A question for legal experts on DU -- can a class action suit be brought against Fox

[diva77]

for disseminating disinformation about COVID-19? They clearly contributed to behavior (e.g. lack of social distancing) that led to the exponential spread of the virus.

[2naSalit]

1. I'd like to know about that too.

[elleng]

2. Maybe/maybe not,

but difficulty would be proving causation of the harm.

[diva77]

3. interesting - thanks for your input

I think Fox exists to cause harm, period.

[captain queeg]

4. Well maybe they could be sued and forced to spend a ton of money defending themselves.

Works for Trump all the time

[Stonepounder]

5. IANAL, but I seriously doubt that there could be a successful suit.

First, it is damn hard to go after newspapers - 'Freedom of the Press' and all that.

I think you have to be able to prove a) they knew they were disseminating false info and then b) you have to prove malice. Since they are going along with the President, they can just plead that they believed him. Kinda hard to disprove.

But, as I say, IANAL.

[yonder]

6. They'll pull out the "we are entertainment, not news" angle

that they've used successfully before.

[Aquaria]

7. That is not true

It was debunked, long ago:

While the term “accredited news station” may sound official, no regulatory body even exists that would accredit Fox News (or CNN, MSNBC, etc.) as a “news” station. In addition, a spokesperson for Fox News said the meme’s claims were false.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-entertainment-switch/

The FCC, the only regulatory body related to air waves, doesn't have a classification of categories of stations. They only issue licenses, and you have one or you don't. Moreover, even if the FCC had such a thing, it wouldn't apply to Fox, because Fox is a cable network, and cable stations don't require licensing because they're a private sector network, not public. They also don't fall under FCC regulations at all, other than for the most basic of decency/obscenity standards.

Now some of the news people at Fox, like the former anchor, Shep Smith, have said that the opinion shows are there to entertain, but he was stating his (fair) viewpoint, not speaking for the entire network. No one there has ever said that the network is an entertainment channel.

While we're on the general topic of bullshit about Fox peddled by liberals who should know better:

Fox didn't sue for the right to lie to the public.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-skews/

Fox News wasn't banned from airing in Canada:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/canadian-fox/

In fact, Fox airs in Canada, on the same type of system as they air in the USA, which is as a private cable/satellite channel. For something even scarier, they also air the same way in some surprising countries, like France, Italy, Japan, and The Netherlands. Really.

https://www.foxnews.com/story/where-in-the-world-is-fox

[Aquaria]

8. I also know how this bullshit started that Snopes doesn't address

First came a Hollywood Reporter interview with Roger Aisles, where he compared Fox's ratings to those of entertainment channels like ESPN and Disney:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150409110830/http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/person/roger-ailes-0

This got the loonies of the fringe left fired up for quite a while, because they weren't smart enough to understand what Ailes was saying, namely that his propaganda outlet was pulling down ratings as good or better than the big entertainment channels, NOT that he was labeling that channel as entertainment. Because he wasn't.

And then what got the loonie fringe even more riled up was this satirical article at the Huffington Post Canada site:

04/01/2017 07:01 EDT

Fox News To Add ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only' Disclaimer

"The Fox lawyers had their day."

Charles Foster Kane

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/04/01/fox-news-for-entertainment-purposes-only-disclaimer_n_15727044.html

At the time, people believed this ridiculous satire, even though it had all the obvious signs of being a joke.

1) Note who the author is--Charles Foster Kane from the famous film about a fake reporter/publisher, Citizen Kane. Hello! That's a huge sign that it's a joke!

2) Look at the article's date. Look hard, and THINK. It's April Fool's Day!

But some people were so fricking stupid that Huffington Post had to post this disclaimer in 2018:

Editor's note: Happy (belated) April Fool's Day. This story was originally published in 2017.

There's plenty to criticize about the dirtbags at Fox, but these ridiculous memes are not among them.

Use your heads, people.

[yonder]

11. You've got a lot there.

What I understand, is they used a entertainment venue rather than news outlet defense to successfully argue a suit against them. This would have been 10-15 years ago in a Florida? court.

In skimming your posts, I did not see a reference to that. Tomorrow I'll plow through your links and dig deeper to refresh my memory.

[Aquaria]

26. That isn't what happened. At all.

It was a breach of contract lawsuit filed by reporters at a Fox network affiliate in Tampa Bay, NOT the Fox News Network. The reporters refused to amend a story to make it less one-sided than management requested, and they were fired. The station never aired the story, thus they couldn’t be sued for lying to viewers.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-skews/

[yonder]

32. Thanks for clearing that up.

I've been carrying that ridiculous notion around since reading about it those many years ago.

When the source fails, the record prevails.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

9. Hell, they've been disseminating hazardous disinformation since what, 1996?

Clearly evil people taking advantage of our constitutional freedoms........

Re-purposing a common phrase, "everything Fox News touches dies".

And to use another often heard exclamation: "If only there was a law".

[Aquaria]

10. It would be nearly impossible

We simply don't have anything in our legal codes that makes the transmission of false information over the airwaves a crime, and we probably never will because the courts aren't in the mood to take on the First Amendment that way.

Our media has wide latitude to publish or air what they want as long as they aren't willfully lying. IOW--If they give out false information, they're clear if they had no malicious intent in transmitting that false information. Malice aforethought is the standard established by NYT v Sullivan, back in 1964. It protects reporters who get stories wrong, but who meant no harm, or you and I if we say something that's false about someone, but don't know it's false or meant no harm by it.

Personally, I think malice aforethought is too often a get out of jail free card for willful liars who can put on a believable-enough act that they meant no harm, especially irresponsible "media" sources like the National Enquirer or other such hacks. The problem is that it's difficult to get a court to agree that it's libel or slander, because proving what someone was thinking only in their head at the time they committed the offense is damned near impossible.

This is why so few people win a libel, slander or defamation case in the US. It happens, but, hoo boy, do you need to have massive amounts of documentation with every i dotted and t crossed, not to mention one bad-ass pit bull of an attorney to win that battle. Go to a place like the UK, though, and a libel or defamation suit often results in a big win for a plaintiff taking aim at, say, the UK Mail, a notorious tabloid. This is because the UK (and the majority of other countries) don't define libel so broadly in their legal codes as the US does.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

12. The FCC appears to disagree:

Broadcasting false information that causes substantial 'public harm'

The FCC prohibits broadcasting false information about a crime or a catastrophe if the broadcaster knows the information is false and will cause substantial "public harm" if aired.

FCC rules specifically say that "the public harm: must begin immediately and cause direct and actual damage to property or the health or safety of the general public; or divert law enforcement or public health and safety authorities from their duties."

Broadcasters may air disclaimers that clearly characterize programming as fiction to avoid violating FCC rules about public harm.

Broadcasting false content during news programming

The FCC is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press. It is, however, illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge.

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-information

Of course, FoxNews is cable, not broadcast tv, so what the FCC calls illegal doesn't apply to them.

[former9thward]

16. Even if Fox were over the air the FCC does not "disagree."

No successful class action could be brought against any network just because someone thinks their content is false.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

21. The FCC statement I quoted does express disagreemwith this statement in the post to which I replied:

"We simply don't have anything in our legal codes that makes the transmission of false information over the airwaves a crime."

Note the FCC's use of the word "illegal."

Whether or not a succssful suit could be brought is another matter, one about which I expressed no opinion.

[Aquaria]

22. The FCC does not apply to Fox

And never will. It applies only to those stations qualifying for an FCC license to use public airwaves, AKA, OTA stations. OTA stations are the ones you get for free with ur old bunny ear antenna. It does not apply to cable. Because cable stations are private networks. Not public,

And the FCC does not override NYT v Sullivan. Maybe if you’d actually worked in a law firm, you’d know how impossible it is to win a libel or slander suit, the only legal way you can go after someone for telling injurious lies under our current legal environment.

[onenote]

13. No.

[rainin]

14. Does anyone know why they dropped "fair and balanced"?

I assumed they weren't legally allowed to use that term, since it was provably false. Who made them do that? Someone found a loophole

[former9thward]

18. They still use it in Chicago where I live.

[onenote]

20. No one stopped them from using it. And those who tried failed.

They still can and sometimes do use it, but they more often use other slogans such as "Real News, Real Honest Opinion".

A group tried to get Fox News' trademark for the "Fair and Balanced" slogan canceled but ultimately gave up.

[Aquaria]

23. It was a marketing decision.

They had been using it a long time and decided on something new. Companies change slogans and logos all the time.

I never heard of any legal case against them for using it. If there has been one, it would have been a big story. But if you have a cite for the case, be my guest in sharing it.

[COLGATE4]

15. Nope. Already litigated. Court found that Fox "News"

isn't news at all but merely 'entertainment' so no problem with telling lies. PS. This is the reason that Fix "News" is not permitted to broadcast in Canada.

[former9thward]

17. Not true.

Fox News is carried in Canada. This is another false internet rumor.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/canadian-fox/

[onenote]

19. I wish folks on DU would stop repeating nonsense that was debunked years ago.

[Bonx]

33. But that would cut the daily posts in half

[Aquaria]

24. And it was never declared an entertainment

Staton, because there is no such thing as classifying stations by content, on cable or on FCC-licensed stations.

Where people got these ridiculous notions, I’ll never know.

[renate]

25. Does it matter whether it's winnable? The suit should be brought whatever the odds

What they did needs to be brought to the public’s attention.

And I would LOVE it if a serious boycott of its advertisers went nationwide. They are literally responsible for gullible people’s deaths and for the deaths of people who were infected by their viewers. They need to be brought DOWN.

[Aquaria]

27. Yes, it matters, because lawyers are expensive

Gathering up all the evidence is expensive.

Will you be paying for it?

[onenote]

28. You want to pay their costs for bringing a frivolous lawsuit?

Be my guest.

[renate]

30. It doesn't seem frivolous to me

Gullible people were given information that will contribute or has contributed to deaths, when the owner of the company knew enough about what was coming to preemptively cancel his own social gatherings.

I’m saying that while there is no guarantee of success, as in any lawsuit that isn’t cut and dried, it seems like a worthwhile idea to explore.

No, of course I don’t want to pay the costs. But I would be proud to contribute to them.

[onenote]

31. You need to return your law degree to whatever school gave it to you

[democrattotheend]

29. I've been wondering this as well

It's possible, but I need to look into whether there are any laws granting immunity. My instinct is that courts would be reluctant to allow a case like that because it's core political speech. But if anyone wants to be a plaintiff in such a case I'd consider taking it.