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Reason
Reason
Jacob Sullum

Conservatives Who Want To Weaken Defamation Standards May Regret Opening That Can of Worms

Donald Trump LB Sullivan Ron DeSantis Fox CNN Elena Kagan Joe Biden Martin Lur King, Jr. Neil Gorsuch Dominion

Last October, former President Donald Trump sued CNN (again) for defamation. Among other things, Trump argues that the news channel defamed him by describing his claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election as "the 'Big Lie,' a concept tied to Adolf Hitler." Trump thinks his lawsuit is the "perfect vehicle" for reconsidering Supreme Court precedents that make it difficult for public figures to win compensation for injury to their reputations.

Fox News, meanwhile, is counting on those precedents to protect it from liability for promoting the "Big Lie," which implicated Dominion Voting Systems in a "massive fraud" that supposedly denied Trump a second term. Fox argues that Dominion cannot meet the "actual malice" test that the Supreme Court established in the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, which requires proof that Fox either knowingly or recklessly aired false allegations against the company.

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