When cornered, some politicians grudgingly admit COVID-19 restrictions went too far and made little sense. But that still leaves us wondering as to their thinking when they locked playgrounds, mandated masks, restricted travel, shuttered businesses, closed schools, confined people to their homes, sent cops after paddle-boarders floating on the lonely sea, ignored their own rules, […]
In this week’s The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman analyze the fallout from the historic failure of Silicon Valley Bank and deride a recent congressional hearing concerning the reporting of independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger on the Twitter Files. 0:52: Silicon Valley Bank collapse 26:30: President […]
The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing Thursday on the Twitter Files, giving independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger the opportunity to present their reporting to Congress. The Twitter Files, which show that multiple arms of the federal government—including the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control […]
During his Fox News show on Monday night, Tucker Carlson presented surveillance video from the U.S. Capitol on the day of the January 6 riot, which he obtained from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.), as evidence that the conventional depiction of that event is misleading. He noted that Democratic politicians, journalists, and commentators have routinely […]
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 […]
When former Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt was making the promotional rounds last August for his book Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back, the Fox public relations department was not shy about batting down the number-cruncher’s claims of being fired for his early election-night call of […]
Did Fox News actively promote the conspiracy theory that implicated Dominion Voting Systems in a “massive fraud” that supposedly denied Donald Trump a second term? Or did Fox merely report what the president and his representatives were saying? Those questions are at the heart of the defamation lawsuit that Dominion filed against Fox in March […]
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI)—a British nonprofit that smeared Reason as an unsafe news website using dubious criteria—might want to take a closer look at newly uncovered disinformation being spread by… the website of the Global Disinformation Index. GDI is partly funded by the U.S. State Department, and seeks to discourage advertisers from working with news […]
A legislative ally of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill in the Florida House on Tuesday that would remove many of the legal protections against defamation lawsuits established in the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan. The new bill is yet another attempt by DeSantis, an aggressive critic of defamation law, […]
After the 2020 presidential election, Fox News helped promote what Rupert Murdoch, chairman of its parent company, privately called “really crazy stuff.” It was a baroque conspiracy theory that claimed Joe Biden had stolen the election through a “massive fraud” involving Dominion Voting Systems, tricky Smartmatic software, phony ballots, election officials across the country, George […]