News

#Former AG Barr defends Fox News in op-ed about Dominion lawsuit 

Former Attorney General William Barr defended Fox News from claims of defamation brought in court by Dominion Voting Systems in an opinion column published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

Calling the voting tech provider’s case against the cable new giant “weak,” Barr argued a ruling against Fox would severely weaken the First Amendment protection that all news media enjoy.

“A ruling against Fox would be a major blow to media freedoms generally, subjecting news outlets to the prospect of outsize liability whenever they report on newsworthy allegations that turn out to be false,” Barr wrote in the op-ed published Thursday evening.

The former attorney general’s line of thinking mirrors arguments Fox’s lawyers have been making in court documents and public statements for months: that Fox was not responsible for the claims made by Trump’s allies about voter fraud and the fact the president of the United States was making those claims was newsworthy.

Dominion has charged top executives and hosts at Fox knew the allegations being made by Trump and his allies were false but decided to air them anyway. The voting systems company has unearthed in court filings in recent weeks a series internal communications and depositions from leaders at Fox showing them privately dismissing Trump’s claims of voter fraud but worrying how the network’s audience might react to fact checks of those claims.

Fox has argued the internal communications of its employees have been “cherry picked” and do not prove the network acted with actual malice, a key legal standard in defamation cases, toward Dominion.

“Conservatives shouldn’t try to weaken the actual-malice standard. For the foreseeable future, we will likely be on the wrong side of the culture-setting consensus,” wrote Barr, who famously rebuked Trump’s claims of voter fraud before resigning from his administration. “The left should think twice about cheering for Dominion in this case. While the left has more artillery, it also has more targets for defamation cases, as left-wing media outlets far outnumber conservative ones.”

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on Google News too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com

If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our News category.

Source

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
Close

Please allow ads on our site

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!