At the center of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News and Fox Corporation is a deceptively subtle First Amendment question: How may a news outlet speak about false claims made by a public figure?
A Delaware judge will soon decide whether to grant summary judgment to Fox or Dominion, instead of sending the case to a jury. But that won’t be the end of the case. Unless the parties reach a settlement, the case could eventually wend its way to the US Supreme Court, where the justices would have to confront this core question.
The facts of the case have been widely reported, and the enormous number of statements by Fox executives and employees has been usefully summarized by the Washington Post. Among the revelations: Fox personalities from CEO Rupert Murdoch to TV host Tucker Carlson privately acknowledged that President Donald Trump was lying when he claimed fraud cost him re-election.
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Legally, the two sides mostly agree on the facts. Hence the outcome is ultimately going to hinge on how the courts apply defamation law. The basic background is the famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, where the Supreme Court held that a public figure suing for libel must prove that the defamatory statements were made with knowledge of their falsehood or with reckless disregard for their falsehood. Although Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have made noises about softening the Sullivan standard, it remains good law.
Ordinarily, it doesn’t matter whether...
Times of Malta's editorial team has demanded that alleged money-launderer Chris Spiteri remove false claims posted on Facebook against journalist Jacob Borg. An alert has also been filed with the ...