“These impositions on my free speech are out of control,” he says, as he prepares to launch into a lengthy broadcast of his totally uncensored speech.
i read the entire lawsuit. oy! that is some serious legal standing.
fox news is going to take a very well deserved hit from this lawsuit. smartmatic had a sterling reputation, unlike fox cable news.
It’s like watching when some asshole who pulls kittens’ tails for giggles decides to up his game and climb into the tiger cage at the zoo… 
I have not read the lawsuit, but I have a question - were the specific lies told by Fox NEWS ANCHORS, or by personalities like Hannity? They have argued before that Fox And Friends and Hannity are not news, and that people should know that the outlandish things they say are not news.
IANAL but I’m pretty sure something doesn’t have to be labelled “news” to be defamatory.
And letting someone finish out their parental leave is one where I would hope would have been worked out. But there wasn’t a transition, so you can’t blame Biden and team for not addressing it.
Any lawyer who says crap like that should face sanction from the bar. Continued spouting of that crap should lead to disbarment.
It’s easy to gloss over that stuff when the money is pouring in, and pour in it did. Spouting bullshit was profitable, and things got out of hand. When you spend all your time counting money, it’s easy to let things spin out of your control.
Now they’ve been flanked on the right by Newsmax and OAN, and they’re standing there with their dicks in their hands. Fox News is in legitimate trouble; their ratings are down and their legal exposure is enormous. They have little choice here but to cut a deal or else that organization (which is a separate corporation, albeit owned by, Fox Corporation) could suffer a catastrophic loss.
From what I understand about defamation lawsuits, the plaintiffs have to prove that statements made by the defendants led to harmful results, such as loss of business and threat to life, among other things. It’s the reason why Alex Jones lost all those defamation suits to the Sandy Hook survivors, even though he had the “for entertain purposes” clause in his byline.
if i remember correctly, the suit states that guliani, powell, dobbs, bartiromo, and pirro enjoy a trusted position as lawyers, and journalists. as such they have a responsibility to do due diligence before reporting or speaking in public.
pp 6-8 of the lawsuit speak to the bonafides of the above named defendants.
the link is a pdf.
Smartmatic lawsuit - DocumentCloud
Fox fell to third in the most recent ratings report, out of the top spot for the first time in a while. I’m wondering if this is a precursor to Republican election problems in the next cycle, where you have to cater to the awful base just to get into the game but picking up that stench kills you with the general (voting and viewing) public.
More from CNN Business:
I have a hard time believing this will have a major impact on anything. I know every circumstance is different but if this is such a slam dunk why haven’t more companies/people taken on news media? On the other hand a cease-and-desist letter was enough for Newsmax to shut down the MyPillow guy, so maybe something will come of this.
My guess is that it’ll be settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money, Fox talking heads will read a retraction, and things will largely continue on as before.
I dunno - when has blatant and demonstratively false information been repeatedly presented by a so-called responsible news organization in order to gin up opposition?
The last time that immediately springs to mind is 1898, when Hearst was getting people riled up about going to war with Spain.
Journalists… it is to laugh.
Because the level of outright slander hasn’t been this bad before, at least not in modern times.
The anchor had to apologize on his hands and knees to the pillow pitstain.
Oh, I read a good portion of the lawsuit and the authors were aware of that distinction.
They did not name Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity in the lawsuit. They named Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. And Rudy, of course.
The complaint against each of them contains the following language.
Defendant Name presents himself (herself) to readers and viewers as a provider of factual information - not opinion, rhetoric or spin. However, contrary to her (his) public persona, he(she) was one of the primary proponents and speakers for the disinformation campaign against Smartmatic.
So it look like they tried, quite specifically, to cover that base.
I can check for examples, but there was a lot of media cheerleading for Bush the Younger’s crusade into Iraq. “Weapons of mass destruction” and claiming he’s mean to his people and neighbors. Perhaps not on as catchy as, “Remember the Maine” but still made out of whole cloth.
Except the media were reporting was they were being fed. In this case, Fox and company were pulling this out of tier own ass.