 21, attorneys for Dominion pointed to Fox News host Sean Hannity as an example of someone who knew that the Big Lie was a lie but promoted the claims of Trump attorney Sidney Powell anyway. Powell, who is also facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion, falsely accused Dominion of helping Democrats steal the election from Trump. Another MAGA Republican who made that false claim and is being sued by Dominion is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Dominion has sued former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well.

Reporting for the New York Times on December 21, journalist Jeremy Peters explains, “On November 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was ‘corruption all across the country, in countless districts,’ in a plot to steal reelection from the president, Donald J. Trump. At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used ‘to trash large batches of votes.’”

But when Hannity gave a deposition two years later on Wednesday, December 21, 2022 and was under oath, he admitted, “I did not believe it for one second.”

According to Peters, “The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April. Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”

Under the New York Times v. Sullivan standard established by the Warren Court 58 years ago, defamation is very difficult to prove. An honest mistake doesn’t fit the definition of defamation — the plaintiff has to show actual malice. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the Times and lost because Palin and her attorneys couldn’t prove actual malice.

“The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News,” Peters notes. “Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite.And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those who were making the decisions at the network. In Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, Dominion’s lawyers argued that they had obtained ample evidence to make that case.”

Peters adds, “One lawyer for Dominion said that ‘not a single Fox witness’ so far had produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network. And in some cases, other high-profile hosts and senior executives echoed Mr. Hannity’s doubts about what Mr. Trump and his allies like Ms. Powell were saying, according to theDominion lawyer, Stephen Shackelford. This included Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and the prime-time star Tucker Carlson, Mr. Shackelford said.”

Citing Cooper and Carlson as examples, Shackleford told the court, “Many of the highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies.”

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/supreme-court-refuses-to-dismiss-dominions-1-3-billion-defamation-suit-against-mike-lindell/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/devin-nunes-sue-nbc-libel/

9 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/oans-summer-election-conspiracy-theories

The 2020 presidential election was 693 days ago, and One America News Network is still a major hub for both denying the reality of 2020 and projecting conspiracy theories onto future elections.

Since June, OAN’s election fraud coverage has continued to hinge on hosts’ and guests’ repeated denials of the fairness of the 2020 election. It has included everything from claims that the ballot counts were tampered with to continued promotion of Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous 2000 Mules documentary. And despite an ongoing $1.6 billion defamation suit, OAN has even proclaimed that “we were right” about Dominion Voting Systems.

With the stolen election as bedrock, OAN is looking grimly toward the future, with paranoid warnings that the Democrats will now use TikTok, postal unions, and their October surprise — “the next COVID election variant” — to cheat in the midterms and beyond. All this as the supposedly “Stalinesque” FBI runs interference for President Joe Biden’s political goals with actions like seizing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s cell phone. ...

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/mike-lindell-dominion-false-narrative/

defam ct loss

mma 9 22

Fox News host Sean Hannity loves to tout the ridiculous lawsuits that Donald Trump’s lawyers keep filing against the former president’s enemies. But when those suits fail — and they almost always do — he either ignores the results or denounces the judge dismissing the lawsuit.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks tossed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and various other people and entities for purportedly conspiring to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign by tying him to Russia. In dismissing the lawsuit — in part with prejudice — Middlebrooks criticized its application of law and factual accuracy. He even suggested that Trump’s attorneys may face sanctions.

The lawsuit had drawn praise on Hannity’s program the night it was initially filed for supposedly having “all the necessary predicates for a racketeering case.” When Middlebrooks dismissed the suit, the Fox host denounced his action as a symptom of a “two-tiered system of justice in this country” that is “undermining faith in our most important institutions.”

Trump is extraordinarily litigious and regularly threatens dubious legal action to garner attention. His ultimatums frequently fall apart in court, when they materialize at all. That trend has continued since Trump left office, with his lawyers repeatedly filing complaints that immediately meet with scorn and derision from the legal community.

But Hannity is both a close adviser to Trump and one of his most obsequious supporters, so that history has not dissuaded him from credulously promoting the former president’s legal actions.

The Fox host has propped up at least three Trump complaints that were tossed by federal judges this year. In addition to the Clinton lawsuit, Hannity’s program touted Trump’s ineffectual complaint against New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking to halt her investigation of his business empire, as well as a class action lawsuit he brought against Twitter, Facebook, and Google over their suspensions of his social media accounts. But in each case, he did not follow up when the cases were thrown out.

On Hannity’s program, Trump’s lawyers and family members get softball interviews to lay out the complaints, while the host and his regular legal-issue guests tout their prospects. In some cases, Hannity has even drawn connections between the filings and the conspiracy theories featured on his show.

The “Russiagate” RICO suit

Hannity’s mood was celebratory on his March 24 broadcast as he announced the action Trump’s lawyers had taken just hours earlier.

“Former President Trump filed an explosive lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and others for their role in pushing their years-long Russian conspiracy hoax and lies, laying out evidence of racketeering, a conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood, among other claims,” Hannity said.

“As the lawsuit reads: ‘The defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent Donald J. Trump was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty’ -- which, of course, we expose right here on this program,” he added.

Hannity then turned to Trump lawyer Alina Habba and Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, to discuss the “very valid suit.”

“It's wonderful when you can actually file a suit that is in the most part proven, which is the situation that I find myself in,” Habba said, before praising Hannity for “calling it out from the beginning.”

Indeed, Hannity had spent years helping to concoct the sprawling “Russiagate” conspiracy theories at the heart of Trump’s complaint. But while he was cheering on Trump’s attempt to effectively take Fox monologues before a judge, legal experts were mocking the former president’s complaint and warning that it would go nowhere.

But Hannity claimed the lawsuit “has great merit,” then asked Jarrett for his opinion. Jarrett praised the complaint, saying that Habba and her co-counsel had provided “all the necessary predicates for a racketeering case.”

“This was a criminal enterprise run by Hillary Clinton, approved by Hillary Clinton, the false information disseminated by Hillary Clinton and her cronies,” Jarrett added. “And it's got everything in it, that is necessary to prove the case: obstruction of justice, fraud, conspiracy, theft of trade secrets. The list goes on and on."

[twt]

"I can't wait for discovery and depositions,”Hannity said at the end of the segment, before asking Habba, “I hope we get to that point. You think we'll get there?”

“We're going to get there,” she replied.

They are not going to get there.

Hannity reconvened the panel on Friday night following the suit’s dismissal. The host introduced the segment by painting the judge’s action as evidence of the “two-tiered system of justice in this country” that is “undermining faith in our most important institutions” and “shredding our Constitution” before turning it over to his guests.

[vid 9/12]

habba blamed the suit’s failure on drawing “a Clinton judge … who I had asked to recuse himself but insisted that he didn’t need to; he was going to be impartial.”

Jarrett also took issue with the ruling, saying, “It appears to me here that this judge in Florida wanted to be both judge and jury. He wanted to be the trier of the fact here. And he simply states and declares that Trump hasn’t stated a cognizable claim under the law. Well, I think he has!”

The suit to stop New York’s Trump Organization probe

Hannity had already started his Christmas vacation on December 20, 2021, when Trump’s lawyers filed suit against James, seeking to force her to call off the state attorney general probe into the Trump Organization on the purported grounds that she had violated his constitutional rights by bringing the suit due to “political animus.”

But Hannity’s guest host, Tammy Bruce, filled in in his stead that night. While legal experts had warned the effort was far-fetched, Bruce gave Habba a friendly platform to tout the supposedly “pretty clean and cut” case.

“You can't scrutinize somebody,” Habba claimed. “It's called viewpoint discrimination. It's unconstitutional. The country doesn't allow it, and Letitia James has to be stopped.”

A few weeks later, Hannity hosted Trump’s adult son Eric, who brought up the suit.

“It's going to stop because frankly we've assembled the best legal, ethical minds, and we're going to sue her for this abuse of power.And that's the only way we can fight back, to sue her for this abuse of power,” Trump said.

“We don't have equal justice under the law or application of our laws anymore, and I say that sadly. We're now criminalizing political differences. I say that sadly,” Hannity replied.

A federal judge dismissed Trump’s suit in May.

The class action suit to get back on social media

“First tonight, President Trump is fighting back against Big Tech and today, he announced a brand-new class action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google,” Hannity said at the top of his July 7, 2021, program.

“Now, with a team of high-powered attorneys, President Trump is now taking aim at what we have discussed at length on this program,” Hannity explained. “That Section 230 protections. Now, it's enjoyed by many Big Tech giants because supposedly they don't involve themselves in editorial. But in reality, they do.”

Legal experts scoffed at the class action lawsuits Trump’s lawyers filed, calling them “sure losers” due to the First Amendment protections the platforms enjoy.

But Hannity called it a “strong case,” and the people he turns to for discussions of legal issues were on board.

Alan Dershowitz, who served as one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers, called it “the most important First Amendment case of the 21st century,” adding, “There are cases, precedents going both ways and no one can predict what the outcome would be.”

And Jarrett told Hannity that “the argument that Trump makes in his lawsuit is a compelling one” and that it was “a solid argument to be presented in court.”

It wasn’t. A judge dismissed the Twitter lawsuit in May.

cohn-esque attack, diversion? retaliation?

an 9 22

A federal judge in Florida delivered a sharp, strong, and devastating 65-page rebuke as he dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and more than two dozen others including the Democratic National Committee and, initially, five former FBI officials who were later dropped from the $24 million suit. U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks said the lawsuit was so weak he agreed with the defendants who described it as “a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances,” and added, “it has no merit as a lawsuit.”

The lawsuit was filed by Alina Habba, who “previously worked as general counsel at a parking garage company.”

It “blamed Hillary Clinton and others for conspiring to malign his character,” Bloomberg reports, and “accused more than two dozen defendants of orchestrating ‘a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.’ It was filed in March under the civil version of a racketeering law normally used against organized crime.”

Judge Middlebrooks, in tossing Trump’s suit, wrote: “At its core, the problem with plaintiff’s amended complaint is that plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this court is not the appropriate forum.”

The lawsuit claimed Trump suffered “injurious falsehood,” “malicious prosecution,” “violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,” “theft of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016,” and “violations of the Stored Communications Act,” along with “various conspiracy charges and theories of agency and vicarious liability.”

Calling it “a scathing dismissal,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes Judge Middlebrooks “says the Alina Habba-led suit was devoid of facts, premised on nonsense legal claims, and late.”

Middlebrooks blasted Trump’s attorney, writing, “Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way.”

At one point Middlebrooks writes, “the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law. In fact, they are foreclosed by existing precedent, including decisions of the Supreme Court. To illustrate, I highlight here just two glaring problems with the Amended Complaint. There are many others. But these are emblematic of the audacity of Plaintiff’s legal theories and the manner in which they clearly contravene binding case law.”

“What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” Middlebrooks added.

Former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Bruce Ohr were named as defendant in the original lawsuit but later dismissed.

Judge Middlebrooks was so angered by the fact the lawsuit was even filed he noted, “I reserve jurisdiction to adjudicate issues pertaining to sanctions” against Trump’s attorneys.

2015 cost 3m$ to defend

Today we are happy to announce a monumental legal victory for Mother Jones: A judge in Idaho has ruled in our favor on all claims in a defamation case filed by a major Republican donor, Frank VanderSloot, and his company, Melaleuca Inc. In a decision issued Tuesday, the court found that Mother Jones did not defame VanderSloot or Melaleuca because “all of the statements at issue are non-actionable truth or substantial truth.” The court also found that the statements were protected as fair comment under the First Amendment.

pretty sure they lost? but not b/c lying?

no lnx pix

https://www.azmirror.com/2021/08/31/dem-lawmaker-asks-court-to-reject-jan-6-defamation-case-from-gosar-finchem-kern/

Democratic Rep. Charlene Fernandez is asking a court to dismiss a defamation case brought against her by two Republican state legislators and a GOP congressman because statements Fernandez made to the FBI about the two GOP legislators are privileged.

The case stems from a letter sent by Fernandez and other Democratic lawmakers asking the FBI to investigate Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, former state Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, and GOP Congressman Paul Gosar’s connections to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C.

In February, the trio filed a lawsuit against Fernandez, D-Yuma, accusing her of defaming them by making disparaging remarks, connecting them to the violence of Jan. 6 and conspiring against them. The trio have not brought a suit against any of the 43 other Democratic legislators who also signed the letter.

the lawsuit was stalled for months because Fernandez was immune from being served while the legislature’s annual session was taking place. But when the session ended, Fernandez waived service and both sides agreed to a 60-day response period which started at the end of the session on June 30.

“Contrary to all of the rhetoric… this is not a lawsuit about alleged fraud in the 2020 election, the purported suppression of conservative viewpoints by social media companies or issues of border security,” Fernandez’s attorney, David Bodney, wrote in the motion to dismiss the lawsuit. “Rather, this lawsuit is about whether state legislators – or, indeed, any Arizonan – may petition federal authorities to investigate potential crimes of the utmost seriousness without being dragged into court to face frivolous and retaliatory defamation litigation.”

(Bodney represents the Arizona Mirror on matters relating to public records and other First Amendment issues.)

Bodney argued that the court should grant the motion to dismiss in part because the Democratic lawmakers were communicating with law enforcement entities. Arizona case law states that such communication is privileged and a person cannot be sued for making a report to law enforcement.

“Thus, the relevant question is whether the Criminal Referral constitutes a formal or informal complaint to a prosecutor or law enforcement,” Bodney says. “Unquestionably, it is, as its name makes clear.”

Bodney also argues that the three GOP officials have failed to show that Fernandez has demonstrated “actual malice” — that she knew or had the “high probability” that she knew the statements she was making were false or defamatory.

In their lawsuit against Fernandez, Finchem, Kern and Gosar pointed to public statements they made denouncing the violence of Jan. 6 as evidence that Fernandez acted with “actual malice.”

“The fact that a public official has made self-serving denials of the conduct for which he is being criticized is insufficient to show actual malice as a matter of law,” Bodney argued.

Bodney also suggested that the initial lawsuit by Finchem and Kern — Gosar was added as a plaintiff several months later — did little to distance themselves from the violence of Jan. 6 as well.

“It is not reckless disregard for the truth, by any definition, to assert that a man who returned to the scene of an ongoing riot should be investigated for his potential involvement in encouraging and supporting the rioters,” Bodney said.

Footage reviewed by the Arizona Mirror has shown that Kern was closer to the Capitol than he said he was, and he was recorded on the Capitol grounds while violent clashes with police were still ongoing.

Finchem, too, has been found to have been closer to the Capitol on that day than he claimed.

Finchem has insisted that he never got within 500 yards of the Capitol building, but Getty footage of the failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election that was discovered by activists on Twitter shows Finchem walking directly in front of the east steps at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters had already broken through a series of barricades and police lines, and then smashed their way into the Capitol building.

Fernandez is seeking attorney fees from Finchem, Kern and Gosar.

This isn’t the first time Finchem has gone after his political rivals.

Earlier this year Finchem sent a cease and desist letter to the group who was seeking to recall him from office. Finchem said if they did not destroy all their campaign related material, which focused on Finchem’s connections to Jan. 6, he would sue them for defamation.

One point of contention for Finchem in the cease and desist letter is his connection to the extremist Oath Keepers organization that the recall organizers pointed out.

Finchem has long been tied to the organization, but in his cease and desist his attorney claimed that the Oath Keepers is a “non-partisan” group and called allegations that it is anti-government to be “spurious claims.” The letter also calls the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website “hate-filled”

The FBI describes the Oath Keepers as a “loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government have been coopted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights.”

Sixteen Oath Keepers have been indicted thus far in a case that claims they coordinated to conspire to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, with prosecutors saying that more could be prosecuted in the future.

Finchem’s attorney, Alexander Kolodin, previously represented Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company conducting the Arizona Senate’s “audit.”

an 722

no lnx guk

A judge ruling in favor of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit moving forward signals the possibility of looming financial woes for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. According to The Guardian, Delaware Supreme Court Judge Eric David in June ruled that Dominion Voting Systems could proceed with its defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation.

The lawsuit is a legal pushback against Fox News' reporting and perpetuation of voter fraud and election misinformation following the 2020 presidential election.

Per The Guardian, David determined "that it was a reasonable inference that Murdoch and son Lachlan either knew outright that Dominion had not manipulated the election or 'recklessly disregarded the truth' when Fox disseminated lies initially launched by Donald Trump."

READ MORE: Right-wing media outlets continue to rage against Dominion’s defamation lawsuits: report

Speaking to The Guardian, a number of legal experts have offered their perspective on the case and why it suggests trouble ahead of Fox News. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Stetson University constitutional law professor and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, weighed in on Dominion's case as she noted that the voting technology company appears to have a substantial argument.

“Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News,” Torres-Spelliscy said to the news outlet, adding that "all of the 'conspiracy theories about Dominion’s machines were just pure bunk,'" She also noted that "Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of [Trump’s] ‘big lie’ a megaphone.”

“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” said Media Matters for America chief executive, Angelo Carusone.

However, Fox News is confident that it will survive this legal battle.

READ MORE: The 'Fox News of justice': Jon Stewart slams SCOTUS justices' flurry of controversial and conservative rulings

A Fox spokesman told also released a brief statement to the news outlet on behalf of the network. “We are confident we will prevail in this case, as the First Amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected,” the spokesman said.

In addition to the lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion also has a $1.6 billion lawsuit against conservative news networks One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax.

As well as being endorsed by Wood, Diaz was also endorsed by disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn,who, along with Wood, is one of the most listened-to figures in QAnon world.

Flynn’s brother, Joseph Flynn,who iscurrently suing CNN for portraying him as a QAnon supporter after he appeared in a video typing the QAnon oath, also congratulated Diaz on her victory.

aha used to be bad corps that SLAPPed goog guys press, now tech corps big enough to make bad corps behave?

proof of benefit?

an 5 22

sixteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency, far-right pundit and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza continues to shamelessly promote theBig Lieand falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump — a claim that the 61-year-old D’Souza makes in his new documentary “2000 Mules.” Journalist Anthony L. Fisher critiques “2000 Mules” in a scathing op-ed published by the Daily Beast on May 19, arguing that D’Souza’s documentary is so sloppy and badly done that even Fox News and Newsmax have ignored it.

“The new documentary ‘2000 Mules,’ a Dinesh D’Souza joint,is barely more credible than your average rando conspiracy theory video on YouTube, but its production values attach to it a superficial seriousness,” Fisher explains. “The film’s intended audience will see a rational ‘just asking questions’ kinda guy, D’Souza, talking with some ideological allies — like Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka and Larry Elder — who are merely concerned about voter integrity in the America they love.”

Fisher continues, “But the bulk of the film consists of D’Souza’s highly dramatized explainer sessions with a couple of technological ‘experts,’ also credited as executive producers, whose claims that they’ve used geotracking data to uncover thousands of vote-harvesting mules fall apart under the barest of scrutiny. Surveillance footage of people taking selfies after dropping their votes in dropboxes is presented as ‘A-ha!’ evidence — while ignoring the fact that people taking voter selfies was a mundanely common thing to do in 2020, and for quite a few years prior.”

According to Fisher, “2000 Mules” suffers from “relentless repetition of innuendo” and “almost no verifiable facts.”D’Souza, Fisher notes, complains about Republicans who want to move on from the 2020 election and slams them as cowards.

“D’Souza’s whining extends beyond the film itself, and into coverage of the film,” Fisher observes. “Or in the case of Fox News and Newsmax, the lack of coverage around ‘2000 Mules’ — likely because both networks have already been sued for pushing potentially slanderous Big Lie accusations against voting technology companies. D’Souza’s white knight, Donald Trump, came to the film’s defense when he slammed Fox for ignoring ‘the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time.’But even a Trump-supporting right-wing firebreather like Ben Shapiro can’t bring himself to say D’Souza made a persuasive case with ‘2000 Mules,’ because the film’s central thesis simply isn’t backed by any supporting evidence— much less an overwhelming amount of verifiable, unimpeachable data.”

Someone who doesn’t already buy into the Big Lie, Fisher stresses, won’t change their mind because of “2000 Mules.”

“The film isn’t meant to persuade anyone, it’s meant to reinforce the already passionate certainty in people who believe in something that simply does not exist,” Fisher writes. “It is a vile piece of agitprop, pushing a falsehood that could very well tear our country apart. It’s also a very stupid movie, packaged as smart, fearless muckraking. In a sense, it’s a 90-minute safe space for MAGA snowflakes who can’t accept the fact that their hero is a loser.”

an 7 22

a judge ruling in favor of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit moving forward signals the possibility of looming financial woes for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. According to The Guardian, Delaware Supreme Court Judge Eric David in June ruled that Dominion Voting Systems could proceed with its defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation.

The lawsuit is a legal pushback against Fox News' reporting and perpetuation of voter fraud and election misinformation following the 2020 presidential election.

Per The Guardian, David determined "that it was a reasonable inference that Murdoch and son Lachlan either knew outright that Dominion had not manipulated the election or 'recklessly disregarded the truth' guk when Fox disseminated lies initially launched by Donald Trump."

“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” said Media Matters for America chief executive, Angelo Carusone.

However, Fox News is confident that it will survive this legal battle.

In addition to the lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion also has a $1.6 billion lawsuit against conservative news networks One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax.

FAIL

On January 17, 2020, text messages released by the House indicated that Harvey coordinated with Ukrainian-American Lev Parnas to obtain negative information against Trump's political opponent Joe Biden and to bolster the discredited claims that it was the Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election.^[13][14] The messages added weight to claims made in 2019 by Parnas's attorney that Harvey met withRudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and their associates at the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C.^[15] Further that Harvey cancelled a trip to meet with Ukrainian officials in person to avoid having to disclose the meeting with Congressman Adam Schiffand that he phoned and Skyped instead.^[16]

Harvey sued CNN, Lev Parnas and Parnas's attorney for defamation in October 2020, claiming they had falsely accused him of criminal, unethical, and dishonest conduct. The case was dismissed by federal judge Richard Bennett on February 17, 2021.^[17] Two days later, a similar defamation suit filed by Nunes against CNN was dismissed by federal judge Laura Taylor Swain.^[18] In April 2021, Bennett found Harvey and his attorney had acted in bad faith and ordered them to pay CNN’s court costs and legal fees.^[19]

oann settle defam of Ga ruby, ran 30 sec story on how , newsflash, GA officials had ruled no voter fraud.

tdb

MEDIA

OAN Finally Admits ‘No Widespread Voter Fraud’ After Settling Defamation Suit

FINALLY

Georgia election workers were dragged through the mud on OAN by right-wing conspiracy theorists like Rudy Giuliani. Now the network is finally acknowledging there was no fraud.

William Vaillancourt

Updated May. 10, 2022 11:03AM ET / Published May. 09, 2022

OAN

The right-wing cable network One America News Network on Monday ran a pre-recorded 30-second segment acknowledging that there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election workers in the 2020 presidential election. The segment appears to be part of a recent settlement relating to a defamation lawsuit brought against the network by two such workers.

The segment notes that an investigation by state officials into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud made by ex-President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani turned up nothing. “The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct,” a narrator states.

“A legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” the voiceover adds.

Freeman and her daughter, Moss, say they were harassed online and in person after baseless rumors began circulating online, due in part to content published by the conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit, which the pair also sued.

In January 2021, when Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to try to “find” votes to overturn the state’s election results, he mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times. Freeman was also visited by a publicist for Kanye West, who threatened her in an effort to extract a confession about committing election fraud.

And if that weren’t enough, video of the pair doing their jobs was hyped up by Rudy Giuliani—and Sean Hannity—who falsely claimed that it showed “blatant, clear, obvious” fraud. While speaking to Georgia State House Republicans about the video during a Zoom meeting in December 2020, Giuliani at one point can be heard saying, “We should try to get this on Newsmax and OANN.”

Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani as well, and that case is ongoing.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/federal-judge-shoots-down-sarah-palins-request-for-new-defamation-trial-against-the-ny-times/

no lnx twt

Analysis: why Sarah Palin’s painfully flawed NY Times lawsuit has hit a brick wall

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaking at a September 4, 2014 rally at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson February 15, 2022

On Valentine’s Day 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff announced that he is throwing out Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times — as the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has failed to demonstrate that the Times acted with “malice” against her. Daily Beast reporter Pilar Melendez and Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple analyze this development in articles published after Rakoff’s ruling.

In her lawsuit, Palin alleged that the Times did more than screw up in its coverage of her — it acted with “malice.” But Rakoff, announcing his decision, said, “My job is to apply the law. The law sets a very high standard for actual malice, and in this case, the Court finds that standard has not been met.”

Nonetheless, Rakoff allowed the jury to continue its deliberations on February 15.

“The dismissal does not exactly come as a shock — especially since Rakoff made a similar decision back in 2019 that was ultimately reversed by an appellate court,” Melendez explains. “Even Palin attorney Shane Vogt admitted during opening statements last week that the suit was unlikely to succeed, thanks to decades-old protections for journalists offered in part by a precedent involving the Times: the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling that established the standard for defaming public figures.”

It was the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 9-0 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan 58 years ago under Chief Justice Earl Warren that set the “malice” standard for a case like Palin’s lawsuit against the Times. Although Rakoff had some criticisms of the Times’ coverage of Palin when he announced his decision, he emphasized that the publication showed no signs of acting with “malice” as the former Alaska governor alleged.

Roy Gutterman, director of Syracuse University’s Tully Center for Free Speech in Upstate New York, agrees with Rakoff’s decision and told the Daily Beast, “Because the plaintiff here is a high-profile public official and figure, proving that the newspaper’s errors were a lot more than an honest mistake was a high burden she could not meet. This is the type of case that shows exactly why we have the actual malice standard under the First Amendment. Public officials have to overcome a high burden for a reason. An editing mistake, though ‘unfortunate,’ as the judge noted, is not proof of actual malice. This case will likely live on through appeals.”

[twt]

In his Post column, Wemple argues that Palin never showed that James Bennett, the Times’ former editorial page director, was “out to smear Palin.”

“Palin needed evidence — preferably in e-mail form — that Bennet was eager to nail Palin with something he knew was false: an ‘actual malice’ smoking gun,” Wemple observes. “Instead, she offered only e-mails outlining another day at the Times. Palin faced a ‘very high burden,’ acknowledged Rakoff, stressing that First Amendment law is designed to allow a ‘very robust debate involving, especially, people in power and that the whole point of the First Amendment as applied in that context would be undercut if the standard for libel and defamation were not as high as the Supreme Court decreed.’”

Wemple adds, “The journalistic implications of Rakoff’s ruling are wide-ranging. The timing of his announcement — which comes during the second day of jury deliberations — creates a problem for all parties. Figuring that the case will eventually be appealed, Rakoff said that the appeals court will benefit from having a jury verdict alongside his ruling. Should the jury rule for Palin, the appeals court could simply reinstate the jury action without having to order a new trial. All that said, does Rakoff really think that, in 2022, an un-sequestered jury won’t catch wind of his ruling?”

It remains to be seen what decision the jury will ultimately reach in Palin’s lawsuit. But one thing is for certain: Judge Rakoff clearly believes that from a defamation standpoint, she has failed to make her case.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/roy-moore/ loses defam

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/fox-news-dominion/

lawsuit viable?

palin vs nyt on Gabby crosshairs tho corrected?

1 22 an

[media crit]

Donald Trump went into the 2020 election with some of the worst approval ratings on record for a sitting president. He made virtually no effort to appeal to those who didn’t vote for him. How was he able to remain standing, and how did he even potentially have a chance at a second term even if he lost the popular vote? One big reason is that he and his acolytes had convinced their base that the media can’t be trusted.

As we know by now, whenever the media aired even mildly critical coverage of Trump or those who were supposedly helping him make America great again, the response on the right was some variation of “(noun) (verb) fake news!” Indeed, it’s almost an article of faith among the Republican base that the media can’t be trusted.

If your news diet consists of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing social media, and Christian conservative outlets, you probably think that when the mainstream media isn’t making things up, it’s crossing lines that should never be crossed in order. But there’s one problem—with few exceptions, it’s right-wing media that engages in that very behavior. And while some of those elements are finally answering for the worst of their sins, others are long overdue for a dose of accountability.

Contrary to what Trump and his diehards would have us think, whenever mainstream media outlets make a mistake, those mistakes are usually corrected fairly quickly once caught.A case in point was a 2017 editorial in *The New York Times* that held 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin partly responsible for a grisly 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The Old Grey Lady’s editorial board claimed that just days before the shooting, Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that placed stylized crosshairs on the districts of 19 Democratic House members. The implication was clear—that map was a big reason why one of those lawmakers, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, nearly died that day.

That claim was slammed on all sides of the aisle, prompting the Times to partly retract the editorial within five hours of it going online. All of the inaccurate information was retracted within two days.Despite this, Palin sued the Times for defamation. As near as can be determined, Palin is suing because she didn’t just want the Times to retract, but to grovel. The suit was due to go to trial in late January, but was pushed back to early February after the rabidly anti-vaccine Palin caught COVID-19.

Palin faces tough sledding under current precedent for libel and defamation suits. As a public figure, she would have to prove that when the editorial board greenlighted the initial version of the editorial, it did so acting with actual malice. That is, Palin would have to convince a jury that the editorial board either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. Remember, the statements at issue were retracted in almost no time at all in modern media terms. Her onlychance of winning is to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of making it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

As it currently stands, Palin’s suit betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how media outlets with actual standards work. Indeed, the Times’ quick retraction stands in marked contrast to the behavior of celebrity gossip blog Gawker. In March 2016, Gawker was effectively forced out of business when it was ordered tocough up $140 million in damages to pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape of Hogan. While its sister sites (such as sports culture blog Deadspin, tech blog Gizmodo, and feminist blog Jezebel) were sold to Univision at a bankruptcy auction, Gawker itself wasshut down that August. Ultimately, Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million that November.

A number of observers slammed the verdict for itspotential chilling effect on freedom of the press, especially after billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thielrevealed that he had bankrolled the suit. Thiel openly admitted that he wanted to punish Gawker after its now-defunct tech gossip sister, Valleywag, outed him as gay in 2007. Indeed, in a post-mortem about Gawker on its last day of business, NPR media reporter David Folkenflikobserved that Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s suit against Gawker portended “ugly implications for press freedom in light of adversaries with nearly infinite resources.”

At its peak in 2015, Gawker hadover 23 million visits per month, making it one of the most visited sites in the world. With that level of popularity, it’s only fair to wonder—why was no one willing to ride to Gawker’s rescue? Granted, potential buyers might have beenskittish about having to deal with the massive legal headache of a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire. But surely someone with the wherewithal to withstand Thiel’s resources would have rescued Gawker solely on the principle of defending freedom of the press, right?

By then, however, Gawker had lost a lot of goodwill as a result of two instances where its disregard for standards dating back to the days of typewriters and leaflets was exposed for all to see. In 2015, Gawker ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

When the story went live, the criticism came inhard,fast, and fromall directions.Most of the detractors argued that it served no public interest to even imply that Geithner was gay. For example, the University of Minnesota’s Jane Kirtley, a media law expert, told The Daily Beast that absent evidence that Geithner gave “preferential treatment to people in the hiring process” or was guilty of sexual harassment, she was “really hard-pressed” to see a legitimate reason for running the story.

But this story had a more fundamental problem than lack of public interest. It was sourced almost entirely from a guy who was extorting Geithner. Specifically, the bulk of the story came from texts provided to Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent. Despite this, according to Mother Jones, Gawker took onlyone working day to research, vet, and fact-check the story before it went live.

A number of media experts found the rapid turnaround time for this story extremely problematic. Ken Paulson, former editor-in-chief of USA Today and current president of the First Amendment Center, told Mother Jones that stories that could even potentially wreck someone’s reputation “are typically vetted over a longer period.” Over that time, Paulson added, details could come up that “could give you pause about publishing.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams was interviewed in the same article, saying that when there is evidence of blackmail or extortion, it ought to be “a blinking yellow light, or even a blinking red light” to thoroughly vet it before you even consider publishing it.

Gawker’s defense, at the time, seemed to be that the story was true and nothing else mattered. In response to withering criticism—including from Gawker’s own readers—Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel harrumphed in a since-deleted tweet that in her mind, “if it’s true, you publish.”

The fact that Gawker seemed to justify this story simply because it was true appeared especially tone-deaf a mere four years after the News of the World wasforced out of existence due to rampant phone-hacking. Indeed, Gawker’s ethos appeared little different from that of WikiLeaks. By then, we’d known since at least 2010 that Julian Assange’s idea of transparency includedreleasing unredacted Social Security numbers—and dismissing any potential harm as “collateral damage.”

A mere 18 hours after the story went live, Gawker Media’s six-member managing partnershipvoted to remove it over thefurious objections of Gawker’s editorial staff. But when Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton deliveredthe official explanation for removing the post, he proved that he still didn’t get it.

Denton said that the story about Geithner was “true and well reported,” which would have been enough to justify running it “in the early days of the Internet.” However, he said, “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003,” and this meant that potential stories “have to be true and interesting” in order to pass editorial muster. Denton went further in a memo to Gawker’s editorial team, saying that he was “ashamed” to have his name attached to the story, even if “we were within our legal right to publish.”

There are times when what was considered good reporting years ago is patently unacceptable now. For instance, the relentless coverage of Britney Spears in the early 2000swould never be tolerated today given greater awareness about mental health and sexism. But this didn’t even come close to being one of those times. By suggesting that an article that essentially amounted to aiding and abetting extortion would be even remotely acceptable in 2003, Denton made his statement announcing the article’s deletion amount to a non-apology apology. It also casts a pall on the good that Gawker actually did—like turning the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, or revealing that Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Soon after the furor over the Geithner article died down, it became even clearer just how serious Gawker’s cultural problem was. In July 2015, Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawsontweeted a mea culpa about his days at Gawker. He admitted that he’d written, on orders from his boss, “baseless posts accusing an actor of raping an ex-boyfriend.” That actor wasJames Franco.

From 2008 to around 2014, Gawker churned out a series of articles that attempted to out Franco. The first of these articles, penned by Lawson, was a follow-up to ablind item in the New York Postin which an unidentified actor reportedly broke into his former boyfriend’s apartment and violently raped him. Inhis article, Lawson mused that the three likely suspects were Will Smith, Christian Bale—and Franco.

Soon afterward, Lawsonwrote another article suggesting that based on Gawker commenters’ sentiment, “the people” felt Franco was a gay rapist. He then followed that up witha third article suggesting that the “gay rapist” Franco had actually been mentioned by the person who tipped off the Post about the supposed violent attack. If there is any difference between that article and Trump’s penchant for spewing baseless garbage that’s supposedly based on what “many people are saying,” I don’t see it.

Later, other Gawker writerspenned articles suggesting that Franco was gay, based on the thinnest reeds of evidence. According to The Daily Beast, this was part of Gawker’s “creepy obsession with outing closeted men.” Granted, Franco is no angel. In 2021, he not only settled a lawsuit alleging that he harassed several students at the acting school he ran from 2014 to 2017, but admitted sleeping with some of his students.

Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that it took more than six years and at least one false start for Gawker to be revived. It returned in the summer of 2021 as a sister publication to women’s magazine Bustle, who bought Gawker’s remains in 2019. One would have thought that given Gawker’s popularity, it would have been revived sooner. However, NPR’s Folkenflik noted that when Univision bought Gawker’s sister sites, it concluded that Gawker itself was “too toxic to touch.”

Given how long it took for Gawker to be revived, any potential white knights must have reached the same conclusion. Who would want to take on an organization that not only believed there was a time where extortion was at all acceptable, but had no qualms about running libel?

Indeed, even as I write this, the articles libeling Franco are still available on Gawker’s website. That contrasts sharply with how the Times handled the initial version of its editorial attack on Palin. Contrary to what she and her fellow deplorables would have us believe, mainstream media outlets have standards—and those that lack standards get culled.

The same, however, can’t be said for some mainstays of right-wing media. For instance, when former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore made a bid for the U.S. Senateseat that came open when Jeff Sessions was tapped as Trump’s attorney general, Breitbart led a relentless smear campaign against the women who claimed Moore sexually assaulted them or pursued improper relationships with them. And it did so even though its editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow,believed at least one of the accusers was credible.

Marlow made this shocking assertion in an interview with CNN’s Oliver Darcy in December 2017, a month after Moore’s narrow loss to Democrat Doug Jones. He revealed that he believed that Moore’s initial accuser, Leigh Corfman, had “a lot of credibility.” Corfman, you may recall, claimed Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 14.

By admitting that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible even as Breitbart was smearing them, Marlow effectively put big, fat asterisks by every story Breitbart ran about the election. Victim shaming is bad enough, but doing so when you have reason to believe a victim is telling the truth is absolutely heinous. It’s even more so considering that Marlow admitted Breitbart went all-in for Moore to protect Trump.

Project Veritas also joined in on this disgraceful campaign. Its ringleader, James O’Keefe, even went as far as having one of his minions, Jaime Phillips, try to plant a bogus story in The Washington Postclaiming that Moore had impregnated her.But that story came apart when the Post did some actual journalism and discovered Phillips’ story had more red flags than a lifetime of Alabama football games. Most damningly, Phillips had created a GoFundMe page boasting about her goal to join “the conservative media movement” in exposing “the liberal MSM.”

To pile obscenity on top of insult, O’Keefe revealed in December 2017 that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible. And yet, he felt compelled to smear them because—wait for it—he felt their credibility was “not my subject matter,” and his real goal was exposing “bias in the media.” So the man whose stock in trade is targeting journalists for supposed bias admitted that doing so was so important that he felt compelled to shame victims that he believed were credible. Let that sink in.

To give you an idea how outrageous Breitbart and Project Veritas’ behavior was here, imagine if every news outlet that passed on the prospect of exposing Harvey Weinstein’s depravities had reason to believe Weinstein’s accusers were credible—and yet ran stories effectively calling them liars. It makes Palin’s squawking about theTimes’ failure to basically grovel before her look hypocritical as all hell.

Fortunately, at least two other members of the deplorable fever swamp are facing long-overdue accountability. Take InfoWars, for instance. Even after Alex Jones was kicked off mainstream social media and blackballed from smartphone app stores, it looked like he was going to continue his years-long promotion of conspiracy theories and hate speech—albeit with a much reduced audience.

But what may have been the beginning of the end for Jones came in 2018, not long after Facebook and YouTube gave him the boot. Several families of Sandy Hook victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones for defamation. Specifically, they wanted Jones held to account for his numerous claims that the Sandy Hook victims and survivors were “crisis actors.” These claims have resulted in the survivors being relentlessly harassed and trolled. The family of Noah Pozner, for instance, has had to move numerous times due to the harassment, and now live under high security in an undisclosed location. They have never been able to visit their son’s grave.

A series of legal reversals for Jones and InfoWars culminated in the fall of 2021. That September, a Texas judge issued three default judgments against Jones and InfoWars in two defamation suits filed by Sandy Hook families. The judge had lost patience with Jones’ refusal to turn over documents, and found it egregious enough to conclude that Jones had already lost. In November, a Connecticut judge issued a default judgment in a suit filed against Jones in another lawsuit. While damages will be determined at trial later this year, they are likely to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars—in all likelihood, enough to put InfoWars out of business.

Another fixture of the deplorable fever swamp, Gateway Pundit, may also face extinction after beingsued for orchestrating a vicious trolling campaign that falsely accused Georgia election workers of stealing their state for Joe Biden. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, claim that Gateway Pundit started a flood of disinformation that reached all the way to Trump, who attacked Freeman by name in his now-infamous attempt to shake down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Dozens of bogus stories about Freeman and Moss resulted in death threats, doxing, and kidnapping attempts, among other things. Rather than apologize, Gateway Pundit actually tried to raise money off the lawsuit, netting over $81,000.If there is any justice, though, that fundraising effort will be a futile exercise. Gateway Pundit and its impresarios, the Hoft brothers, ought to get a very hard lesson on why private citizens only need to prove negligence in order to win libel suits.

The Times moves in almost no time at all by current media standards to retract claims about Palin—and yet, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Gateway Pundit refuse to even attempt to apologize for far worse. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer to that question is simpler than you may think. For all the caterwauling we hear from the right about the media not having any standards, we have seen instance after instance where the media has shown it actually does. Moreover, whenever elements of the mainstream press show they don’t have standards, they are weeded out. The demise of Gawker is a stark example of what happens when you catapult your way into the mainstream, only to show you have little regard for basic standards of decency.

If we are to remove the tinder from our politics, we must subject the media to the same level of accountability that Gawker faced, and what InfoWars is more than likely to face. As Gawker learned in 2016, that standard ought to apply regardless of political shade. But if Palin and other right-wingers are willing to take off their blinders, they would see that their own side of the media divide is long overdue for a cleaning.

Poll 426 votes Show Results

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/mike-lindell/

libel suit loss daily ---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/election-official-sues-trump-and-giuliani/

defamations?

candace owen 821 20m$

judge tosses ~ gop strategist

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/devin-nunes/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/rachel-maddow/

oann pays $250k legal fee fails defam i assume

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/alex-jones-attorneys-make-wacky-attempt-to-drag-hillary-clinton-into-sandy-hook-lawsuits/

mirror of smartmatic kraken suits?

Flynn's family members file $75M lawsuit against CNN over QAnon video

321 an

// kraken?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/fox-news-was-forced-to-make-a-damning-admission-in-a-tucker-carlson-lawsuit/

cody f

fox News got to claim victory on Thursday after a new ruling in a lawsuit brought against the company came out in its favor, but the win arrived at a steep cost. To deflect an allegation of defamation, the network was forced to claim that one of its highest-profile personalities can't reasonably be expected to consistently provide accurate information to viewers.

Here's the background. Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, was paid for her silence about an affair she said she had with Donald Trump during the 2016 election by America Media, Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, on the Republican campaign's behalf these details were exposed and confirmed in the case against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to participating in the illegal campaign finance scheme. The story became national news, so leading Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed the case.

But he didn't present it accurately. Discussing the McDougal case alongside the similar story of Stormy Daniels, Carlson said:

Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed. Two women approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money. Now, that sounds like a classic case of extortion.

McDougal decided to sue Fox News because these facts are not correct. She did not approach Trump, threaten him, or extort him for money. She sold her story to AMI, which promptly buried it. Carlson grossly misrepresented the facts, a point that Fox News did not dispute in the case. McDougal said since Carlson willfully distorted the factual record, he defamed her.

To defend Carlson, however, Fox News had to make a damning claim. The host with the highest-rated show on cable news cannot be trusted, his own network said.

In fact, it's even worse than that. Federal Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil found:

This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” ... . Fox persuasively argues ... that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes.

So the top-rated program on a news station cannot be reasonably expected to be taken seriously and "reasonable" viewers will be skeptical that his claims are not "actual facts." Perhaps this is a good legal argument to make, but it's a dreadful position to be in as a news organization.

The judge argued that Carlson's defense is bolstered because he started out saying: "We’re going to start by stipulating that everything Michael Cohen has told the feds is absolutely true. Now, assuming honesty isn’t usually a wise idea with Michael Cohen, but for the sake of argument, let’s do it in this case, everything he says is true[.]”

But this actually should cut against Carlson's defense. His point is that the account he's giving is based off the claims in the Cohen case. That's a perfectly reasonable stance to take in an argument. But then he goes on to misrepresent those claims — claims which are a matter of the factual record. So this isn't a part of his show where he's clearly being non-literal — it's a part when he's explicitly said he's trying to convey the facts as the Cohen case presents them. And he patently failed to do that. This failure arguably, from McDougal's point of view, arose out of actual malice. Given that Carlson's show doubtless has the resources to do basic fact-checking and that his commentary displayed open contempt for McDougal, her legal claim seems eminently plausible.

And in the portion of the monologue that McDougal alleged is defamatory, Carlson explicitly said: "Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed." Again, the remarks were clearly couched to make it clear they were not opinion, but facts.

Carlson even repeated his remarks about the extortion later in the show, but the judge found these considerations unpersuasive:

It is true that Mr. Carlson repeatedly asserted that the conduct was extortion during a debate with a guest commentator in which Mr. Carlson also described the payment from Cohen to McDougal as “paying off someone who is extorting you, threatening to make public details of your personal life, if she doesn’t get paid.” See Episode Transcript. But there can be no doubt that Mr. Carlson did so as hyperbole to promote debate on a matter of public concern.

Putting aside the merits of the lawsuit, however, it's worth dwelling on the fact that Fox News' official position is that its lead commentator cannot be counted on to be accurate when discussing the news of the day, even when he says he's simply stating the facts of a case.

The fact is, Carlson is a liar, and from all appearances, he often intentionally lies to his audience to get them to buy into his warped ideological view of the world. For example, he recently misrepresented a government report suggesting it helped cast doubt on climate change, when in fact it reached precisely the opposite conclusion. But of course, people like me are always accusing Carlson of being a liar, and his viewers surely don't care what I think. How would his viewers feel, though, if they knew Carlson's own network thought he couldn't reasonably be trusted?

Perhaps the worst thing for the outlet is that not only did it have to make this damning admission in a legal case, but a judge agreed.

From Your Site Articles

421

smartmatic ~ dobbs, pirro and bartir

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/dominion-lawsuit-fox-news

1.6B$?

sidney pwl atty said no reasonable person could beleive her

321

dominion defam

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/my-pillow-lawsuit/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/without-merit-dan-bongino-ordered-to-pay-the-daily-beast-31-000-for-filing-frivolous-defamation-lawsuit/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/rachel-maddow/

Far-right One America News must pay $258,391.50 in legal fees to MSNBC.

"A federal judge in California has ordered Herring Networks, the parent company of far-right conservative media organization One America News Network (OAN), to pay MSNBC and host Rachel Maddow $250,000 in attorney's fees stemming from a defamation lawsuit that was dismissed last year," Law & Crime reported Saturday.

"Herring in July 2019 filed a lawsuit against Maddow which claimed the liberal host haddefamed OANwhen she discussed reports that one of the network's contributors also worked for the Russia state news organization Sputnik. Maddow went on to state that OAN 'literally is paid Russian propaganda,' which OAN's parent company claimed was false and defamatory. Herring, the parent company, then filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million,"Law & Crime explained. "Attorneys representing Maddow and MSNBC responded by filing a special motion to strike the case under California's Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (Anti-SLAPP) law."

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant sided with MSNBC, entitling the network to expenses under California law.

"The court calculated that Maddow's team of high-priced attorneys from the law firm Gibson Dunn—including famed First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, Jr.—were entitled to collect on 363.1 hours of work totaling $247,667.50, plus an additional $10,724 for hours billed by paralegals," Law & Crime reported.

Read the full report.

an 221

after spending months pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud, Lou Dobbs is reportedly out of a job.

"Fox News has canceled 'Lou Dobbs Tonight,' the program hosted by television's staunchest supporter of Donald Trump and of his assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election, The Times has learned. Dobbs' program, which airs twice nightly at 5 and 7 p.m. Eastern on the Fox Business Network, will have its final airing Friday, according to a Fox News representative who confirmed the cancellation," the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

"Dobbs, 75, remains under contract at Fox News but he will in all likelihood not appear on the company's networks again. In addition to his Fox Business Network program, he occasionally turned up on the Fox News Channel as a commentator," the LA Times reported. "The cancellation comes a day after voting software company Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News and three of its hosts — Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. The company claims the hosts perpetuated lies and disinformation about Smartmatic's role in the election, damaging its business and reputation."

Read the full report.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

fox News demanded Seth Rich family keep court settlement over bogus story quiet until after the election: NYT

Sarah K. Burris Raw Story

January 18, 2021

Fox News settled a lawsuit with Seth Rich's family in the fall that was large enough that they weren't required to apologize publicly for lying about the family's son for years. But one provision that New York Times reporter Ben Smith discovered, was that they asked that the settlement news not be announced until after the November election.

"Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement...

121 an

dominion plans to sue pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell for defamation — 'imminently'

but smart tech is not big? maybe // to jnz on sandy hook

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/election-fraud-2649563720

no lnx vud twet

Fox News airs point-by-point fact check of wild election fraud claims during 3 of network's most pro-Trump shows

President Donald Trump being interviewed by Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo, composite image.]

Elizabeth Preza December 20, 2020

Fox News this weekend is airing a stunning point-by-point fact check to claims made on programs hosted by the network's most pro-Trump voices after voting technology company Smartmatic send a 20-page legal letter demanding "a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports."

The segment, which features an interview with Palo Open Source Election Technology Institute voting technology expert Eddie Perez, aired on Lou Dobb's Friday show and Jeanine Pirro's Saturday show. Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo will also show the segment.

In its Dec. 10 letter to Fox News Media, Smartmatic charged the company and its hosts with waging "a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes." The company also demanded the company "match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications."

As the Washington Post reports:

"During Friday night's fact-checking segment, the questioner asked Perez: 'Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?'

This appeared to be a reference to Giuliani's Nov. 12 claim on the show that with Smartmatic software, 'the votes actually go to Barcelona, Spain.' Perez responded, 'No, I'm not aware of any evidence that Smartmatic is sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries.'"

Speaking with CNN, Perez said that while he was unaware of the nature of the interview when he spoke to Fox News about Smartmatic, it's important to clear up any confusion the network's viewers have about voting integrity in the United States.

"I felt it was important to talk to Fox News," Perez said. "Of anything potentially more important to be speaking the facts to their audience because there are a lot of consumers of Fox News that have doubts about the election."

Watch the video below:

in stunning segment, Lou Dobbs has come to Jesus moment and fact checks all the wild election conspiracy theories he’s been peddling on air. One-by-one he debunks them. Don’t expect Trump to retweet this clip. Note: Dobbs was threatened with legal action by the voting companies. twt]

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Watch: Florida attorney busted for voter fraud in Georgia — and ... ›

Trump's legal team takes to Fox News to cry election fraud — it didn't ... ›

Trump's baseless election 'fraud' allegations continue to be laughed ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Trump Discussed Naming Sidney Powell as Special Counsel on ... ›

Mitch McConnell has an 'election fraud' problem - CNNPolitics ›

Ex-Texas cop arrested for trying to prove ballot fraud conspiracy theory ›

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/top-trump-supreme-court-pick-involved-in-100-million-controversial-lawsuit-involving-top-trump-campaign-strategist/

roger salon

Florida judge rumored to be on short list of nominees to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death is currently hearing a $100 million lawsuit from one of President Donald Trump's top campaign strategists.

Judge Barbara Lagoa was appointed to Florida's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals less than one year ago by Trump. She is one of two Trump appointees on a three-judge panel which will decide whether the effort by the president's senior campaign strategist Jason Miller to revive a $100 million defamation suit against Gizmodo may advance.

Miller has sued the media conglomerate over a 2018 article in its now-defunct subsidiary website Splinter reporting that he drugged a woman with an abortion pill without her knowledge after learning she was pregnant.

Splinter reported that the allegation came in a court filing from A.J. Delgado, a former Trump 2016 campaign aide. Delgado has been engaged in a bitter custody dispute since 2017 with Miller, a married man who fathered her child while they worked on the campaign. Delgado claimed in a court filing that the alleged smoothie incident involved another woman, whose identity she did not publicly reveal.

Miller filed a $100 million defamation suit against Gizmodo Media and Katherine Krueger, the reporter for Splinter. He denies the allegations.

A Miami-based federal district court judge tossed out the case a year ago, ruling that the report was a fair and accurate summary of a judicial proceeding — and therefore shielded from libel charges. Miller appealed that ruling, and the court heard opening arguments last month.

The appeal hangs on Miller's argument that the "fair report privilege" should not apply, because the filing cited by Splinter was been under seal at the time of publication. However, Gizmodo claims that the document was available for at least a three-day window before Miller's lawyers filed to seal it. Because the court did not automatically seal the document, Gizmodo says it had a fair claim for publication under New York law.

The two Trump-appointed judges on the panel — Lagoa and Andrew Brasher — "seemed friendlier to Miller's case," according to a Politico report on the initial hearing last month.

For a Supreme Court nominee, Lagoa's judicial experience would be thin by historical standards. Lagoa has about nine months of experience on the federal bench, and she previously served for less than one year on Florida's Supreme Court.

In addition to the Miller case, Lagoa is also currently ruling on a challenge to a Florida law requiring anyone with a serious criminal conviction to pay all fines and legal obligations before they can vote. Florida is a key swing state in the 2020 elections.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee recently wrote to Lagoa and Brasher, along with Trump appointee Robert Luck, asking them to recuse themselves from the case. The senators cited judicial ethics rules barring judges from ruling on cases if their impartiality can be "reasonably" questioned. Though Brasher recused himself, Lagoa and Luck have not.

Lagoa's potential conflicts of interest in that case may go beyond her connection to Trump. During her short stint on Florida's Supreme Court, the judge ruled to reverse a decision invalidating the felon voting law. She argues that the federal case is different from the state-level case, which some see as a gray area when it comes to recusal.

The Trump campaign views Florida as a must-win on its path to electoral victory Nov. 3.

Lagoa, a Cuban-American from Florida, was also featured on Trump's Sept. 10 list of potential nominees.

Financial affidavits from Miller's child support case, reviewed and first reported by Salon, showed the Trump adviser has consistently argued for years that he is broke despite simultaneously reporting incomes anywhere between $20,000 and $67,000 a month. His August affidavit showed a $35,000 monthly income starting in June, when he joined the Trump campaign. However, the campaign has not disclosed any payments to Miller or other top staff members.

Delgado has publicly claimed that Miller may be financially "desperate" to overturn the initial ruling on his $100 million lawsuit.

"It's Lagoa who decides it," she tweeted. "So she was placed on this list and now has to rule in Miller's favor."

Federal judge Amy Coney Barrett has been reported to be the front-runner to replace Ginsburg. Trump said Monday that he intends to announce a decision by "either Friday or Saturday."

Obama’s citizenship has been well-documented, and his official, government-issued birth certificate clearly states that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Bearing that in mind, Esquire ran a satirical article in 2011 shortly after the release of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” saying that the book had been recalled. It was a joke, but Corsi wasn’t laughing—and Corsi filed a frivolous lawsuit against Esquire, seeking damages of $285 million. But in 2012, Corsi’s lawsuit was thrown out in federal court on the grounds that satire is protected by the First Amendment.

https://www.alternet.org/conservatives-rail-about-free-speech-college-campuses-real-threat-our-first-amendment

amanda m

Its a sign of the idiocy of Donald Trump-era politics thathundreds of thousands of words havebeen spent pushing what amounts to a hoax about "campus censorship," while genuine assaults on free speech -- especially by Trump himself, just don't attract the same amount of attention.But while the New York Times prefers to lavish attention on conservatives whose feelings are easily bruised might get, there are activists fighting genuine threats to free speech and pushing back against censorship that's far more serious than having someone scold you that racist thing you said.

Last week, a coalition of mostly left-leaning organizations — including theACLU, Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch — joined under the banner Protect the Protestto speak out against an increasingly worrisome tactic that wealthy private interests use to squelch free speech: SLAPP suits. "SLAPP" is short for "strategic lawsuits against public participation." While there are many variations, most SLAPP actions use defamation lawsuits — or even just the threat of them — to scare journalists, activists and even private citizens from speaking out against injustice. While these lawsuits are rarely on solid legal grounds, they are nonetheless highly effective at the goal of keeping critics silent.

The typical SLAPP suit, as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., explained last week on a press call, is filed by a wealthy corporation or individual and aimed at a smaller organization or less wealthy person. The wealthy party's suit is "designed primarily to outlast and outspend" those who are speaking out, Whitehouse said, "to go at their funding, to make them burn their resources in litigation."

The wealthier party, he added, "can basically win a breath-holding contest fighting in the courts."

No doubt the most famous of these cases was the 2016 lawsuit by former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan against the website Gawker, alleging that the site had invaded his privacy by publishing a leaked sex tape in which he allegedly appeared. While Hogan arguably had a sympathetic case on human grounds, it soon emerged that his lawsuit was the result of :{a multi-year SLAPP campaign waged by:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:, who was bitter that Gawker had published unflattering articles about him in the past. Thiel's efforts led to a case that was winnable — he appeared determined to destroy Gawker — but much of the time SLAPP plaintiffs aren't really interested in the legal soundness of their cases. [suit was actually about invasion of privacy, hilariouis as thiel is spy big data guy]

"In almost all these cases, these lawsuits were never going to win," explained Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. "But the problem is these powerful people and corporations don’t actually care about winning. They care about inflicting damage."

What free speech activists want is laws making it harder to sue someone for defamation without just cause. It gives the person who is being sued a chance to file a special motion for dismissal before the case can really get underway. That could help stop frivolous lawsuits before the defendant has spent too much money and could also, in many cases, discourage litigious, censorious people from bothering to sue in the first place.

The Public Participation Project has a map of the state laws protecting free speech from frivolous lawsuits, but what activists really want is a federal law. As Jeremy Rosen of the Public Participation Project argued in The Hill in 2016, "not all of the existing laws provide sufficient protection, and SLAPP plaintiffs have the ability to 'forum shop' for a state without adequate free speech protections in which to file their lawsuit," which means "legal fees from SLAPP suits can bankrupt individuals simply for exercising their First Amendment rights."

Typically, the discourse around SLAPP policy is focused on journalists and activists, who are often intimidated out of raising public awareness with lawsuits or even just the threat of lawsuit. But there's another group of people who need protection: Survivors who wish to speak out about their experiences.

“In light of the MeToo movement, when more and more women are speaking, we need to protect their rights to tell their stories," Bridget Mahoney, a former Youngstown, Ohio, news anchor who has become an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, told Salon.

Mahoney has been outspoken about her previous marriage, which she says was abusive, and her extensive and costly efforts to get out of it. After all that, she and her daughter helped join a campaign to pass the Tina Croucher Act, an Ohio law mandating that public schools make education and resources related to "dating violence" available to students. As part of their activism, they testified in front of the Ohio state legislature and, Mahoney said, her ex-husband sued both her and their daughter for defamation based on what they shared in the testimony.

“I simply ran out of money," Mahoney said. "It created a whole level of additional trauma. We had progressed so far in healing our wounds from the past, and this just added new ones.”

Mahoney's experience is all too common. As Tyler Kingkade of Buzzfeed reported in 2017, defamation lawsuits are "a new tool in the battle over Title IX enforcement and are proving to be serious obstacles to students filing sexual misconduct complaints."

"Sometimes the mere threat of a defamation suit is enough to deter a student from going ahead with a sexual assault claim," Kingkade wrote.

Mahoney said that after she does speaking events, "women come up to me and say they’re afraid to even speak publicly, for fear of getting sued."

These lawsuits don't just affect women speaking in public, to be clear. In many cases, they are triggered simply by a woman filing a complaint with police or with an educational institution. Anti-SLAPP legislation has already been used successfully to get defamation lawsuits dismissed that were filed in response to the victim doing nothing more than calling the police.

“It’s literally re-victimization, these retaliatory lawsuits," Mahoney said.

In defense of free speech, the Protect the Protest coalition held events early last week in multiple cities, in which activists picketed the front doors of some of the most SLAPP-friendly law firms in the country. With so much chatter in the press about "free speech," the hope is that attention can be diverted away from right-wing hoaxes and scare tactics and towards this genuine, systematic threat to free speech.

"There is no such thing as progress without protest,"May Boeve, executive director of the environmental group 350.org, said in a statement. "Our climate and communities depend upon people making their voices heard."

wow a blast from the past:

http://web.archive.org/web/20020625140654/http://www**.rachel.org/**bulletin/bulletin.cfm?Issue_ID=601

#522 - Political Science, November 28, 1996

Science is a process that allows people to reach agreement about the nature of reality, no matter what culture they come from. If I describe how to make a thermometer and you follow the recipe, you and I will end up agreeing that, at sea level, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). Not all of reality is accessible to the scientific method but for those parts that are, science allows us to reach agreement. Thus the scientific method has enormous power for getting people together.

We read about 30 scientific and medical journals on a regular basis. In recent years, a remarkable quantity of bad news for humans and the environment has appeared in these and other peer-reviewed journals. Because these results were gathered by the scientific method, they are pretty convincing. On the basis of this work, it seems safe to say that our civilization is pulling the rug out from under itself. Business as usual is relentlessly destroying the community of creatures and ecosystems upon which our survival depends. On the other hand, business as usual is enormously profitable for a small group of people, who fiercely defend what they are doing and who now sponsor an entire industry dedicated to denying that trouble lies ahead.

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the business community has developed a specific wish list for the new Congress: they want less environmental regulation, and they want to curb the rights of citizens to bring lawsuits against corporations for harms.[1]

It seems apparent that the long-term strategy for achieving both goals is to diminish the power of science. The aim seems to be to bring science out of the laboratory and turn it into more of a street fight where the most powerful and ruthless adversary has the best chance of winning. By this means, it seems apparent, corporations intend to undercut the credibility (and therefore the power) of scientific findings.

In these two arenas --the courts, and government regulations -- contradictory tactics are being pursued.

In the courts, corporations (and the representatives they paid to install in Congress) are trying to limit scientific evidence by excluding views they claim are outside the mainstream. For example, the Republican Party's 1996 Platform contains a section called "Restoring Justice to the Courts," which proposes to "eliminate the use of 'junk science'... by requiring courts to verify that the science of those called as expert witnesses is reasonably acceptable within the scientific community..."[2] In other words, testimony by expert witnesses would be disallowed unless it represented the views of the scientific mainstream. Scientists with new research findings and new information about cause-and-effect would be effectively excluded from the courts until their work had been absorbed into the mainstream of science --a process that might take years or even decades.

On the other hand, in the arena of environmental regulation, the same corporations (and their same representatives in Congress) are working hard to undermine the credibility of mainstream scientific views. In this arena, their goal is to boost the standing and credibility of the scientific fringe --the handful of dissidents who say that global warming is not harmful and may even be beneficial; that the ozone hole is natural or has perhaps been faked; and thatdioxin is not nearly as poisonous as most scientists say it is --and it may even be good for you.

The thread that ties these contradictory views together is the goal of making science into something that confuses people and thus drives people apart, instead of something that helps people reach agreement about the nature of reality.

The effort to make science more political has been gathering momentum since the election of 1994 when self-styled "conservatives" gained control of Congress. During 1995, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held three public hearings, one devoted to depletion of the ozone layer, one to global warming, and one to the powerfully poisonous industrial byproduct, dioxin. According to a recent analysis of the hearing transcripts, a common theme emerged from the three hearings:

(1) Research funded by the federal government is not sound science because scientists have an economic incentive to exaggerate the importance of their work ("to shill for the apocalypse," as one witness, Patrick Michaels,phrased it);

(2) Consensus science derived from peer review is not sound science because it represents a conspiracy by the scientific establishment to suppress dissenting views;

(3) Science which contains uncertainties in its conclusions is not sound science;

(4) Science that is not strictly empirical (meaning based on observations and not based on theories or models derived from observations) is not sound science.[3]

Clearly, if these definitions of "sound science" were accepted, most environmental science could not be considered sound, and nearly all studies linking human health to environmental degradation would be declared unsound. There is --and always will be --uncertainty in our understanding of complex domains, such as the environment and human health. Models are used in all complex scientific studies--purely "empirical" studies, without reference to theoretical constructs, are rare. Peer review is how scientists find errors; without it, science could not proceed. And much environmental science must be funded by public agencies because the private sector has no interest in funding it (and, indeed, often has a strong interest in seeing that it is NOT funded.).

Theeffort to politicize science is proceeding outside the halls of Congress as well. Individual scientists, science writers, and scientific societies, are being intimidated by lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits. Examples:

Last August, Bette Hileman, a veteran science writer for CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS (C&EN;), which is published by the American Chemical Society, wrote an opinion piece titled, "Global warming is target of disinformation campaign."[4] In it, Hileman described "a systematic campaign of disinformation" being conducted by a small group of scientists calling themselves the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) whose work is funded by coal, oil, utility, automobile, and chemical companies --the corporations whose profits might decline if Congress took global warming seriously.

A prominent member of GCC is Patrick Michaels, a faculty member at the University of Virginia and a fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Michaels often publishes commentaries covering everything from global warming to the free market and tax policy in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's newspaper, the WASHINGTON TIMES.[5]In recent months, Michaels has been attacking the work of Benjamin D. Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Santer wrote the final draft of Chapter 8 of the latest report from the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Chapter 8 concluded that "the balance of scientific evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate" --a conclusion fully supported by the IPCC but one that the coal and oil industries cannot leave unchallenged. Hileman evaluates Michaels's attack on Santer's work, concluding, "... [E]ither Michaels does not understand Santer's work or he is deliberately distorting it." In the normal course of scientific debate, such criticisms are routine.

But no longer. Now S. Fred Singer --a former colleague of Michaels and a frequent author in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON TIMES --has threatened a lawsuit against the American Chemical Society: "The American Chemical Society may well be courting one or more libel suits," Singer writes in the Moonie TIMES November 13, 1996, referring to Hileman's opinion piece.[6]

Singer is himself one of the fringe scientists who appeared as a witness (as did Michaels) at the 1995 Congressional ozone hearing described above. During the hearing, Singer tried to establish his ozone credentials by claiming to have published several peer-reviewed papers in which he presented his current theories about why the continent-sized ozone hole over the South Pole isn't a problem. However, when Congressional staff checked his references, they found that Singer's only published work on ozone depletion during the past 20 years had beenone letter to the editor of SCIENCE magazine, and two articles in magazines that are not peer reviewed.[7] And of course his many articles in the Moonie WASHINGTON TIMES, where Singer is a regular blowhard columnist--the scientific equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. In fact, Limbaugh says he gets his information about the ozone depletion nonproblem from sources that have been traced back to Singer.[8]

The assault on science doesn't stop with threats aimed at intimidating journalists. The LOS ANGELES TIMES reported (Nov. 22, pg. A3) that U.S. Ecology --a corporation trying to build a huge nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley in the California desert --has threatened to sue two scientists who were commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior to study the safety of the proposed dump.In a letter to the two scientists, U.S. Ecology wrote, "Should you continue your participation in Interior's ill-advised project, please do so based on the knowledge that U.S. Ecology intends to seek compensation from any persons or entities whose conduct wrongfully injures its interests in this manner."

The two scientists --hydrogeologists Martin Mifflin and Scott W. Tyler --are employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and are both members of the National Academy of Science's panel on Ward Valley.

The U.S. Ecology tactic is working. The two scientists have said they must stop work on Ward Valley until the federal government agrees to pay their legal costs, if they are sued. A Department of Interior official called U.S. Ecology's tactic "disgusting" but said under law the government cannot indemnify contractors, so the Ward Valley safety analysis has been put on hold.

The message is unmistakable: if science is standing in the way of corporate goals, then the methods of science will be discredited, modified or discarded, and individual science writers and scientists, and even scientific societies like the American Chemical Society, will be threatened and intimidated.

It seems clear that the root cause of these problems is a corporate form run amuck. This legal form, which limits corporate owners' liability yet provides full Constitutional protections for corporate actions, is providing legal cover and nearly unbounded resources for continuing unprincipled attacks on our most important social institutions, including courts, elections, and the scientific method itself. Now would be an appropriate time to examine the corporate form, and modify it as necessary, to make corporations once again subordinate to the will, and the general welfare, of the American people.

--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

[1] Robert D. Hershey, Jr., "The Election Changes Little; Business Can Live With That," NEW YORK TIMES November 15, 1996, pg. D1.

[2] Republican platform quoted in Representative George E. Brown, Jr., ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE: FRINGE SCIENCE AND THE 104TH CONGRESS (Washington, D.C.: Office of Representative George E. Brown, Jr., October 23, 1996), pg. 7, note 16. Brown is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science.

[3] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 15; see also the rest of Brown's report, including the appendices.

[4] Bette Hileman, "Global warming is target of disinformation campaign," C&EN; August 19, 1996, pg. 33.

[5] Michaels writes regularly in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON TIMES; see, for example, March 30, 1994, pg. A14; October 18, 1993, pg. A16; March 17, 1993, pg. G3; February 5, 1993, pg. F1; and December 15, 1992, pg. F1. The WASHINGTON TIMES was founded, and has been subsidized to the tune of a billion dollars since its founding, by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. See Daniel Junas, "The Washington Times: Who Pays the Bills for the Right's Daily Paper?" EXTRA! (March/April, 1995), pgs. 15-16. EXTRA! is published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 130 West 25th Street, NY, NY 10001; phone: (212) 633-6700.

[6] S. Fred Singer, "Disinformation about global warming?" WASHINGTON TIMES November 13, 1996, pg. A15.

[7] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 11, note 26, evaluates Singer's recent publications.

[8] See Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, BETRAYAL OF SCIENCE AND REASON (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), pg. 41.

Descriptor terms: science; courts; corporations; junk science; regulation; dioxin; global warming; ozone deplation; congress; lawsuits; slapp suits; bette hileman; patrick michaels; cato institute; sun myoung moon; banjamin santer; ipcc; fred singer; washington times; american chemical society; u.s. ecology; ward valley; radioactive waste; george e. brown, jr.