Tonight on GeekNights, we consider Magic and illusions. In the news, Rangers, and America's openly fascist "news" network FOX admits they lied about voter fraud.
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If you think street magicians arenât in control of their performance space, I got news for you.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is definitely plenty of magic that people can do any place and any time. A NYC friend once told me that they were waiting in line for a movie and someone else going to see the movie who happened to be in front of them did some amazing card tricks for them. Only later did they find out it was David Blaine.
About Fox admitting guilt by settling. Legally that just isnât true. By reaching a settlement no party admits or is found guilty of anything.
That being said, we know they settled because they would very likely have lost. We also know that Dominion wasnât 100% sure they would win, or be granted full damages if they won, hence they accepted the settlement.
It sure would be great if that whole network would be shut down.
They didnât admit guilt in the legal sense.
What they did is make a public statement
In a statement made Tuesday after Fox News settled the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, Fox said:
âWe acknowledge the Courtâs rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.â
They admitted publicly that certain claims, their claims, about Dominion, were false claims. A translation of this sentence is âwe lied.â Therefore, they admitted that they lied.
Presumably, a requirement that they make this public statement was one of terms of the settlement.
But did they make that statement on their own network and to their own audience? Those are the people who need to hear it.
Did Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity say during their shows that âWe lied to you so Fox could make money?â
No.
If Dominion wanted that to happen, they should have negotiated for that in their settlement.
True, but without that, Foxâs public statement is essentially worthless.
Fox and the hosts on Fox will not change their behavior, they just wonât be as stupid about documenting why theyâre doing what theyâre doing.
The Fox audience will never learn that Fox lied to them and reported falsehoods because they only watch Fox and Fox wonât admit that on their own station.
Dominion got paid. Good for them. But nothing has changed or gotten better for anyone else.
Did Dominion have an opportunity to make something like that happen, and they missed it? Maybe.
But Dominion is an evil corporate entity as well. Why should they care about anything other than the money and their reputation?
The fact that we are in a spot where we must rely on the benevolence of a corporate entity to achieve justice, thatâs the problem.
Dominion did what was best for them, not for society as a whole, and I didnât really expect anything different.
I just take somewhat issue with your comment that Fox:
Foxâs statement was about as weaksauce an admission as possible, and like I said, will have no bearing, impact, or change on how they âreportâ the news, so itâs essentially meaningless.
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It means they will either back off from this line in the future, or theyâll face similar cases from continuing to act as they did previously.
This is a step toward making it too legally and financially perilous to continue as usual.
Lawsuits against OANN and Newsmax and the other players in this space are ongoing. FOX is just the first milestone.
Based on court filings, six more defamation lawsuits are pending: right-wing networks Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN) and Trump loyalists Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.
The six remaining lawsuits:
Newsmax: Dominion Voting Systems of Colorado was targeted by former President Donald Trump and his allies, filed a complaint against Newsmax in Delaware state court in August 2021, finding the news channel âcreated an entire brand out of defamingâ the company.
OANN: U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols has allowed Dominionâs lawsuit against One America News Network (OANN) to move forward and is expected to go to trial in 2024. The voting technology company claims the far-right network promoted fraud allegations despite knowing they were false, and âââhelped create and cultivate an alternate reality where ⌠Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud.â
Rudy Giuliani: A federal judge refused to throw out a defamation lawsuit against Trumpâs formal personal attorney after the voting machine company sued him in January 2021, alleging he âenriche[d] himself by falsely claiming that Dominion fixed the election.â Giuliani and others have alleged a widespread Democratic election conspiracy involving multiple states and suspect voting machines.
Sidney Powell: the conservative and controversial attorney remains an ardent proponent of Trump, although she was dropped from his legal team after making incorrect statements about the voting process and promising to âblow upâ Georgia with a 'biblical lawsuit. Dominion is seeking $1.3 billion in damages for spreading false fraud claims in the 2020 elections.
Mike Lindell: Denver-based Dominion separately sued Lindell and MyPillow for defamation in federal court, alleging the CEO âsells the lieâ about the companyâs voting machines âbecause the lie sells pillows.â
Patrick Byrne: The CEO of Overstock is being sued for âmanufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolenâ using Dominion voting machines. A U.S. District judge ruled âa reasonable jury could find Byrne acted with actual maliceâ in spreading provably false assertions about Dominion.
Some of the evidence from the FOX Discovery and the facts of the settlement are relevant to these.
No it wonât and no it isnât.
Donât let Dominionâs case fool you. These types of cases are incredibly hard to win. Almost impossible. Thereâs a reason why Trump and other Conservatives actually want to get rid of the NYT v. Sullivan Standard. The standard for First Amendment Cases and libel laws, as set down in New York Times V. Sullivan is incredibly high and incredibly difficult to meet:
"Because of the importance of free debate about public officials, the Court held that it was not enough that Alabamaâs libel lawâlike most libel laws in the English common law traditionâallowed defendants to use the truth of their defamatory statements as a defense.[13] Instead, the Court held that under U.S. law, any public official suing for defamation must prove that the defendant made the defamatory statement with âactual maliceâ.
âThe constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with âactual maliceâ â that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.â
Most of these types of cases never make it as far as Dominionâs because itâs almost always impossible to prove âactual malice.â The only reason we can in this case is because the Fox people kept emailing and texting each other. Without that, thereâs no way to prove âactual malice.â
So to go back to my comment above, all Fox needs to do is just not document why theyâre âreportingâ on certain topics and thereâs no way to prove actual malice.
Fox will most assuredly NOT back off from this line, theyâll just be smarter and more devious about how they cross it in the future.
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This is in practice almost impossible to do while still maintaining operational cohesion.
Iâm confident they wonât be able to walk the line without several âI did the crime on purpose with malice aforethought, per my previous emailâ smoking guns. I bet they just quietly drop voting fraud as a major topic and focus on safer nazi propaganda.
As for OANN, Newsmax, and the Pillow guy, I will bet money âactual maliceâ will be so easy to present a case over itâll make the FOX case look weak in comparison.
I guess weâll find out, but I just donât see this settlement having a major impact on Fox or what Fox pushes out.
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