[robomartin]

Well, you have it entirely wrong.

Elon is accusing Media Matters of something. That's the "If Elon is wrong" (or right) part the courts have to decide.

If he is right, this is a crime (or whatever the appropriate legal classification might be). And this is precisely what we have laws and government for.

If someone slanders you, the law is what you use to deal with the problem.

This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Here's a super-simple primer on that:

At a basic level everyone is free to say anything.

The First Amendment does not protect you from the consequences of your speech.

You can go out there slander and libel anyone you want. That does NOT mean the US Constitution protects you from the consequences of your actions. Not even close.

I was involved in a slander case decades ago. A competitor, aided by his buddies at an industry newsletter, decided to slander me and my company at the time. They allowed him to write an article full of serious lies. When I took that to a specialist attorney he explained what I just said above about how ignorant people are about what the First Amendment actually means in terms of rights and responsibilities for your actions.

In the lawsuit we filed approximately ten people could have lost absolutely everything. My attorney said it was so obviously slanderous and malicious that we could go for the financial decapitation of everyone involved. I didn't want to live with having cause that kind of harm to a bunch of fucking morons who didn't know any better and got carried away. The settlement was sizable. They all suffered serious financial damage. My competitor had to close his doors. That's one asshole I had absolutely no sympathy for. It cost him dearly. Well deserved.

Don't confuse free speech with the freedom to be an asshole or cause material destruction without consequences. That isn't what free speech is about.

It's high time that someone teaches outfits like Media Matters a solid (legal/financial) lesson. Yet, the allegations have to be proven in court. We'll see what happens.

If proven in court, I hope he goes after every media organization that pushed the narrative and wins. Maybe then we will have media that goes out of their way to deliver verified, truthful and well researched evidence-based news.

This is what puzzles me. Why doesn't everyone want our media organizations to be truthful? Again, how are lies and manipulation good for society? I don't care what political angle they come from. We should not tolerate this crap. It isn't good for anyone.

[aw1621107]

> Elon is accusing Media Matters of something. That's the "If Elon is wrong" (or right) part the courts have to decide.

My apologies for misinterpreting you. I was interpreting the statement as talking about Elon and Media Matters disagreeing on some factual claim, which (basically?) hasn't occurred yet.

> If someone slanders you, the law is what you use to deal with the problem. > > This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

The case has everything to do with the First Amendment. The First Amendment limits the restrictions/consequences that can be placed on speech by laws, so if some speech is protected by the First Amendment then you can't use the law to deal with the problem.

What Elon is complaining about here is undoubtedly the type of speech that the First Amendment can protect. Therefore, the very first hurdle he will have to cross is convincing the judge that the First Amendment does not apply. If it does, nothing else matters.

(Well, maybe venue issues will cause problems for the lawsuit first, but the First Amendment would be the first substantive issue).

> This is what puzzles me. Why doesn't everyone want our media organizations to be truthful?

It's a nice-sounding sentiment that's easy to agree with in the abstract, to be sure, but it's running up against multiple factors that don't exactly incentivize it and it's going to be extremely difficult at best to change that, if it's even possible at all.

Not to mention there's a distinction to be drawn here between societal/cultural/etc. enforcement and governmental enforcement of the ideals you wish were adhered to. It's not without reason that the First Amendment is as broad as it is, after all...

[robomartin]

I think you are over-using First Amendment to effectively make a false claim from authority.

Well, what we say here is irrelevant. The courts will decide. I am looking forward to that outcome, one way or the other. Stay tuned.

[aw1621107]

> I think you are over-using First Amendment to effectively make a false claim from authority.

Would you mind explaining why you think so? If you're not interested I can hardly force you to, but it seems like a rather unusual position compared to what I've generally seen.

[robomartin]

> What Elon is complaining about here is undoubtedly the type of speech that the First Amendment can protect.

This is for the courts to decide. You and I do not have access to any of the evidence that will be presented in support of his allegations. Saying "undoubtedly", making a connection to the First Amendment as a source of authority is impossible without this evidence presented in the context of a trial.

Other than when I have been obviously biased (It is beyond obvious I have a very low opinion of Media Matters), I have been consistent in stating that this is for the courts for decide based on evidence.

That's basically it. We cannot, from our perspective, invoke the First Amendment to then become judge, jury and executioner. Can we have an opinion? Of course! Yet that's all it is, for both of us. We don't know enough for that opinion to even begin to approximate reality. To get there we need evidence that will only be available during the trial.

These kinds of discussions always remind me of something that happened in 2016. Just before the presidential elections someone set fire to a church belonging to a black community and spray-painted "Vote Trump" on the side.

The media immediately went off the rails. They knew this was a Trump supporter. They knew this was a racist white person. They knew this was politically motivated. They knew it was Trump's fault. They knew Trump supporters were human garbage. They mounted a carpet-bombing campaign seeking to do as much damage as possible to both Trump and his supporters. It was wall-to-wall coverage as soon as the news surfaced. Demonstrators went to the streets. Judge. Jury. Executioner.

I think it was a week or two later. Police announced they caught the person responsible for the fire-bombing. It was a member of the church (a black man), who had a problem with the priest. He was not a Trump supporter at all. He thought he could deflect investigators away from him by spray-painting "Vote Trump" on the side of the building he burned down.

That's what society has become. We have groups like Media Matters engaging in genuinely evil misinformation campaigns as well as flat-out targeting and destroying people and businesses that do not align with leftist ideology. We have a complicit media --which is largely solidly aligned with the left-- engaged in ideological warfare. They are like white cells attacking anything that does not align with their ideological position.

And then we have people behaving as sheep, allowing themselves to be guided by the nose by these master manipulators who, at the end of the day, care not one bit about them. At the limit, this is purely about obtaining and maintaining power at the expense of society not in service to the people.

This topic goes well beyond reaching for the First Amendment. This is about something far more important than that. I would say it might even go as far as the very survival of this society.

I follow Latin American history and politics closely, partly because I lived there for many years. I have always said that countries like Argentina are time machines for the US. This, because everything that has happened here has happened in Argentina (and other LATAM nations) years, sometimes decades, before.

A few days ago Argentinians voted for a new president, and a new path. They effectively revolted against the leftist regimes that have absolutely decimated this once-prosperous nation and elected the first Libertarian president in the world, Javier Milei. Right on cue, leftist-media in the US and elsewhere have been busy attempting to utterly destroy Milei. And yet, anyone who actually listens to what he has to say (I have probably watched three or four hours of interviews with him) would not be wrong to thing "WTF?" when reading some of the coverage by nearly every US media organization. It's pure unfounded destructive hatred with no basis in reality whatsoever.

This video on the Argentinian elections is interesting, the comments are worth reading:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLvWin8mL2k

The case between X and Media Matters goes to court. Let's see what we learn when the evidence is presented. This nation desperately needs to expunge this disease that is destroying us from the inside.

[aw1621107]

Thank you for taking the time to explain!

I think I wasn't being very clear there. Sorry about that :(

There's a reason I said it's the type of speech that is protected by the First Amendment and not that the speech is protected by the First Amendment. The intent was to convey that what Elon is complaining about is something that can be protected (broadly speaking, reporting is one of the quintessential examples of First Amendment protected speech, after all), and therefore a First Amendment analysis must be done. Maybe I'll be surprised and the article will be deemed defamatory as a matter of law (i.e., it's reporting that is not protected by the First Amendment), but that analysis still has to take place before anything else.

> You and I do not have access to any of the evidence that will be presented in support of his allegations.

> To get there we need evidence that will only be available during the trial.

We do have some access to evidence courtesy of the complaint, since it must include at least something due to federal pleading standards.

I think those same pleading standards are part of why it's easy to not take a "wait-and-see" approach. Elon has to include enough evidence to show that he has a fair chance of winning as a matter of law. If the judge looks at the complaint and finds that the evidence there is insufficient to sustain the case, then whatever other evidence Elon may or may not be sitting on is effectively wasted. Elon could submit an amended complaint at that point, but he only gets one guaranteed try at that, so in theory he should save the time and cost and just get it right the first time.

In addition, even if the case survives a motion to dismiss he'd need to give that evidence to Media Matters as a part of discovery, they can use that same evidence in a motion for summary judgement (if appropriate, of course, since we don't know yet whether Media Matters actually disputes the factual accusations Elon made).

In other words, if Elon has truly damning evidence he's incentivized to show it as part of the initial submission, rather than squirrel it away in hopes of reaching the jury when that's far from a guarantee.

[robomartin]

I fully expect it to be a very interesting case.