Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Rachel Maddow have all used "No one could honestly believe that what we say is really true" as an argument in legal proceedings against them.
The specific details are Maddow was talking about a journalist from another network(OAN), and said something like "This person is literally paid by the Russian government to produce news stories". Maddow's team argued that it isn't slander because no reasonable viewer of her show would take that statement to be truthful despite the confident/clear language it is expressed in.
Krauss was in fact working for OAN and Sputnik at the same time and Sputnik is funded by the Russian government. Maddow even won attorney fees in that case. Rouz is a propagandist; quotes in the decision amply demonstrate that.
Quoting the appeals decision, The challenged statement was an obvious exaggeration, cushioned within an undisputed news story.
Equating Maddow’s exaggeration with Jones and Carlson is just rank bothsiderism.
If they actually are on the payroll, how is it an "obvious exaggeration" to say that they are getting paid by the Russian government? If something is demonstrably true, why would one need to hide behind the "No reasonable person would believe this to be true" defense?
Because that is the threshold question of any defamation case [1]. OAN lost that case and re-lost on appeal. Then in awarding Maddow attorneys fees, the court was saying OAN shouldn't have even filed the suit in the first place.
The question for you, the original question, is why would you consider her shorthand argument based on fact equivalent to what Alex Jones does?
Because when you're defending a lawsuit, you lay out multiple lines of defense. What we said was true, but even if it wasn't true, we had good reason to think it was, but even if we really didn't have good reason, we're just entertainment. That way you're not doomed if the court accepts some convoluted argument that what you said wasn't actually true.
As loathe as people are to hear "both sides", 'The Left' absolutely does this as too. They just use different names and insinuations to communicate the same point, that sources presented by the other side is not to be trusted.
Remember when Biden claimed that COVID-19 was invented by the Republicans to make his presidency look bad?
Remember when Obama refused to acknowledge that Trump won the presidency and when CNN aired nonstop coverage from conspiracy theorists claiming that the entire election was fraudulent?
Remember when Obama claimed months in advance that any election in which a Democrat lost was necessarily fraudulent, and then incited a mob to take over the US Capitol building during the electoral vote count? And then when Obama refused to authorize the national guard to prevent US senators and house representatives from being taken hostage?
You're damn right -- they're both totally the same.
This is very likely to devolve into a partisan squabble, so I don't want to keep going back and forth on this. I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. If I pick only one example, it looks like I'm not prepared and have nothing substantial to counter with. If I list multiple examples, it will look like I came here prepared for a fight as a right wing partisan. How do you want to proceed, if at all?
Can you cite an example of left-wing news outlets playing "fast and loose" in a way that literally jeopardized the foundation of US democracy and incited mass violence?
Even if you think the investigation into Trump's ties to Russian influence was unjustified, it relied on democratically-elected representatives to impeach him, and it never undermined the rule of law itself.
I'm sure you can find examples with lesser consequences, but given the stakes, are those really relevant here?
It's easy to dismiss all such disagreements as being boiled down to partisanship, which is why it's more useful to look past the actions and focus on the outcome.
Violent rhetoric from politicians and their supporting news outlets has real consequences, and in this case the actions of one side are resulting in the potential for mass vigilante violence:
From Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy[1]
About half of all surveyed Republicans agreed with these points:
1. The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.
2. A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.
3. Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done.
4. It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.
>"in a way that literally jeopardized the foundation of US democracy"
What does this even mean? This is way too vague and nebulous to ever get a grip on. I'm guessing you're talking about members of House/Senate contesting the results of the election, which they had a right to do, and followed the constitutional procedure for. You could also say this relied on democratically-elected representatives and wasn't undermining the rule of law.
>"and incited mass violence?"
Again, what qualifies as "mass violence"? I assume you're alluding to January 6th, which I hardly consider "mass violence" as it was very much localized and was over within a few hours. Surely the summer riots are more deserving of a term like "mass violence", no?
If we're talking about vigilante violence / decentralized intimidation, Maxine Waters told people to harass Trump staffers: "“They’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store... The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them.”"
As for your four bullet points, I am confident you can get the same kind of result (eroded faith in Democracy) by tweaking the questions to appeal to the sensibilities of people on the left. Just imagine flipping a few them by asking if a liberal agrees with "The rights of women and minorities are disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save them" and "It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people have been victims of voter suppression".
>What does this even mean? This is way too vague and nebulous to ever get a grip on.
No, the idea that democracy is undermined when citizens are told that their elections are no longer valid or trustworthy, and when politicians no longer respect the results of those elections, is actually very clear and straightforward. The legitimacy of those in power is upheld by the legitimacy of elections. Take away the latter, and what remains is tyranny.
>Surely the summer riots are more deserving of a term like "mass violence", no?
We're talking specifically about lies told by the media that resulted in mass violence. So, no.
>Maxine Waters told people to harass Trump staffers
Remember, we're speaking now in terms of actual outcomes. You'd need to point to demonstrable mass violence that resulted from her comments.
>I am confident you can get the same kind of result (eroded faith in Democracy) by tweaking the questions to appeal to the sensibilities of people on the left
I'm sure you've got a great imagination, but what counts is evidence. Given your confidence, surely you can find a study or poll somewhere to support that hypothesis. And given the vast sums of money behind right-wing think tanks and PACs, I would not expect such studies to be wanting for funding.
“When do we get to use the guns? ... That's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
> Can you cite an example of left-wing news outlets playing "fast and loose" in a way that literally jeopardized the foundation of US democracy and incited mass violence?
Protests summer 2020? There was a huge surge covid a month after those protests everywhere in USA, even though it was summer and covid should have been low as everywhere else in the world during summers. All of the left wing politicians and news outlets scrambled to try to discredit this or hide it or find any flaws in that connection, but the connection is crystal clear. Those protests lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
>Those protests lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This sounds like an opinion disguised as fact. If that wasn’t your intention then you’ll need to show peer-reviewed evidence of at the very least a strong association between those two outcomes.
Moreover, we’re specifically talking about lies perpetrated by the media that led to mass violence. The George Floyd protests weren’t fomented by media lies — you can go ask a poor black American if you want to know what’s going on.
You start off with a premise that is not immediately obvious. You claim right-wing news outlets are jeopardizing the 'foundation of US democracy', but most right wingers would counter that democracy is not the foundational value of the United States, but rather, individual rights, that even democracy is subservient to the rights of the individual. For example, no matter how many people would vote for such an ability, a modern 'right winger' would reject the notion that the people should be able to buy others. Your insistence that democracy is being eroded by the right, is easily countered by most conservatives that individual liberty is being eroded by the left, and they can easily point to the coronavirus lockdowns which seem neverending, obviously overreaching, and -- given the vaccine -- also unnecessary. They can point to multiple examples of what they see as having their rights trampled over, such as being forced to participate in events they have moral concerns with, while facebook and Amazon and other large companies apparently have every right to kick off those they agree with from their multi-billion dollar platforms.
So the counter to your claim that the right is undermining democracy is that the left is undermining civil liberties.
>...most right wingers would counter that democracy is not the foundational value of the United States, but rather, individual rights, that even democracy is subservient to the rights of the individual...
That's a good point, but consider the following:
Civil liberties don't exist in a vacuum -- their definitions arise out of conflict among members of society. I.e., the individual, alone in nature, has no need for them. One of the functions of a government is to protect those liberties, especially among those in the minority.
Without trusted elections and therefore a sound democracy, elected officials have no legitimacy. Without a legitimate claim to power, they become tyrants, and the state loses its moral authority to uphold one person's civil liberties against another's. There is no longer any social consensus backing those decisions.
I don't disagree with your description of right wingers saying that individual rights are foundational rather than democracy. I will point out that neoconservatives just spent $6T trying to export democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan rather than individual rights. Indeed, there is no second amendment in the Iraq constitution which we wrote.
> I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility.
I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate.
The question seems quite black and white.
We have a few classic lies:
* Obama is a Muslim from Kenya
* His wife is transgender
* Climate change is a hoax
* COVID is a hoax
* Climate change is a hoax
* There is not enough pollution in the world
* The Democrats are Communists
* The Democrats run an occult pederasty wing through Twitter
* Trump won the 2020 election
All of these are widely believed by Conservatives and all of these have been widely spread by Conservative speakers.
Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?
"> I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility.
I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate."
Actually, I was exactly right. I'm sensing some hostility from you right now and I'm making the mistake of engaging when I should just let it go.
>"Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?"
So on the one hand, the laundry list you gave is acceptable as "widely believed by Conservatives", but I have to provide counterexamples that are only restricted to "prominent democrats"? You also don't qualify what 'widely believed' means, so I can just as easily claim that people on the left widely believe other falsehoods. If it is so bad that some conservatives agree with the idea that "Democrats are Communists", is it not exactly the same thing as Democrats believing that "Republicans as Fascists"? This is a widely believed view by Progressives.
I'm not here to chuck a laundry list of "lies" at you. Quite frankly I see something like "Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years" and I roll my eyes. Am I seriously expected to believe that number is anywhere close to accurate? I dare say the majority of those are subject to interpretation, which we will not be doing here.
Likewise, it isn't the left's fault that conservatives routinely do deny real reporting on real events that actually happened as being reported by a liberal bias.