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https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/project-veritas-wins-early-round-

A New York judge slammed The New York Times for blurring the lines between news and opinion. The paper had attempted to get a defamation lawsuit against it dismissed on the grounds that, among other things, its reporters were just expressing their personal opinions when they disparaged the investigative journalists at Project Veritas.

The judge ruled the lawsuit can go forward, finding that Project Veritas showed sufficient evidence that The New York Times may have been motivated by “actual malice” and acted with “reckless disregard” when it ran several articles against the investigative journalism outfit.

“[I]f a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,” Judge Charles Wood of the New York State Supreme Court said in his March 18, 2021 ruling.

The lawsuit stems from The New York Times’ coverage of an explosive video released in September purporting to show illegal voting practices within the Somali-American community in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional district in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The video was based on Snapchat videos bragging about ballot harvesting posted by Liban Mohamed, the brother-in-law of a city council candidate named Jamal Osman. Project Veritas describes the video in its lawsuit:

Mr. Mohamed displayed a vast number of ballots littering his car’s dashboard while boasting in Somali, ‘[n]umbers don’t lie! You can see my car here is full. All these here are absentee ballots. Can’t you see? Look at al these, my car is full,’ and ‘[j]ust today we got 300 (ballots) for Jamal Osman.’ In another video, Mr. Mohamed filmed himself exiting an apartment complex with his hand stuffed with voters’ ballots and baosting, ‘[t]wo in the morning. Still hustling.’

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/federal-judge-one-party-control-of-the-press-and-media-is-a-threat-to-a-viable-democracy/

The control of major media by one political party is a dangerous threat to the country, a federal judge warned in a blistering dissent that called for courts to revisit libel laws that generally protect the press from being held liable for their reporting.

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news,” wrote Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit for the Court of Appeals. “It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy.”

Silberman argued that it’s time for courts to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, which has shaped press law in favor of media outlets for more than five decades. The New York Times and the Washington Post “are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction,” Judge Silberman wrote in his March 19 dissent.

He said that orientation also controls the Associated Press and most large papers in the country, including the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe. “Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet,” Judge Silberman added.

Silicon Valley also has “enormous influence” over the distribution of news and it “similarly filters news delivery in ways favorable to the Democratic Party,” wrote Judge Silberman, highlighting the shocking suppression of stories about Joe Biden and his family when he was running for president.

In that case, Twitter and Facebook censored media outlets that reported accurately about the Biden family’s dealing with foreign entities. Twitter suspended users, including sitting White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, for merely sharing accurate information, and prevented people from sharing the information privately on its platform. Facebook said it would censor coverage of the Biden family corruption pending a “fact-check,” an unprecedented privilege given to Biden in the closing days of one of the closest presidential elections in history.

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/tyler-o-neil/2021/03/21/leftist-media-bias-is-a-threat-to-democracy-judge-warns-in-scathing-dissent-n1433938?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=582

Laurence Silberman, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, urged the Supreme Court to overturn the key defamation precedent New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), in part because the legacy media has become a threat to American Democracy. Silberman dissented from a court panel’s majority opinion in Tah and McClain v. Global Witness (2021), which ruled that Global Witness did not violate defamation law in falsely accusing Liberian officials of taking bribes from Exxon.

Silberman (a Reagan appointee) argued that the NGO Global Witness had clearly defamed the Nigerian officials by accusing them of taking bribes from Exxon when in reality the officials had only received bonuses from their employer, the National Oil Company. Silberman accused his fellow judges, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan (an Obama appointee) and Judge David Tatel (a Clinton appointee), of “employing legal jiu-jitsu,” creating new arguments to get Global Witness off the hook for defamation.

“In the revisionist view, the National Oil Company bribed its own agents and employees to do their jobs. Tellingly, the Majority offers no motive for a bribe,” Silberman argued. “After observing my colleagues’ efforts to stretch the actual malice rule like a rubber band, I am prompted to urge the overruling of New York Times v. Sullivan.”

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Citing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Silberman argued that New York Times “was a policy-driven decision masquerading as constitutional law. The holding has no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution, and it baldly constitutionalized an area of law refined over centuries of common law adjudication.”

Silberman admitted that in 1964, the press may have needed the protection of New York Times v. Sullivan in order to cover the civil rights movement in a hostile and racially segregated South, but he argued “that power is now abused.”

“The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions,” Silberman warned. “Our court was once concerned about the institutional consolidation of the press leading to a ‘bland and homogenous’ marketplace of ideas. It turns out that ideological consolidation of the press (helped along by economic consolidation) is the far greater threat.”

“Although the bias against the Republican Party—not just controversial individuals—is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s. (I do not mean to defend or criticize the behavior of any particular politician). Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction,” Silberman noted. He added that these papers set the “orientation” of coverage for the Associated Press and most large papers across the country.