The Dominion Lawsuit Against Fox News Is Part of the War against Free Speech
In March 2021, Dominion Voting Systems—a company that produces electronic voting equipment and software—sued Fox New Channel for 1.6 billion. Dominion claimed the company had been harmed by allegedly false claims made by Fox program hosts and guests about Dominion’s role in alleged efforts to rig the 2020 US presidential election. In April 2023, Fox New Channel settled with Dominion for $787.6 million. Dominion still has other lawsuits pending against other parties, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
The Fox settlement over a defamation lawsuit comes less than a year after Alex Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in a lawsuit over things he said on his show about the Sandy Hook massacre. Both lawsuits were centered around merely saying things that other people didn’t like being said. Both suits were also centered on politically charged topics of public interest. Both lawsuits also demonstrated how defamation laws can be used to silence people and punish them for making controversial political statements. Moreover, it’s clear that both Jones and Fox news commentators were expressing these views as journalists.
The Alex Jones lawsuit was alarming in its own way, as I explained here at mises.org. The Dominion lawsuit, however, is even more baseless and alarming in that it sets a precedent in which a government-funded monopoly can sue private parties over statements about public policy. Moreover, it is clear that the US regime—along with many other regimes throughout the West and the world overall—have ramped up efforts to limit free speech under the guise of combatting “misinformation.” The White House and Big Tech have worked together to deplatform and silence users who say things the regime doesn’t like. A second important tool in silencing critics is defamation laws. Defamation lawsuits can be employed by regime allies to silence, impoverish, or otherwise harass critics who make statements regime agents find troubling. The Dominion lawsuits are an illustration of how this works.
Why Defamation Isn’t a Real Problem
The very concept of defamation has always been incredibly questionable, and it clearly is incompatible with any serious commitment to free speech. The idea of defamation has always relied on the notion that if Person A says something nasty about Person B, then Person C is going to simply believe those nasty things and act accordingly. Thus, we are required to believe that if my neighbor tells my wife that I’m an adulterer, then my neighbor is somehow at fa
Article from Mises Wire
