This is the new problem with the talk shows who claim to be issuing commentary and opinion and use that as a defense to slander. In fact the premise is very clear that Tucker is expressing his opinion of what happened and there is the line between 1st amendment and defamation. Tucker can express his opinion on any subject of the public news but if he can be sued for any opinion then it could chill is his 1st amendment rights. Sc will always err on the side of allowing a right to be expressed versus allowing lawsuits with no restrictions. Then both CNN and FOX will be opento non stop lawsuits everytime they express an opinion on anyone. Carlson believes McDougal extorted trump for hush money...that is his opinion and sadly he has the right to express it. McDougal has all the right to go on TV and deny those claims and opinions. If tucker carlson says McDougal was convicted of fraud in the past and that is not true then there is a clearer case of defamation to sue under. opinions always are very subjective and therefore will more likely than not be protected under 1st amendment....
I don't have the tucker clip but you're taking the trumpy judge's word on this. What was the "political debate" being framed and how is the audience to know "not stating actual facts" but instead giving an opinion? These are the judge's words mind you. In any case, I posted mostly as precedent of judges appointed by Trump and how this dominion lawsuit would land at SCOTUS and end up the same way. After all, Tucker et.al. were telling verifiably untrue "opinions" about the election and this company, were they not? The only difference here is McDougal did not have the pockets for discovery to make the case of "they knew they were lying".
The election claims were not mere claims but actual claims against Dominion who sued. That is different. Tucker saying the woman sued to shake down trump.is commentary.and not defamatory in the same way. She might not like it but that is his opinion. Tucker saying Dominion machines.were faulty and threw the election for.Dems is a slanederous claim defaming Dominion in a big way.
The extorsion claims were not mere claims but actual claims against McDougal who sued. How is that different? extorsion is a criminal accusation as would be vote rigging so how is one defamatory while the other is commentary? I'm not trying to be argumentative it just seems like we just want to give corp. a pass while an individual gets the shaft.
She sued him and Tucker expressed his opinion that her lawsuit was without merit. Anyone can file a lawsuit. If the suit has no merits than it can be dismissed by the court. We all can discuss the merits of a lawsuit without getting sued. You are saying now that anyone who expresses an opinion on a lawsuit should be subject to a lawsuit themselves. What if Tucker simply said the suit was without merit. Now she should be able to sue EVERYONE on tv who claims the lawsuit has no merit which implies a shake down? Now you are chilling free speech. You went to the individual v. corp argument but you dont want to address the real issue. She chose to sue a public figure, not file a criminal complaint. If she filed a criminal complaint and this wsa going to trial and Tucker said she was a whore who wanted sex for money and is now wanting to prosecute Don then he is committing some slander that could be actionable. Remember slander and defamation are NOT CRIMES... they are civil actions. Saying a lawsuit is frivolouos or she is suing just to get some money is something said about ALMOST EVERY LAWSUIT FILED WHEN INVOLVING PUBLIC FIGURES. You cannot sue people when they express an opinion on merits of a civil lawsuit decided by the merits, especially in the media. FOX accused Dominion of actually committing treason and high level fraud and conspiracy by fixing an election. Those claims directly harm Dominion in its business and are complete fabrications which FOX knows to be untrue because nothing was proven. This is the very definition of defamation and why The Enquirer and many other media outlets get sued. Sorry but McDougal get her feelings hurt the media believes her lawsuit was without merit and she sold her story and got paid off. She is crying about her reputation but she cannot prove any actual harm or that Carlson knew what he was saying was truly false. You think Macdougal is an angel and nothing in her lawsuit was about money?
It might not seem right but 1st Amendment means putting up with tucker giving an opinion on a lawsuit which is not factual but not allowing a channel to claim a company comitted conspiracy, treason, and fraud without any evidence or proof.
Let me approach it a different way, why is the following (from the McDougal case) not good enough defense for the dominion lawsuit for the things Tucker et.al. said about them? In reaching her decision, Judge Vyskocil relied in part on an argument made by Fox News lawyers: that the “general tenor” of Mr. Carlson’s program signals to viewers that the host is “engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘nonliteral commentary.’” The judge added: “Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive with an appropriate amount of skepticism’” about the host’s on-air comments. and a bit of background since I don't even remember the lawsuit in question: During the 2016 presidential campaign, McDougal, a former Playboy model, had sought to tell her account of an earlier affair with Trump. The National Enquirer tabloid bought McDougal's story for $150,000 during the 2016 campaign and then buried it to protect Trump from any fallout. More than two years later, in December 2018, Carlson began presenting Trump as the victim of extortion. Seeking to discredit former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's tale of hush payments — and alleged campaign finance law violations — Carlson first told viewers, "Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed." But they aren't undisputed. They're not even facts. He then proceeded to say, "Two women approach Donald Trump and threaten to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn't give them money. Now that sounds like a classic case of extortion." <<is that the out? ("now that sounds like..") Pictures of former adult film star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, and McDougal flashed on screen. Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 on behalf of Trump, who denies that either affair occurred. In reality, McDougal never approached Trump. She and her representative had spoken to ABC News and to the National Enquirer because, she said, she feared word of the affair would leak out during the campaign anyway and she preferred to be the one to tell the story. It wasn't publicly known that David Pecker, then the CEO of the tabloid's parent company, had promised Trump he would help keep stories about extramarital affairs from seeing the light of day.
Dominion lawsuit is against the whole network because numerous Fox fucktards repeated the story about Dominion being complicit in throwing the election and committing fraud, treason and conspiracy. That is why the lawsuit agains the network can succeed because FOX accused Dominion of a high level crime that if true would devestate and ruin the company. FOX does not have the right under Free Speech to accuse Dominion of an array of felonies repeatedly and non stop without any indication of proof or intent to even support their claims, even after courts of law said they were false. THis is not the same as Fucker giving his opinion that she is shaking down trump. MacDougal is allowed to sue whoever she wants and we are allowed to pass judgment on it. Free speech. Maybe she was shaking him down... how do you know.....she certainly tried to make money selling her story. It is not unreasonable to claim she is shaking down trump because it is an opinion. If she said "I am suing Trump for money" she would not be arrested and thrown in jail...her suit would simply be thrown out for baseless claims. MacDougal is being accused of suing trump for money... which....um she did.... Fucker might have gotten some facts wrong but that is still a matter of opinion since nothing was factually addressed. MacDougal got paid off and even tried to sell her story.... We dont want every person who is criticized on the media being able to sue and chill free speech. We do want media to be held accountable if they make extremely strong accusations of treason, fraud and conspiracy to throw an election which would put Dominion out of business when these claims were foudn to be false by courts of law yet FOX kept on KNOWINGLY repeating the claims and supporting speakers on air that continued to do so.
I'm not sure where McDougal "sued" Trump? She sued the enquirer to tell her story as I understand it and never approach Trump so the whole "approaching Trump for cash/extortion" thing falls apart there and is verifiable fact (counter to Cucker's statements).
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/23/media/fox-news-dominion-reliable-sources/index.html ‘It’s a major blow’: Dominion has uncovered ‘smoking gun’ evidence in case against Fox News, legal experts say Analysis by Oliver Darcy, CNN Updated 11:29 PM EST, Thu February 23, 2023 (CNN) - Fox News is in serious hot water. That’s what several legal experts told CNN this week following Dominion Voting Systems explosive legal filing against the right-wing talk channel, revealing the network’s executives and hosts privately blasted the election fraud claims being peddled by Donald Trump’s team, despite allowing lies about the 2020 contest to be promoted on its air. While the legal experts cautioned that they would like to see Fox News’ formal legal response to the filing, they all indicated in no uncertain terms that the evidence compiled in Dominion’s legal filing represents a serious threat to the channel. “It’s a major blow,” attorney Floyd Abrams of Pentagon Papers fame said, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put Fox in a more precarious situation” in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” filing that “clearly lays out the difference between what Fox was saying publicly and what top people at Fox were privately admitting.” A cache of behind-the-scenes messages included in the legal filing showed Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch called Trump’s claims “really crazy stuff,” and the cable network’s stars — including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — brutally mock the lies being pushed by the former president’s camp asserting that the election was rigged. It also showed attempts to crack down on fact-checking election lies. On one occasion, Carlson demanded that Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich be fired after she fact-checked a Trump tweet pushing election fraud claims. Tushnet said that in all of her years practicing and teaching law, she had never seen such damning evidence collected in the pre-trial phase of a defamation suit. “I don’t recall anything comparable to this,” Tushnet said. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.” David Korzenik, an attorney who teaches First Amendment law and represents a number of media organizations, said that the filing showed Dominion’s case against Fox News has serious teeth. Korzenik stressed that while the law allows for bias and ratings-seeking behavior by media outlets, it does not allow for the publication of material one knows to be false. The filing, Korzenik said, “certainly puts Fox in the actual malice crosshairs and puts them in real jeopardy.” RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor and media law scholar at the University of Utah, described the evidence as “pretty voluminous” and said that she too had never seen evidence like it collected in a high-profile defamation case against an outlet as enormous as Fox. “This is a pretty staggering brief,” Jones said. “Dominion’s filing here is unique not just as to the volume of the evidence but also as to the directness of the evidence and the timeline of the evidence.” “This ‘out of the horse’s mouth’ evidence of knowing falsity is not something we often see,” Jones added. “When coupled with the compelling storyline that Dominion is telling about motivation — the evidence that at least some key players in the organization were actively looking to advance some election denialism in order to win back viewers who had departed — it makes for a strong actual malice storyline.” In a statement, Fox News accused Dominion of generating “noise and confusion,” adding, “the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.” “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the network said. “Their motion for summary judgment takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record.” But the attorneys said Dominion’s filing showed it had built a powerful case against Fox. “The dream for a plaintiff’s attorney is what Dominion claims to have here,” Jones said, “smoking-gun internal statements both acknowledging the lie and deciding to forge ahead with perpetuating it.”