“To err is human. To correct is journalism!”

Dominion v. FoxNews & History of Defamation

Dominion v. Fox News…
It’s been a long and windy road from Walter Cronkite to Tucker Carlson…

The history of defamation suits against journalists is quite colorful. More than mere legal standards of proof for litigants, it goes to the core of our country’s liberty and freedom of the press.

In this episode, Dr. Aimee Edmondson explains how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sullivan decision in 1964 liberated journalists to do their jobs. She is a professor in media law and journalism history with a particular focus on civil-rights-related libel law, and, lucky for us, is the author of In Sullivan’s Shadow, The Use and Abuse of Libel Law During the Long Civil Rights Struggle, which we discuss in this episode.

With respect to defamation law, back in March, our former Attorney General, Mr. Bill Barr, published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Dominion’s Weak Case Against Fox”, in which he offered three legal defenses that Fox News could have used (had the case gone to trial) against Dominion’s defamation suit. Although we don’t get into Mr. Barr’s article in detail, Dr. Edmondson discusses the history of defamation law in parallel to the legal defenses Mr. Barr proposed for Fox News.