Some legal experts say it is time to draw a sharp line between protected speech and harmful disinformation.
The lawyers and First Amendment scholars who have made it their life’s work to defend the well-established but newly threatened constitutional protections for journalists don’t usually root for the media to lose in court.
But that’s what is happening with a series of recent defamation lawsuits against right-wing outlets that legal experts say could be the most significant libel litigation in recent memory.
The suits, which are being argued in several state and federal courts, accuse Project Veritas, Fox News, The Gateway Pundit, One America News and others of intentionally promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election, and of smearing innocent civil servants and businesses in the process.
If the outlets prevail, these experts say, the results will call into question more than a half-century of precedent that created a clear legal framework for establishing when news organizations can be held liable for publishing something that’s not true.
Libel cases are difficult to prove in the United States. Among other things, public figures have to show that someone has published what the Supreme Court has called a “calculated falsehood” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
But numerous First Amendment lawyers said they thought the odds were strong that at least one of these outlets would suffer a rare loss at trial, given the...
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