What price does US media pay for spreading election lies? | US elections 2024

As voting began for the 2024 US presidential election, the election technology company Smartmatic and the conservative broadcaster Newsmax agreed to lie in the last election campaign.

Smartmatic settled a separate defamation lawsuit with One America News Network (OANN), another far-right network, in a confidential settlement earlier this year. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Atlanta poll workers who faced brutal harassment after various networks spread false claims about them, settled with OANN in 2022. Eric Coomer, a former Dominion employee, reached an agreement with Newsmax in 2021. Dominion, another election equipment company, reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox on the eve of the trial.

Some of the comparisons were accompanied by televised apologies and retractions. Others, including the Fox-Dominion agreement, have not. In some cases, the terms of the agreements were not disclosed at all, leaving the public unclear about what price, if any, the media is paying for spreading election lies.

Smartmatic and Dominion, as well as Freeman and Moss, still have several libel lawsuits pending against far-right media outlets and other allies of Donald Trump. But only one of the defamation cases has reached the trial stage so far, the rest have ended in settlements. These agreements — which can lack disclosure or accountability — underscore how limited defamation law is in the sense of justice it can bring to the public when it comes to election misinformation.

Defamation law is an area of ​​the legal system designed for specificity – it is structured to allow certain people to receive financial compensation for specific reputational damage.

“It’s definitely more complicated than you think because defamation law can only address misinformation that harms a person’s reputation,” said Lyrissa Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida. “Most misinformation, particularly election-related, is not directed at an individual in the way that these claims were. So defamation will not protect us from election misinformation.”

RonNell Andersen Jones, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Utah, said it’s not surprising that the vast majority of cases have been settled. The hurdle for proving defamation against a media outlet is extraordinarily high in the United States.

“Studies are very expensive. Libel juries are notoriously unpredictable animals,” she said. “It is unreasonable to expect that the shareholders, investors or owners, the people in this company, have to take the financial risk of pursuing a lawsuit that could go (against them). It is unreasonable for them to have to take this financial risk in order to better correct the general public. To be honest, I was surprised that Fox-Dominion wasn’t established long before.”

Some of these calculations could change, at least for Smartmatic. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has reportedly invested millions of dollars in the company’s defamation lawsuit, which includes a pending lawsuit against Fox.

But in the context of election misinformation that continues to pollute U.S. political discourse, a settlement may give the impression that those who spread misinformation will get off the hook if they are willing to pay.

Trials also have a unique status in the American psyche as the forum in which the truth emerges. And so, in cases involving the spread of lies, a trial naturally seems to be the antidote.

“When it comes to debunking misinformation, defamation lawsuits can be incredibly powerful,” said Daniel Rauch, a law professor at the University of Maryland. “At their best, libel judgments are authoritative, fact-based statements in which ordinary community members—regardless of their backgrounds and politics—all agree that a lie is a lie.

“This is a sign of real credibility, especially at a time when there is so much distrust of other ‘debunkers’. And it’s a signal that you can’t get through an out-of-court settlement.”

Trials also provide the public with a unique opportunity to hear from witnesses responsible for alleged lies. In the Fox trial, the opportunity to hear testimony under oath from people like Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch would have been an extraordinary moment to learn about the state of mind of the people responsible for publishing false information.

“Especially when we think about persistent, persistent lies that are weaponized among ideological subgroups of the population, blatant testimonies have an authenticity that is harder to refute or could potentially tip the scales toward correcting the narrative.” Such vague reports about “It couldn’t be an order from a judge,” Jones said.

The one defamation case brought to trial also clearly demonstrated the limits that litigation can have in correcting public records. Last year, a jury in Washington, D.C., ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million in damages for lying about them after the election.

Since Giuliani did not provide any evidence in the case, the judge responsible for the case ruled that his testimony was false and inadmissible. And Giuliani showed little remorse even during the trial, standing on the courthouse steps and repeating lies about Freeman and Moss. He quickly filed for bankruptcy and Freeman and Moss have been going to court ever since to collect their judgment.

And even if the litigants are willing to save any costs and the cases actually clear all the hurdles to get to trial, the trials themselves may not change anyone’s mind.

Lidsky warned against expecting too much from legal proceedings. She pointed to Trump’s refusal to accept the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case as an example of how a libel trial might not change anyone’s mind.

“The public as a whole has not accepted the final statement of the truth,” she said. “There are people who, through motivated reasoning, continue to believe what they want to believe.”