Meanwhile in Fox News troubles

Recall that Fox agreed to settle with Dominion voting machines company to the tune of $787.5 million in that defamation suit April last year to avoid a possible jury verdict awarding them the $1.6 billion Dominion was asking for.  

The biggest loser loses again

A federal judge late Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president argued that the cable network’s statements about his false 2020 election fraud claims likened him to Adolf Hitler.

In the lawsuit, Trump’s team argued that CNN writers and television anchors’ use of the phrase the “Big Lie,” in five specific incidents, incited “readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear” him.

  Politico

For the love of Pete, inciting "readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear" someone is Trump's signature m.o. - often multiple times in one day.

The phrase “big lie” historically has referred to a propaganda technique so powerful that people who believe in its message could not believe that someone could have distorted it. It has popular origins in German from Adolf Hitler in his memoir, Mein Kampf.

[...]

U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who Trump appointed in 2019, reasoned that because all of CNN’s statements were opinion, Trump could not legally sue the network for defamation.

“Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal wrote in his dismissal. “CNN’s statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”

[...]

“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”

Look out Judge. You'll be the next person Trump incites his readers and viewers to hate.

PS, when did "contempt" become a verb?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sarah Palin, 2-time loser

A judge has ruled that a libel lawsuit former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed against the New York Times over a 2017 editorial should be thrown out because her lawyers failed to produce adequate evidence that the newspaper knew what it wrote about her was false or acted recklessly toward indications it was false.

[...]

The decision Monday was the second time Rakoff has thrown out the case. He did so in 2017 after an unusual hearing in which Bennet testified about his decision-making related to the editorial. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals later reinstated Palin’s suit, calling Rakoff’s approach unorthodox and in violation of federal rules covering civil litigation.

[...]

The [current] ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff Monday came as a Manhattan jury was deliberating on Palin’s suit, which claimed the Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her by unfairly linking her to a 2011 shooting spree in Arizona that killed six people and gravely wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).

[...]

Bennet testified that the Times saw the event as an occasion to urge politicians at both ends of the political spectrum to tone down their rhetoric. He said he introduced language into the editorial that suggested a direct link between a targeting map issued by Palin’s political action committee and the 2011 Arizona shooting. No such link was ever established, but Bennet said he wasn’t trying to imply there was a cause-and-effect relationship, just that there was rhetoric specifically targeting Giffords in advance of that shooting.

[...]

Rakoff said he would continue to allow the jury to deliberate to a verdict, arguing that an appeal in the case seems inevitable and that the jury’s verdict could be useful to the appeals court.

[...]

“Ms. Palin was subjected to an ultimately unsupported and very serious allegation that Mr. Bennet chose to revisit 7 years or so after the underlying events,” the judge said. “I think this is an example of very unfortunate editorializing on the part of the Times but, having said that, that’s not the issue before this court.”

[...]

Rakoff noted that Palin was not only obligated to show actual malice, but needed to prove it with clear and convincing evidence. “That places the burden very much on the plaintiff in these situations,” he said. “In this case, the court finds that that standard has not been met.”

  Politico

Libel or defamation suits are hard to win against news organizations. I wonder who encouraged her. And who bankrolled her, because they're definitely not cheap.

The Times issued two corrections to the disputed editorial within hours, but Palin claimed they were inadequate and that the publication damaged her reputation, leading to fewer speaking engagements and requests for political help.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Damaged her reputation.

Before the jurors were excused for the day Monday, Times attorney David Axelrod expressed concern to Rakoff that some of the jurors might see “push notifications” about his decision that were sent out by various news outlets.

The judge then said he planned to “schmooze” with the jurors a bit before telling them to avoid press coverage of the case.

“I didn’t think I should let the day expire, when you know I love this jury, without wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day,” he later told the jury. “If you see anything in the media about this case, just turn away.”

Ummmm....kind of sounds like the judge is setting Palin up with an automatic appeal.

Activist judges

A New York trial court judge has upheld his order preventing The New York Times from publishing documents prepared by a lawyer for the conservative group Project Veritas, in a move that alarmed First Amendment advocates concerned about judicial intrusion into journalistic practices.

In a ruling made public on Friday, the judge, Justice Charles D. Wood of State Supreme Court in Westchester County, went further: He ordered The Times to immediately turn over any physical copies of the Project Veritas documents in question, and to destroy any electronic copies in the newspaper’s possession.

The Times said it would seek a stay of the ruling and was planning to appeal it.

“This ruling should raise alarms not just for advocates of press freedoms but for anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know,” the publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger, said in a statement on Friday. “In defiance of law settled in the Pentagon Papers case, this judge has barred The Times from publishing information about a prominent and influential organization that was obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting.”

  

Well, MY alarms have been raised. This is indeed frightening.

The judge’s order came about as part of a libel lawsuit filed in 2020 by Project Veritas, which is led by the provocateur James O’Keefe, that accused The Times of defamation.

The Justice Department is investigating Project Veritas for its possible role in the theft of a diary that belonged to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter. The Times, in reporting on the investigation, published an article in November that quoted memos prepared by a lawyer for Project Veritas, which expounded on strategies that would allow the group to engage in deceptive reporting practices without breaking federal law.

[...]

“The Times is perfectly free to investigate, uncover, research, interview, photograph, record, report, publish, opine, expose or ignore whatever aspects of Project Veritas its editors in their sole discretion deem newsworthy, without utilizing Project Veritas’s attorney-client privileged memoranda,” the judge wrote.

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer who represents media outlets including CNN, said in an interview on Friday that the judge’s ruling was “way off base and dangerous.”

“It’s an egregious, unprecedented intrusion on news gathering and the news gathering process,” Mr. Boutrous said. “The special danger is it allows a party suing a news organization for defamation to then get a gag order against the news organization banning any additional reporting. It’s the ultimate chilling effect.”

[...]

In his new ruling, Justice Wood rejected the argument by The Times that the memos prepared by Project Veritas’s lawyer — which advised the conservative group on how to legally carry out deceptive reporting methods — were a matter of public concern.

What the everloving fuck? Of COURSE it's a matter of public concern. It concerns deceiving the public!

[L]awyers for The Times wrote on Dec. 3 that the memos had been obtained through traditional reporting, not as part of formal litigation, and therefore could not be prevented from being published. The paper argued that any attempt to prevent it from publishing its journalism was “an unconstitutional prior restraint” that is prohibited by decades of established First Amendment law. “This is not, as Project Veritas suggests, a run-of-the-mill discovery dispute,” The Times wrote in a brief. “The information published by The Times was obtained outside discovery by reporters doing their jobs. Project Veritas simply seeks to use this litigation to suppress unfavorable news coverage of its activities. That it cannot do.”

Apparently Judge Wood thinks it can.