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Comment by robswc | Hacker News Reader

If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company would be broke.

I'd argue traditional media reaches many more people and the impact of intentional lies is that much greater.

I don't think you'd find traditional media companies routinely getting convicted of defamation this egregious. Although, FOX and Newsmax are both facing $1B+ penalties over their reporting on Dominion Voting Systems. And they're both pretty much dead to rights with Dominion able to point very directly to lost revenue as a result of their deliberate lies.

Just reporting something incorrectly isn't punishable at all. Publishing something poorly sourced isn't punishable. Stating a disagreeable opinion isn't punishable. What Jones, Fox and Newsmax did was done with active malice.

Well sure. Technically lying isn't punishable either. Only getting caught and only in some circumstances.

I'm probably just a bit bias, as I remember a bit of a fiasco with content creators relatively recently with the Johnny Depp trial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/johnny-...

here's an excerpt from the editor's note: The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time.

So did the original author simply lie? Did they forget that they never contacted these people? What was the punishment? Clicking on her profile it appears she still publishes regularly.

I just am not a fan of that "loophole." What's to stop FOX news from saying "we just heard all of this bad stuff about the voting machines?" What if its just the opinions of the hosts that the voting machines are compromised?

Not at all saying this is what happened. Just saying its kinda frustrating that _if_ you're smart about it and change your actions, you can still have the same effect of misleading millions of people but be entirely "OK."

That level of lax fact checking pales in comparison to what Jones did. Jones didn't make a mistake. He acted with deliberate and relentless malice. The standards for actual civil punishment for slander, libel or defamation are very high. Just getting facts wrong is nowhere near those standards. Certainly not if you issue a prompt correction when it's brought to your attention. Even saying "I think Sandy Hook was staged" isn't a crime. It's as valid an opinion as thinking the earth is flat or the 2020 election was stolen. Jones absolutely tormented people in a vulnerable state for personal gain and did so relentlessly for years when he very well knew he was lying the whole time.

> every media-company would be broke

Media is constantly being sued for defamation. The difficult part is showing they had evidence they were lying. That was overwhelming in these cases, which is what makes them unique.

Morever, any serious media company in the world when faced with a suit like this would have lawyered up and diligently participated in their defense during the trial. Jones did the opposite: he and his counsel clownishly attempted to boycott the trial, despite repeated and escalating warnings from the judge, and ended up losing by default, which is an almost unprecedented outcome. Most companies don't respond to lawsuits by daring the state to demonstrate the rule of law.

Sure. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying if OP finds that reasonable he would also find it reasonable that basically every media company would go out of business.

I'm not at all a fan of lying, not in the least and think news companies get off way too easy... but $1 for every lie * every person who heard it... that's just a little wishful, lol

No they wouldn't. For most journalists, it's not hard to stick to good faith reporting. If you have evidence, you can present that. If you don't, you can report on a controversy (like when someone is accused of a crime) but be clear you're describing it without the ability to resolve/shed light on it. And when you do make mistakes, you should have a practice of correcting them and documenting the fact that you did so, so that your audience is about equally likely to encounter the correction as they were the mistaken report.

If you do that and have a track record of consistency, then your legal liability is pretty minimal.

>If you don't, you can report on a controversy (like when someone is accused of a crime) but be clear you're describing it without the ability to resolve/shed light on it

Well, I guess there's degrees of lying.

I 100% understand what you're getting at though and I do believe _most_ companies and journalists do practice this... however I've noticed a trend where you'll have a headline or statement that is based on "anonymous sources" or "twitter user says X." Intentionally packing in as much of the claim as possible while minimizing the "source."

One of the most recent examples is from yesterday.

This is the headline VICE News put out yesterday: Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-pu...

No reasonable person could infer that the entire headline is based off of a claim that has been denied by everyone involved. Musk can weather "negative" headlines like that but I'm more concerned about those that don't have the luxury of shrugging that off.

>And when you do make mistakes, you should have a practice of correcting them and documenting the fact that you did so, so that your audience is about equally likely to encounter the correction as they were the mistaken report.

I want to believe that... but there's certainly enough examples of people having their reputation completely trashed by the media with the truth only coming out years later. News companies have incentives to get views/clicks. I can't imagine "we messed up" is as attractive as "this person is a monster."

I 100% agree that they should make best effort to correct stories.

> If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company would be broke.

That doesn't make it any less reasonable of a standard.

Sure. I just don't think it would work too well in practice.

well then maybe they’d be more careful about what they publish. being a big corporation should give you less rights than a singular person, not more

> If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company would be broke.

I think that's a very interesting aspect of this decision. Alex Jones is a very easy person for some people to hate, but will those same people cheer on Trump suing news outlets over the piss dossier and other fabrications, or Kyle Rittenhouse suing people who reported he shot three unarmed black people? And these were things said by actual purported news outlets, not just a guy whose entire schtick is clearly intended to be more entertainment than actual information.

This decision could usher in a new era of fact-based news reporting if it manages to set legal precedent for cases from both sides of the political aisle. But I'm not sure if I can trust either judges or the media to take the next steps required to make that happen.

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