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Republicans are waging a predictably incoherent but very dangerous war on the free press [1]

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Date: 2023-03-06

The lawsuit threats came with a bigger threat: an assault on the 1964 court case that made it so difficult for public figures to win libel suits against media organizations.

x It is indeed libelous. It’s an example of how a bad Supreme Court ruling from 1964 (NY Times v. Sullivan) has created a monster—giving the news media a license to lie about any public figure who can’t prove that the reporter acted with “actual malice,” which is nearly impossible. https://t.co/lWXcUtY2kC — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) March 5, 2023

“Biased” Sen. Mike Lee there identifies the goal, which is shared by at least two Supreme Court justices—Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas—of reducing the requirement that public figures have to show “actual malice”—that the defendant knew the statement was untrue and went ahead with it anyway with “reckless disregard” for the facts. Florida Republicans, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, are already proposing legislation intended to give the Supreme Court an opportunity to change the existing law. Dialing back that standard would unleash a flood of lawsuits by far-right figures unhappy that their dogwhistle statements had been accurately translated for the general public. Even where the defendants of those lawsuits prevailed, the threat of legal action would be a major deterrent to reporting on the far right.

It’s kind of perfect that at the same time Republicans are arguing that Knowles should be able to sue Rolling Stone and a series of other publications for headlines saying he wanted to eradicate transgender people, Fox News is defending itself against a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems by arguing that it is protected by the New York Times v. Sullivan “actual malice” standard. Dominion could actually prevail there, given the large amount of evidence it is offering that Fox News personalities and producers and executives did know that claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump through fraud were false at the time the network repeatedly aired such claims.

Yet again, Republicans want to have it both ways, and it is not hypocrisy, just an expression of their fundamental view that what is most helpful to Republicans in the moment is always true and right.

At the same time Republicans nationally and in Florida are pushing to lower the standard for libeling a public figure, Florida Republicans want to make bloggers register, or face significant fines, if they write about state elected officials. So once they’ve registered, Republicans will know how to find them and penalize them for saying things that meet the new, lower standard for libel of a public figure.

So: Michael Knowles should be able to go to CPAC and publicly argue that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” without even the fear that this will be reported as a call to eradicate transgender people from public life entirely. Fox News should be able to promote what it knows to be lies about the 2020 election and the role of Dominion Voting Systems in that election without being sued for defamation against Dominion. Florida Republicans should be able to force citizen journalists to register with the state. They have no problem with limits on speech—as long as it’s not theirs. When it’s Republican speech, even public criticism is seen as an intolerable limit on their freedoms. The plan is to limit, through one means or another, any ability to publicly criticize or challenge Republicans in order to free them up for things like taking the next logical step from calling for eradication of “transgenderism” as an ideology.

RELATED STORY:

Florida Republicans plan to fire professors and fine bloggers who don't fall in line and obey

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/6/2156523/-CPAC-speaker-s-anti-trans-comments-are-latest-cudgel-in-Republican-war-on-the-free-press

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