NYT Hits Panic Button Over Trump Media Defamation Lawsuits for ‘Critical Coverage’ HotAir

How do we know that they were false and defamatory? ABC News and Disney paid out on the claim. Sixteen million dollars is a strong, if still tacit, admission of defamation. 

The NYT’s cri de coeur aside, the risk for media outlets has nothing to do with “critical coverage,” or opinions in general. The risk comes from publishing false information as fact, and doing so knowingly. They run no legal risk at all otherwise and have massive advantages in such fights anyway. The Times’ hand-wringing over the kind of defamation liability that has always existed comes only because they recognize that “fake news” has become a business model for the Protection Racket Media. They want to shape the political environment to frame themselves as victims rather than perpetrators in that strategy.

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One other risk exists for the mainstream media in this fight. The more they publish false information as “fact,” the more likely that a defamation claim will reach the Supreme Court. When that happens, at least one member of the court is already itching to reverse the 1964 Sullivan doctrine that requires a higher threshold of “actual malice” when it comes to public officials and other “public persons.” Clarence Thomas has written repeatedly on this topic, and Neil Gorsuch joined in that call in 2021’s Berisha v Lawson. Gorsuch wrote that Sullivan had so perverted the incentives that media orgs might dispense with fact-checking prior to publication as a defense:

via hotair.com

Ed Morrissey.

Oh ho ho ho. Nothing like the NYT’s cri de coeur’s to get one in the Christmas spirit.