Rep. Luna Threatens Journalist With Prison For Posting… Public University Bio

Free Speech

from the found-the-censorship-industrial-complex dept

If you want to understand how far MAGA Republicans have strayed from any actual “free speech” principles, look no further than this: Congress issued a subpoena to Rolling Stone journalist Seth Harp, because he posted on X a publicly available online biography of someone involved in the illegal and unconstitutional kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro. There was no private information shared. There was no “doxxing” in any sense of the word.

Just to be crystal clear about what we’re talking about here: a member of Congress subpoenaed a journalist and referred him for criminal prosecution for posting information that was publicly available on a university website. Information that a university proudly displays on its own website. Information that, even if it were classified (which it isn’t), would still be constitutionally protected to publish.

Yet, because MAGA folks always need to attack anyone who makes them look silly, they went crazy. First, they got X to lock his account until he deleted the post. Harp explained how there’s no way you could consider this to be doxxing.

If you can’t read that screenshot, Harp’s detailed explanation of why he did nothing wrong is quite thorough and quite obviously true:

Yesterday, X admins locked my account and required me to delete certain posts in order to log back in. No explanation was given, but I had posted the publicly available, online bio of a Delta Force commander, a full-bird colonel, whose identity is not classified and which anyone skilled at FOIA can ascertain.

In no way did I “doxx” the officer. I did not post any personally identifying information about him, such as his birthday, social security number, home address, phone number, email address, the names of his family members, or pictures of his house. What I posted is still online on Duke University’s website for all the world to see.

If you serve in the US military, your personnel documents are public records, as they should be. Because I served in the Army myself, anyone can obtain my records, which show the units in which I served. Nothing exempts Delta Force from this basic transparency.

To illustrate these points, I also posted the records of deceased special operators, obtained through FOIA, that specifically say “Delta Force” on them, unredacted. In the spirit of fairness, I also posted my own service record. X required me to delete those posts, too.

Nothing about this should distract from the larger issue: Delta Force, acting on President Trump’s unlawful orders, which contravened every principle of international law and sovereignty, as well as the Congress’s prerogative to declare war, invaded Venezuela, killed scores of Venezuelans who posed no threat to the United States, and kidnapped the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, as well as his wife.

Every civilian official and military officer in the American chain of command who participated in this outrageously illegal and provocative act of war – which a supermajority of Americans oppose is the legitimate subject of journalistic scrutiny, and X has no business censoring my timely and accurate reporting.

And just to underscore how ridiculous this entire affair is: Duke University, apparently spooked by the controversy, has now scrubbed the bio from its website. The officer’s name and photo remain, but the biographical text—which revealed nothing even remotely sensitive—has been deleted. So Luna’s intimidation campaign worked, at least in getting a university to memory-hole publicly available information about one of its own fellows. This is exactly how chilling effects operate in practice.

And, for that, he gets a subpoena driven by MAGA Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who falsely claimed he was “leaking classified information.” She then followed it up by referring Harp to the DOJ:

That’s Rep. Luna misleading everyone and misrepresenting what Harp did, saying:

I have referred Seth Harp to the DOJ for investigation and to pursue criminal charges regarding the intentional publication of information related to Operation Absolute Resolve, including the doxxing of a U.S. Delta Force operator. That conduct is not protected journalism. It was reckless, dangerous, and put American lives at risk. The First Amendment does not give anyone a license to expose elite military personnel, compromise operations, or assist our adversaries under the guise of reporting.

Congress has a constitutional duty to investigate when national security is endangered, and no one is above oversight. It is also well within my constitutional authority to work with the DOJ to ensure that justice is served. I look forward to the results of a very thorough investigation and the potential filing of charges for violations of multiple U.S. codes.

I have confirmation that the DOJ has received the letter, and we look forward to their findings.

The only truthful part of that is that she has, in fact (ridiculously), referred Harp to the DOJ.

She’s wrong on every other account. He did not “doxx” anyone. And even if he was revealing “information related to Operation Absolute Resolve,” that is absolutely protected by the First Amendment.

It’s not even a close call. We did this 55 years ago in the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that of course the First Amendment protects journalists publishing even secret government documents about military operations (which isn’t even what Harp did here)—documents that were actually classified, unlike the public university bio that Harp posted.

Take a moment to review all this: In 1971, the Nixon administration tried to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers—genuinely secret documents about the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court told Nixon to pound sand. Now, in 2026, we have a member of Congress going even further, not just trying to stop publication (which already failed half a century ago), but criminally referring a journalist for publishing information that was publicly available on a university website.

In a concurring opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, Justice Hugo Black wrote poetically about the power of the First Amendment protecting journalists especially when they are embarrassing the government:

In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

Rep. Luna either hasn’t read that, doesn’t understand it, or doesn’t care. Because what she is engaging in is out-and-out harassment of journalists doing their jobs, in an effort to intimidate and chill speech of reporters who report information that Luna and the MAGA Trump world would prefer not see the light of day.

That’s not how this works. It’s not how journalism works. It’s not how the First Amendment works, and it’s not how free speech works.

As Seth Stern from Freedom of the Press said in response to this:

Journalists don’t work for the government and can’t ‘leak’ government information — to the contrary, it’s their job to find and publish the news, whether the government wants it made public or not. Identifying government officials by name is not doxxing or harassment, no matter how many times Trump allies say otherwise. Reporters have a constitutional right to publish even classified leaks, as long as they don’t commit any crimes to obtain them, but Harp merely published information that was publicly available about someone at the center of the world’s biggest news story.

You may recall that after the election in 2024, President Trump demanded that Republicans in the Senate kill the PRESS Act, which had been approved in the house with broad bipartisan support. That law, which would make it even more explicit how the First Amendment protects journalists was killed because Trump and the MAGA base have known all along that they need to violate the First Amendment rights of journalists to try to intimidate and silence them.

This fits a pattern that’s become impossible to ignore: the same people who spent years screaming about “big tech censorship” and “free speech” are now wielding actual government power to silence journalists who embarrass them. The same crowd that insisted Trump would “bring free speech back” is now cheering as he and his congressional allies deploy subpoenas and criminal referrals against reporters.

Remember, it was just a few years ago that Rep. Luna herself was apoplectically accusing the Biden administration of colluding with Twitter to censor users… because she didn’t understand what Jira is. Yet, here, she’s helping the bastardized remains of Twitter, X, silence a journalist herself.

In normal times you could trust that the DOJ would laugh at Rep. Luna’s call for prosecution. But these aren’t normal times. We’ve seen case after case after case of the DOJ bringing bogus, bullshit federal criminal cases against perceived enemies for no reason other than intimidation. That most of those cases are failing in the courts is besides the point. The process itself is the punishment.

And here, Rep. Luna is holding the censor’s axe, abusing her power as an elected official to intimidate and suppress the speech of journalists who were just reporting publicly available information. The First Amendment doesn’t stop applying just because the subject of journalism is inconvenient for the government. But Luna and her MAGA colleagues seem to think it does—or at least, they’re betting that their base won’t care about constitutional principles when it’s “their guy” doing the censoring.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anna paulina luna, chilling effects, doj, free speech, freedom of the press, intimidation, journalism, press act, seth harp

NY Orders Apps To Lie About Social Media ‘Addiction,’ Will Lose In Court

Free Speech

from the compelled-speech-101 dept

New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a law that’s going to get expensive fast. The state’s new social media labeling requirement—S4505, courtesy of state Senator Andrew Gounardes—forces websites to slap unscientific warnings on their services claiming that features like algorithmic feeds and push notifications cause addiction.

It’s compelled speech based on contested science, which means it’s blatantly unconstitutional, and courts have already rejected nearly identical schemes. But Hochul and Gounardes either don’t care or don’t understand First Amendment basics, so New York taxpayers are about to fund a losing legal battle whose only real purpose is generating headlines for those politicians pretending to care about “protecting the children.”

(For those keeping track: Gounardes has a track record of pushing unconstitutional anti-internet legislation, and when constituents call him out on it, he tells them they’re just parroting “big tech” talking points. Several of his constituents have forwarded me these dismissive responses. Engaging on substance apparently isn’t part of his process.)

We had warned New York officials that this law was unconstitutional, but Hochul and Gounardes clearly don’t care.

The law targets any site with algorithmic feeds, push notifications, infinite scroll, like counts, or autoplay—basically every modern website—and demands they post warnings claiming these features are addictive. This isn’t based on scientific consensus. It’s based on misreading correlational studies and pretending they show causation.

Hell, even with Texas’s law regarding porn which went to the Supreme Court over its age verification requirements, every court along the way outright rejected the required labeling with unscientific warnings about how porn is unhealthy. Not just the lower court, but the Fifth Circuit, which seems quite willing in other circumstances to go along with anti-internet nonsense. While the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in the case was extremely problematic on other grounds, even it wouldn’t go so far as to say that the government can force websites to label their services based on made up, unsubstantiated claims of “public health.”

Throughout that ruling, the normally censorial Fifth Circuit highlights that the consensus on such public health warnings for pornography are way too contested to require getting around the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech around health warnings:

We are not scientific journal editors, much less social scientists, behavioral experts, or neurologists. The courts generally are not the place to hash out scientific debate, particularly not on so contentious a topic as the impacts of engaging with pornography. Experts must do that in academic journals, studies, and presentations. Therefore, the record leaves us with no option but to declare that the health impacts of pornography are currently too contentious and controversial to receive Zauderer scrutiny.

The science on social media’s “addictive” features is even more contested than the porn stuff the Fifth Circuit already rejected. Yet Hochul’s signing statement declares, with absolute certainty, that “studies show” spending more time on social media increases anxiety and depression. That’s likely backwards.

The studies show correlation, not causation. And actual experts in the field—not politicians cherry-picking abstracts—suggest the causal arrow likely points the other direction. Kids struggling with anxiety and depression aren’t getting adequate professional help and support. So they turn to social media to self-medicate, to find community, to cope. The increased screen time is a symptom, not the cause. Which means taking away that tool—or scaring them away from it with dire warnings—could make things considerably worse for the kids who need support most.

But the key here is that there is no generally agreed upon scientific consensus that social media itself, let alone any specific features of social media, are the cause of depression or anxiety. Yet, Hochul and Gounardes are forcing all sorts of sites to speak and claim that these unproven things are true. That’s dangerous! And obviously unconstitutional.

The bill’s language is so broad that it’ll snag far more than just Facebook and TikTok. Here’s the language in the bill:

“Addictive social media platform” shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application that primarily serves as a medium for covered users to interact with media generated by other users and which offers or provides covered users an addictive feed, push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and/or like counts as a significant part of the services provided by such website, online service, online application, or mobile application.

Techdirt has our comment voting system, which we created years before other systems of “likes” and whatnot, but do we need to warn users that our comments are addictive? Here’s the definition of “like counts”:

“Like counts” shall mean the quantification and public display of positive votes, such as but not limited to those expressed via a heart or thumbs-up icon, attached to a piece of media generated by a covered user.

We don’t publicly “quantify” people voting for “funny” or “insightful,” but we will display an icon when they reach a threshold. Does that qualify? Do I need to pay a lawyer to find out if I have to warn people our comments are addictive? Can I send the bill to Andrew Gounardes?

The whole thing is nonsense.

There can be exceptions, but they appear to be solely the determination of NY’s Attorney General deciding which sites to exempt, which seems to be putting way too much power in the hands of a single politician.

“Addictive social media platform” shall not include any such service or application which the attorney general determines offers the features described herein for a valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of such platform.

We’ve criticized NY’s Attorney General in the past. Now she has a tool to punish us since she has sole authority of determining whether or not our comments qualify under this law. Doesn’t that seem like a problem? It does to me!

Obviously, this applies to way more than just Facebook and Tiktok. But also more than just our comments. It means almost any site with a recommendation algorithm? That’s probably covered. Auto-playing videos? Covered. Notifications of things that may interest you? Covered. That means news sites, recipe apps, fitness trackers, even email clients could theoretically fall under this law’s scope if they have the wrong combination of features and don’t play nice with NY’s Attorney General.

All of these services could face fines from the AG—the same AG with a documented history of launching bogus investigations against internet companies specifically to cover up New York’s own policy failures.

So what happens next? Either this law gets struck down immediately when challenged in court—wasting taxpayer money on litigation over compelled speech that even the Fifth Circuit wouldn’t tolerate—or it survives long enough to force websites to lie to users about nonexistent dangers, potentially driving vulnerable kids away from the online communities that actually help them cope.

Neither is a good look for New York. But at least Gounardes and Hochul will have gotten their headlines. That must be worth something.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, addiction, addictive feeds, algorithmic feeds, andrew gounardes, compelled speech, infinite scroll, kathy hochul, likes, new york, notifications, social media, social media addiction, warning labels, zauderer

State Department Exiles Critics to “Protect” Free Speech

Free Speech

from the that's-not-how-this-is-supposed-to-work dept

Last week, Marco Rubio and the State Department revoked visas for five Europeans—including Imran Ahmed, a legal permanent resident in the US married to a US citizen—because they don’t like their speech about disinformation. The State Department’s justification? This form of speech suppression is necessary to protect free speech.

This is merely the latest episode in what will go down as the most anti-free speech, censorial presidential administration in history. Remember when Trump’s first executive order claimed to “restore free speech and end federal censorship“? We’ve since seen the administration repeatedly attack and punish people for their speech, but the Rubio move takes the hypocrisy to a new level: using government power to punish people for their speech while claiming to fight censorship.

MSNOW asked me to write my take on this story, which was published over the weekend. As I noted, Rubio is using actual censorship to fight fake censorship.

The U.S. government just banned five people from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech. This ban, according to the State Department, is necessary to protect free speech.

If that sounds insane to you, congratulations on your reading comprehension.

For the record: I’ve been a vocal critic of both Ahmed’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, which does ridiculously shoddy research (they once claimed photos of gum were “eating disorder content”), and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, about whom I’ve never said anything nice. But when the U.S. government bans people from the country for their speech, the quality of their work becomes irrelevant. Breton, admittedly, did try to abuse the law to censor Americans, but the EU spit him out and rejected such abuse immediately:

The most instructive case here is Breton himself. He did, in fact, try to abuse the DSA to suppress speech. In August 2024, he sent Elon Musk a threatening letter suggesting that Musk’s planned livestreamed interview with then-candidate Donald Trump could violate the DSA. It was a blatant attempt at censorship. 

And here’s what happened: The EU rejected him. Completely. EU officials went on record condemning the letter, his fellow commissioners distanced themselves from his threats, and within weeks he resigned to avoid being fired. As EU free speech experts noted in a recent open letter: “Politically, the EU’s checks and balances worked.”

So even when Breton actually tried to censor Americans, the EU’s institutions rejected it. Meanwhile, Rubio is retaliating against Breton for that failed attempt by exiling him from the country—actual government punishment for speech.

But the truly egregious bit of the State Department’s move here was that they had Under Secretary Sarah Rogers go on X and claim that these bans were necessary to prevent “Murthy-style speech suppression,” which is an incredible admission, given that the ruling in the Murthy case showed there was no actual evidence of speech suppression.

As I wrote in the piece, this is bizarre revisionist history of a ruling that just came out last year:

Rogers is referring to the Murthy v. Missouri case mentioned above, where two states and a collection of angry social media influencers sued the Biden administration, claiming social media platforms censored content at the government’s direction. The Supreme Court rejected those claims 6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion finding the plaintiffs had no standing because there was no evidence the government suppressed anyone’s speech. The platforms, Barrett noted, were simply enforcing their own rules.

Even worse, in a damning footnote, Justice Barrett highlighted that the lower court’s finding that there was censorship was based on a “clearly erroneous” reading of the evidence.

So the State Department is citing a case that disproved government censorship as evidence of government censorship. That’s not even creative lying — it’s just citing your own loss as precedent.

As I wrote in that piece, this goes beyond routine lying. The State Department is weaponizing a Supreme Court case that explicitly rejected claims of government censorship to justify actual, unambiguous government effort at punishing people for their speech. They’re inverting the legal record—taking a ruling that said “no, the government didn’t suppress speech” and using it as precedent to suppress speech.

The State Department is literally using the judiciary’s rejection of censorship claims as permission to punish people for their speech. When an administration twists a loss into a win by doing exactly what the court said they didn’t do, we’re not just dealing with censorial hypocrites. We’re watching them test how far they can push before anyone stops them.

For what it’s worth Ahmed quickly went to court seeking a temporary restraining order on this decision, which he feared would be used to eject him from the country where he lives with his family. On Christmas day, the judge issued the TRO, with orders for a telephone conference later today to discuss further issues in the case.

Again, there are few things that Ahmed and I agree on (he’s spent months insisting that Section 230 needs to be repealed, based on his direct misrepresentation of 230). I think he’s wrong on a wide variety of issues, and that his advocacy is dangerous for speech and the open internet. But I’ll stand up and defend his right to say such things any day, without the US government punishing him for it.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, eu, free speech, imran ahmed, marco rubio, murthy v. missouri, sarah rogers, thierry breton
Companies: ccdh

FCC Boss Brendan Carr Bullied Bay Area AM Radio Station For Telling Locals The Truth

Free Speech

from the censor's-gotta-censor dept

Brendan Carr was dragged before Congress last week for some light questioning about all the terrible, illegal bullshit he’s been up to. While the hearing mostly focused on FCC independence and Carr’s failed bid to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel, it didn’t touch on the other extremist nonsense Carr’s been up to, including his assault on public media and destruction of consumer protection.

While his higher profile targets have gotten all the attention, the Associated Press has a very good story you should read about Carr’s efforts to bully a Bay Area radio station (KCBS) after it accurately informed locals about the goonish behavior of masked ICE agents.

Carr opened a fake investigation into the network last February, claiming the station had violated ambiguous public interest standards. The fake inquiries were tethered to a right wing antisemitic propaganda campaign attempting to link George Soros to these stations despite Soros’ limited investment involvement being both irrelevant and three or four layers deep.

As our already struggling, highly consolidated, and under-funded media outlets tend to do, KCBS immediately folded under federal existential threat, just as Carr hoped:

“KCBS demoted a well-liked anchor and dialed back on political programming, people said. For months, reporters were dissuaded from pursuing political or controversial topics and instead encouraged to focus on human interest stories, according to the current and former staffers.”

When staffers did try to cover more political fare, they say the tone was heavily scrutinized and the content was watered down to a bland gruel to avoid upsetting Republicans:

“Doug Sovern, a veteran political journalist at the station, said he was sidelined after Carr announced his investigation.

“‘Chilling effect’ does not begin to describe the neutering of our political coverage,” said Sovern, who retired in April. He said his retirement was not related to the controversy.”

As Carr was distracted by his other extremist projects, like failing to censor Kimmel, some of the scrutiny eased and the station regained the confidence to at least report on things like the No Kings protest. But the bullying appears to have had its intended effect. At one point, a KCBS reporter says he was denied the opportunity to interview Katie Porter because management felt it would upset Donald Trump:

“In the weeks after the immigration story, Seelig asked Sovern to cancel an interview he had set up with California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter out of fear she would say something negative about Trump, he said.”

For its part, feckless station management is trying to pretend that nothing happened:

“There has been no change in policy or editorial direction at KCBS,” the station added. “We remain committed to providing our Bay Area listeners with trusted news, including our political coverage, that is balanced and objective.”

KCBS, one of the first AM radio stations ever licensed, had already been steadily defanged by the same media consolidation Carr is looking to accelerate through the elimination of media consolidation rules.

Carr first targeted KCBS with a letter of inquiry, which prompted the station’s corporate owner, Audacy, to immediately shift into CYA mode, reviewing the political statements and social media posts of reporters for any hint of “political bias” (by which they of course mean criticism of right wing ideology and policy).

I’ll reiterate in case you forgot: Audacy (which owns most U.S. radio stations now) was targeted by the right wing earlier this year by a bigoted propaganda campaign that relied on antisemitic tropes to smear the company with lies. A campaign that featured the right wing pretending to care about the very media consolidation they encourage and enable at every step.

It’s another example of how journalism doesn’t really align particularly well with the goals of consolidated corporate power, which in turn weakens it to exploitation by bad actors (like, oh, authoritarians). That’s a major reason why the U.S. desperately needs independent media, worker-owned media, and publicly-owned media, the latter of which Carr is also trying to destroy through sham investigations.

Again, it’s important to step back and view this all as an incredible, generational, and extremely successful right wing and corporate joint project to dismantle real journalism, accountability, and informed electoral consensus. This isn’t something that just popped up with Trump, though it did help enable Trumpism.

The destruction of media consolidation limits. The replacement of journalism with lazy infotainment journalistic simulacrum. The demonization and dismantling of public media. The hijacking of the biggest social media networks for use for right wing agitprop. And now the ham-fisted censorship campaign by dim authoritarian zealots against the few remaining major broadcast networks Trump-allied right wingers don’t currently own.

None of it has been remotely subtle, and the campaign results in a U.S. press that’s utterly and comically incapable of being honest with itself (or its audience) about what’s actually happening. This is, to be clear, the exact trajectory seen in countries like Russia or Hungary that stumbled face-first into permanent autocratic rule.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, censorship, chilling effects, doug sovern, fcc, free speech, ice
Companies: audacy, kcbs

Trump Files $10 Billion Defamation Suit Over BBC Doc That Never Aired Here—Using VPN Stats As Evidence

Defamation

from the the-vexatious-president dept

President Trump, who keeps pretending he’s for free speech, but who has filed more defamation lawsuits against more media organizations than any president in history (combined), has done so again. This time, he has sued the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Florida (naturally). For context: the only other president to come anywhere close was Teddy Roosevelt, who sued a Michigan newspaper for calling him a drunk—and that was while campaigning as an ex-president, not while actually holding office.

At issue was a BBC Panorama documentary about January 6th, in which there is (at worst) a slightly awkward edit: two separate sentences of Trump’s speech were shown one after another, despite being separated by over half an hour of Trumpian ramblings. The original claim was that this edit somehow changed the meaning of what Trump said, though in the past few days, Trump has been falsely claiming that the documentary used AI to make him say things he didn’t say.

The lawsuit makes zero mention of AI. Instead, it claims that they edited the two sentences together in a way that was misleading.

The lawsuit isn’t a surprise. He’s been talking about this for a few weeks now, even though (1) the BBC did nothing wrong, (2) the BBC still apologized, (3) the BBC effectively fired those who did the controversial edit, (4) the BBC has promised never to show the documentary again, and (5) the BBC has since bent over backwards to portray Trump positively.

The lawsuit is ridiculously stupid. As famed First Amendment lawyer Bob Corn-Revere told CNN:

The suit “does not have any legal basis, either on defamation or jurisdictional grounds,” said Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“This is nothing more than the president’s latest effort to intimidate media companies that he sees as adversarial to his administration,” he said.

As he notes, the first hurdle is going to be the jurisdiction. Suing in Florida is a choice, given that the BBC only showed the documentary in the UK, not anywhere in the US, let alone Florida. Showing that the documentary somehow harmed Trump’s reputation in Florida will be virtually impossible if it actually got to that point (which it won’t).

The complaint tries to get around this by—I shit you not—claiming that because VPN usage is up in Florida, it likely means people are using VPNs in Florida to appear to be in the UK in order to watch BBC streams that are geo-locked to the UK. No, really:

According to vpnMentor, a VPN research firm, VPN usage in Florida has skyrocketed since 2024, with a 51% increase in demand on December 19, 2024, and an over 1,000% increase in VPN usage at the beginning of 2025.

Florida streamers have opted to use VPNs to increase their “streaming freedom.” Among the most popular streaming services accessed by viewers using a VPN is BBC’s online streaming platform, BBC iPlayer.

To that end, an article published by Tom’s Guide, a reputable technology news outlet, revealed that a VPN usage survey showed that approximately 41% of VPN subscribers use the service to stream content, citing BBC iPlayer as an example of what a VPN subscriber could view using a VPN.

The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed.

That is the kind of argument that should get a lawyer sanctioned.

Then there’s the actual malice part of this. It’s unlikely that Trump can show actual malice here, since (as a public figure) that would require showing that the BBC knew this was “false” or that they ignored evidence of the falsity of the statement. But that’s a problem since it wasn’t false. Florida is a state that recognizes a version of “defamation by implication,” in which true statements presented in a way that implies a defamatory fact can still be defamation, but it’s difficult to see how this edit rises to the necessary level, which would require the BBC to have deliberately decided to misrepresent the facts in this way.

The supposed smoking gun in the lawsuit is an internal memo that was made public recently, in which some employees raised concerns about the edit, which the lawsuit uses in its weak attempt to manufacture actual malice.

As set forth in a damning and recently leaked BBC internal whistleblower document, the BBC intentionally used the Panorama Documentary to maliciously, falsely, and defamatorily make it appear that President Trump explicitly called for violent action and rioting, and that he “said something he did not,” by splicing together footage from the start of the Speech with a separate quote that he said nearly 55 minutes later, while omitting his statement calling for peace, made less than one minute after his first statement urging supports to cheer their senators and congressmen at the Capitol. Such distortion of the President’s speech by the BBC “materially misled viewers.”

Here’s the problem with that theory: Internal editorial debate about whether an edit works is not evidence of actual malice under its legal definition. It’s evidence of editorial standards. If anything, it shows the BBC was wrestling with how to responsibly present the material—the opposite of reckless disregard for the truth. Trump’s lawyers are trying to weaponize normal journalistic process as proof of bad faith, which is both legally nonsensical and a chilling attack on newsroom deliberation.

There’s a separate issue in Florida, as well, which is that Florida defamation law gives news orgs the ability to limit the damages to “actual damages” by issuing a correction, an apology, or a retraction. And the BBC has, in fact, issued an apology (unnecessarily). This alone should cap any potential damages at actual harm suffered, which would be… what exactly? Trump won the election. His reputation, to the extent it can be harmed by accurately showing his own words about January 6th, certainly wasn’t damaged enough to cost him anything measurable. The man is president.

Oh, I guess we should mention, just for the sake of laughing at it, Trump is actually demanding a very Dr. Evil like “$10 billion” for an edit of a single TV program not shown in the US and which did no actual damage to his reputation.

Still, like nearly all of Donald Trump’s SLAPP suits, the point is not to win the lawsuit. Rather it’s to continue the same streak of intimidation tactics that he’s done for years. He sues media properties on no basis whatsoever, knowing that it causes not just the media targets of his lawsuits to be a lot less willing to report on the president’s words and actions in the future, but also scares others into silence as well.

Donald Trump is a serial filer of SLAPP suits, which serve no purpose other than to intimidate the media away from reporting negatively on him. It is just one of many reasons that he is the most censorial president ever. Hopefully the courts drop kick this case off the docket in record time.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, actual malice, chilling effects, defamation, documentary, donald trump, free speech, january 6th, panorama, slapp suits
Companies: bbc

Three Tweets That Capture The Entire Elon Musk Free Speech Con

Too Much Free Time

from the a-story-in-three-acts dept

We’ve spent years calling out what a hypocrite Elon Musk is on free speech. But sometimes the universe Elon hands you a gift: three tweets in the span of a little over a week that demonstrate the entire con more clearly than any deep dive ever could. Let’s start with this one:

That’s Elon announcing that:

Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder

Which is, to be clear, an extreme anti-free speech position. It’s an extremely censorial stance.

Yes, free speech allows you to refer to someone as a Nazi. As the ACLU has written: there’s no such thing as a right not to be called a Nazi. There are plenty of legal cases where this has been made clear by judges. Here’s just one:

Statements indicating a political opponent is a Nazi or coward are “odious and repugnant” and far too common in today’s political discourse. But they are not actionable defamation “because of the tremendous imprecision of the meaning and usage of such terms in the realm of political debate.” In other words, being called a Nazi or coward are not verifiable statements of fact that would support a defamation claim

So, already, we see that Elon is taking an anti-free speech stance with that tweet. Political hyperbole, even of the Nazi-calling variety, is protected speech. Always has been.

Now keep that tweet in mind as we head into the next one.

Because over the weekend… Elon Musk pretty clearly falsely called the EU Commission (which just fined him)… Nazis.

If you can’t see that, it’s Elon retweeting someone who posted an image of the EU flag being pulled back to reveal a Nazi flag. The original poster says “The Fourth Reich” and Elon’s quote tweet says: “Pretty much.”

So, let’s recap: falsely calling non-violent people Nazis is, according to Elon, “incitement to murder” and yet here he is… falsely calling non-violent people Nazis. Just a week after that original statement.

And then there’s the third act that ties it all together. I know he’s said this one before in similar forms, but this weekend he also claimed that the “Surefire way to figure out who the bad guys are is by looking who wants to restrict freedom of speech.”

So, uh, yeah. Just a week after Elon says that labeling a non-violent person a Nazi should be considered “incitement to murder” (an inherent attempt to suppress speech of critics), he claims that the easiest way to figure out who are “the bad guys” is to see who wants to suppress speech.

According to Elon’s own standard: he is the bad guy. He is saying that we should suppress speech of those who call him a Nazi. And therefore, he is a bad guy. By his own logic.

The pattern is obvious. Elon’s entire incoherent “free speech” framework collapses into a single, coherent principle: speech I like is protected, speech I don’t like should be punished. He wants the freedom to call the EU Commission Nazis. He wants to criminalize anyone who calls him one. He proclaims that those who restrict speech are “the bad guys” while simultaneously arguing that calling him a Nazi should be treated as incitement to murder—a severe restriction on speech. And when he or his allies do actual Nazi-like things? Well, you better not mention it, or you’re inciting violence.

This is what happens when someone who has never understood the actual principles of free speech tries to cosplay as a free speech absolutist. The mask doesn’t just slip—it falls off entirely, and all that’s left is the naked self-interest underneath.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, elon musk, eu, free speech, hypocrisy, hypocrite, incitement, nazi
Companies: x

BBC Pre-Edits Lecture Calling Trump ‘Most Openly Corrupt President’

Free Speech

from the most-openly-censorial-president dept

The BBC is now voluntarily suppressing criticism of Donald Trump before it airs—and the reason is obvious: Trump threatened to sue them into oblivion, and they blinked.

Historian Rutger Bregman revealed this week that the BBC commissioned a public lecture from him last month, recorded it, then quietly cut a single sentence before broadcast. The deleted line? Calling Trump “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” Bregman posted about the capitulation, noting that the decision came from “the highest levels” of the BBC—meaning the executives dealing with Trump’s threats.

Well, at least we should call out Donald Trump as the most openly censorial president in American history.

This is the payoff from Trump’s censorship campaign against the BBC. Weeks ago, Trump threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over an edit in a program it aired a year ago. The BBC apologized and fired employees associated with the project. That wasn’t enough. Trump’s FCC censorship lackey Brendan Carr launched a bullshit investigation anyway. And now the BBC is preemptively editing out true statements that might anger the thin-skinned man baby President.

Bregman posted the exact line that got cut. Here’s the full paragraph, with the censored sentence in bold:

On one side we had an establishment propping up an elderly man in obvious mental decline. On the other we had a convicted reality star who now rules as the most openly corrupt president in American history. When it comes to staffing his administration, he is a modern day Caligula, the Roman emperor who wanted to make his horse a consul. He surrounds himself with loyalists, grifters, and sycophants.

Gosh, for what reason would the BBC cut that one particular line?

The BBC admitted to this in the most mealy-mouthed way when asked by the New Republic to comment on the situation:

Asked for comment on Bregman’s charge, a spokesperson for the BBC emailed me this: “All of our programmes are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”

“On legal advice.” Translation: Trump’s SLAPP suit threats worked exactly as intended.

Greg Sargent, writing in the New Republic, nails why this matters:

There is something deeply perverse in this outcome. Even if you grant Trump’s criticism of the edit of his January 6 speech—never mind that as the violence raged, Trump essentially sat on his hands for hours and arguably directed the mob to target his vice president—the answer to this can’t be to let Trump bully truth-telling into self-censoring silence.

That’s plainly what happened here.

Exactly. The BBC’s initial capitulation—the apology, the firings, the groveling—was bad enough. But this is worse. This is pre-censorship. The BBC is now editing out true statements about Trump before they air, purely because they’re afraid of how he might react. That’s not “legal advice.” That’s cowardice institutionalized as policy.

Once again, I remind you that Trump’s supporters have, for years, insisted that he was “the free speech president” and have talked about academic freedom and the right to state uncomfortable ideas.

Yet, do we hear any of them complaining about this obvious suppression of speech following a clear and censorial threat from the president? Of course not. Will the media continue to pretend that Donald Trump supports free speech, even as he’s the most openly censorial president in history? Of course.

It would be nice if more people would at least acknowledge what a farce all of this is. And it would also be nice if the BBC didn’t so quickly cave to such bogus threats.

And where are all those self-proclaimed free speech warriors now? The ones who spent years screaming about “cancel culture” and “academic freedom”?

Silent, of course. Because it was never about principles. It was about whose speech gets protected. Trump can threaten to bankrupt a media organization for accurately describing his role in an insurrection, and the same people who lose their minds over a college speaker getting heckled will find a way to justify it or simply look away.

The media will continue this charade too. They’ll keep treating Trump’s “free speech” posturing as if it’s sincere, even as he openly threatens journalists, demands the imprisonment of critics, and bullies foreign and domestic media organizations into self-censorship. We’re watching the most openly censorial president in American history deploy the legal system as a weapon against truthful speech, and the political press mostly covers it as just another controversy, not the authoritarian playbook it actually is.

The BBC made a choice here. Not a good one, not a legally required one, but a choice. They decided that avoiding Trump’s wrath was more important than telling the truth. That calculation might make sense in the short term—legal bills are expensive, and Trump’s vindictiveness is well-documented. But in the long term, this is how authoritarians win. Not by directly seizing control of the press, but by making media organizations internalize the censor, editing themselves before the threats even arrive.

Every institution that caves makes the next capitulation easier. Every truth that gets preemptively deleted because it might anger Trump makes it clearer that speaking truth about Trump comes with consequences that institutions increasingly won’t risk. This is the test, and the BBC is failing it.

Filed Under: censorship, chilling effects, corruption, donald trump, free speech, rutger bregman, slapp suits
Companies: bbc

Trump’s Own Judges Easily Reject His Bonkers Lawsuit Against CNN For Calling His Big Lie A ‘Big Lie’

Defamation

from the slapp-slapp-slapp dept

Donald Trump, who presents himself as a free speech champion, sure loves suing the media for their First Amendment-protected speech. CNN is a favorite target of his though these lawsuits don’t do particularly well. Back in 2022, he sued CNN for calling Trump’s lies about the results of the 2020 election “The Big Lie.” Two years ago the district court dumped that lawsuit easily.

It’s taken another two years, but the Eleventh Circuit has upheld that lower court dismissal, and done so in a simple 8-page per curiam opinion from a panel that includes two Trump-appointed judges: Elizabeth Branch and Kevin Newsom. The fact that even Trump’s own judicial appointees unanimously rejected his claims demolishes any narrative that this case had merit or that “biased” courts are persecuting him. This was simply a loser case that never should have been brought.

The appeals court’s analysis cuts straight to the heart of why Trump’s lawsuit was doomed from the start. The term “Big Lie” isn’t a factual claim that can be proven true or false—it’s CNN’s characterization of Trump’s conduct, protected opinion under the First Amendment.

Trump’s argument is unpersuasive. First, although he concedes that CNN’s use of the term “Big Lie” is, to some extent, ambiguous, he assumes that it is unambiguous enough to constitute a statement of fact. This assumption is untenable. Although we haven’t squarely addressed the point, case law from other circuits is persuasive. In Buckley v. Littell, 539 F.2d 882 (2d Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1062 (1977), the Second Circuit held that, by using the terms “fascist,” “fellow traveler,” and “radical right” to describe William F. Buckley, Jr., the defendant was not publishing “statements of fact.” Buckley, 539 F.2d at 893. Rather, the court ruled, the terms were “so debatable, loose and varying[] that they [we]re insusceptible to proof of truth or falsity.” Id. at 894. Similarly, in Ollman v. Evans, 750 F.2d 970 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1127 (1985), the D.C. Circuit held that when the defendant called the plaintiff “an outspoken proponent of political Marxism,” his statement was “obviously unverifiable.” Ollman, 750 F.2d at 987. Trump argues that the term “Big Lie” is less ambiguous than the terms “fascist,” “fellow traveler,” “radical right,” and “outspoken proponent of political Marxism.” But he does not explain this assertion. If “fascist”—a term that is, by definition, political—is ambiguous, then it follows that “Big Lie”—a term that is facially apolitical—is at least as ambiguous.

The court’s comparison to terms like “fascist” and “fellow traveler” is particularly damaging to Trump’s case. If calling William F. Buckley Jr. a “fascist” constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation, then CNN’s characterization of Trump’s election claims as a “Big Lie” clearly falls on the same side of the line. The panel essentially argues that Trump wants special protection from political criticism that no other public figure enjoys.

Second, Trump’s argument hinges on the fact that his own interpretation of his conduct—i.e., that he was exercising a constitutional right to identify his concerns with the integrity of elections—is true and that CNN’s interpretation—i.e., that Trump was peddling his “Big Lie”—is false. However, his conduct is susceptible to multiple subjective interpretations, including CNN’s.

Trump’s lawyers apparently thought they had found a silver bullet in the sheer volume of CNN’s coverage, arguing that more instances of the phrase somehow transformed opinion into defamation. The appeals court wasn’t buying it. If the thing is protected opinion five times, it’s protected opinion 10,000 times. It’s just speech.

Trump’s other arguments are likewise meritless. He argues that the district court erred in limiting its analysis to the five defamatory statements that he listed in his complaint. According to Trump, the district court should have also analyzed the “more than sixty instances of defamation set forth in the Notice Letter to CNN” and the “nearly 7,700 instances in which CNN had defamed Plaintiff with the ‘Big Lie’ allegation.” Brief of Appellant at 18. Trump has not alleged that any of these “instances of defamation” refer to something other than CNN’s use of “Big Lie.” We have held that, by using “Big Lie” to describe Trump, CNN was not publishing a false statement of fact. Therefore, whether CNN used “Big Lie” one time or many is irrelevant to the question of falsity.

This logic-chopping attempt reveals the fundamental weakness of Trump’s entire approach. He’s essentially arguing that repeating a protected opinion enough times magically transforms it into actionable defamation—a legal theory with no basis in the First Amendment whatsoever.

Trump, whose lawyers appeared to throw every possible argument at the court, also claimed that the lower court’s denial of his attempt to amend the lawsuit and try again was an abuse of the court’s discretion. The appeals court explains to Trump’s lawyers, that’s not how any of this actually works.

Trump argues that, when the district court denied his motion for leave to amend, it applied a standard that was too strict. Essential to his argument is his claim that the district court did not issue a judgment when it dismissed his complaint with prejudice. “In these circumstances,” Trump argues, “leave to amend should have been ‘granted liberally.’” Brief of Appellant at 41 (quoting Czeremcha v. International Ass’n of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO, 724 F.2d 1552, 1556 & n. 6 (11th Cir. 1984)). But Trump overlooks that, in its order, the district court indicated that “dismissal of the complaint constituted dismissal of the action.” Id. After dismissing Trump’s complaint with prejudice, the court stated that “[t]he Clerk of Court is directed to CLOSE this case and DENY AS MOOT any pending motions.” Trump, 684 F. Supp. 3d at 1277. Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Trump’s motion for leave to amend.

Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in denying Trump’s motion for reconsideration under Rule 59. Trump asserts that the district court (1) “fail[ed] to consider the entirety of the circumstances surrounding CNN’s publication of the challenged statements” and (2) “appeared to reframe its understanding of [the clear error] standard in a manner unrelated to the case.” Brief of Appellant at 51–52, 55). “The only grounds for granting [a Rule 59] motion are newly-discovered evidence or manifest errors of law or fact.” Arthur v. King, 500 F.3d 1335, 1343 (11th Cir. 2007) (alteration in original) (quoting In re Kellogg, 197 F.3d 1116, 1119 (11th Cir. 1999)). Neither of Trump’s points involve newly discovered evidence or manifest errors of law or fact, and the record confirms that the district court cited and applied the correct standard. We find no abuse of discretion.

This ruling represents more than just another failed Trump lawsuit—it’s a textbook example of how SLAPP suits are supposed to be handled by the courts. Trump’s case had all the hallmarks: a thin-skinned public figure using expensive litigation to punish media criticism, weak legal theories designed more to harass than to win, and endless procedural gamesmanship when the substantive claims inevitably failed.

What makes this particularly significant is that the rejection comes from a panel that includes two of Trump’s own judicial appointees. This demolishes the narrative that Trump’s legal failures stem from “biased” courts rather than fundamentally weak cases. When even judges you appointed won’t buy your legal theories, that’s a pretty clear signal that the problem isn’t judicial activism—it’s your vexatious case.

The broader context here matters. Trump has weaponized defamation law as a tool to silence media criticism throughout his career, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against news organizations that report unflattering truths about him. Most of these cases follow the same pattern: grandiose claims, weak legal theories, and inevitable failure in court. But the process is the punishment—forcing news organizations to spend time and money defending their basic right to engage in political commentary.

There’s nothing new or novel about this case. There’s no deep need to explore some nuance of defamation law here. This is just a garden variety SLAPP suit by one of the most petulant thin-skinned presidents we’ve ever had who regularly loves to abuse the legal system to try to silence and suppress media who doesn’t praise his every move.

In theory, Trump could seek an en banc rehearing by the entire Eleventh Circuit or petition the Supreme Court to review this decision, but both moves would be long shots at best. The legal principles here are well-established, the factual record is clear, and there’s no circuit split or novel constitutional question that would warrant further review. This case is a dead end, which is exactly where it belonged from the start.

Filed Under: 11th circuit, 1st amendment, defamation, donald trump, free speech, opinion, the big lie
Companies: cnn

Brendan Carr Launches Baseless ‘Investigation’ Into PBS, NPR, And BBC To Try And Silence Criticism Of His Weird, Unpopular Boss

Free Speech

from the phony-authoritarian-bullshit dept

Donald Trump’s FCC boss Brendan Carr is opening a fake new “investigation” into PBS, NPR, and BBC in the hopes of suppressing journalistic criticism of the country’s increasingly unmoored and unpopular President. Carr first leaked word of the fake investigation to right wing propaganda website Breitbart.

In a letter to all three outlets (pages 1, 2), Carr indicates that his bogus inquiry is focusing on a minor edit made in a year-old documentary broadcast by the BBC about the president’s support of a violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Carr clearly doesn’t regulate UK media organizations. The PBS and NPR never even aired the documentary in question and had nothing do do with the BBC’s edits. So in his letter, Carr has to jump through a bunch of hoops to make his performative effort sound official and coherent:

Tim Karr, Senior Director of consumer group Free Press, told Techdirt that he spoke to the BBC, who never received the supposed letter Carr leaked to Breitbart. It’s also not posted to the FCC website. And it takes a few minutes of research to find that PBS and NPR, again, never aired the documentary in question (“Panorama,” which never aired in the U.S. and wasn’t even all that critical of Trump).

This is a manufactured scandal. Carr is putting on a cute little show for Trump and right wing media so he can pretend he’s being “tough” on “unfair” “liberal” media outlets. While this is performative grandstanding by a strange, unserious man, it’s still very dangerous for a government official to be abusing FCC authority to try and suppress journalism and free speech.

We’ve covered the BBC fracas recently. The short version: a right wing tabloid created a scandal out of the fact that a year old BBC documentary edited together two parts of Trump’s January 6 speech encouraging violence at the Capitol. While the snippet does reflect Trump’s clear and obvious intent to incite violence at the Capitol, the edit stitched together two parts of the same speech 54 minutes apart.

While the edits may have been in poor judgement, there was no actual distortion of Trump’s intent or of history. And to be clear: this is a bogus scandal U.S. authoritarians (no stranger to propaganda, news distortions, and misleading edits) created to pretend to be mad about. Trump and Carr have openly demonstrated they’re fine with misleading news edits if they help the President.

Still, as we’ve seen with outlets like ABC and CBS, that effort’s been working well so far when it comes to major U.S. media companies, whose affluent, usually Conservative owners are more worried about tax cuts, deregulation, and merger approvals than they are about consistently serving the public interest. It’s far less likely to work on a media organization in another country that isn’t regulated by Brendan Carr.

Trump has claimed he’s going to file a $1-$5 billion lawsuit against the BBC for the edit, despite the fact the edits occurred more than a year ago (outside the limits of UK defamation law).

The BBC hasn’t helped itself by over-reacting to the fake right wing scandal; with numerous high level BBC employees resigning, and the BBC CEO tripping over himself to apologize. Still, they’ve promised to fight Trump’s lawsuit, and have a very good chance of winning it.

Since that lawsuit isn’t likely to go well, Trump had Carr once again abuse FCC authority to launch a fake investigation based on the FCC’s decades-old “news distortion” rule. That rule, created in 1949, was supposed to be used to police major scandals — like a company or politician bribing a news organization to suppress a story important to the public interest.

Carr’s been instead weaponizing the rule to bully media companies that engage in commentary or reporting the President doesn’t like, with mixed success. Carr first leveraged the rule to harass CBS for some innocuous edits made to a 60 Minutes interview last election season. He then pushed his luck even further, abusing the rule in a very unsuccessful effort to censor ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

A bipartisan coalition of former FCC officials just last week wrote a letter to Carr, urging him to eliminate the dated rule and stop abusing FCC power to crush free speech and undermine journalism. Carr, a dutiful MAGA loyalist, unsurprisingly refused, continuing to pretend he’s “serving the public interest”:

Unfortunately when the cowed U.S. corporate media covers these obvious attacks on free speech, they tend to soft sell how monumentally full of shit Carr and Trump are on this subject. Which is, of course, the exact outcome Trump and Carr are looking for.

The U.S. right wing is openly buying up major social networks (X, TikTok), and what’s left of our broken mainstream media (CBS, CNN), then trying to bully or bribe any stragglers into being pathetic stewards of major online information spaces (Meta), or feckless echoes of serious journalism (ABC).

However silly and performative Brendan Carr may be, his party’s mission to own, bully, or destroy all the cornerstones of major media is extremely dangerous. It’s the same gambit authoritarians in countries like Hungary and Russia successfully implemented to successfully cement permanent rule. And while it may improve as Trump’s health and influence fails, most of the U.S. responses to date have been pathetic.

With any luck, their hubris and incompetence will be their downfall. But it’s going to necessitate a broader awareness — especially among the Democrat party gerontocracy easily befuddled by the modern information environment — of what’s actually happening and what they’re trying to accomplish.

Carr’s roping in of NPR and PBS comes as the U.S. right wing also tries to destroy whatever was left of U.S. public media. They’re well aware that, untethered from the distorted financial incentives of ad-based corporate media, public media is more likely to be honest about the dangers of idiot authoritarianism (Jon Oliver recently had a good segment on public media that’s worth a watch).

It’s unlikely anything real comes of this inquiry itself. Again, the FCC doesn’t regulate the BBC and NPR and PBS literally had nothing to do with the BBC’s decision. Carr is putting on a cute (but dangerous) show for his mad king and right wing media, wasting taxpayer resources, and trying to scare media organizations away from telling the public the truth about an unpopular, embarrassing administration.

Filed Under: brendan carr, censorship, defamation, disinformation, fcc, free speech, journalism, news distortion, propaganda, uk
Companies: bbc, npr, pbs

Trump Says He’ll Sue BBC For ‘$5 Billion’ Despite Apologies, Resignations Over Editing Gaffe

Defamation

from the thin-skinned-bullies dept

Last week we noted how the BBC has been tripping over itself to apologize to Donald Trump for some edits made to a BBC documentary. Admittedly the edits weren’t the best idea; they effectively cobbled together two different parts of Trump’s January 6 speech 54 minutes apart not to misrepresent, but to make it more clear that Trump actively encouraged an open, violent insurrection that resulted in fatalities.

Obviously our mad, idiot king didn’t much like that.

Despite multiple resignations and numerous CEO apologies (and a promise to never air the documentary again), Trump insists he’s going to sue the BBC anyway, for between $1 and $5 billion:

“US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion “probably sometime next week” despite the broadcaster’s apology to him over a documentary Trump’s lawyers described as defamatory.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

Again, the edits didn’t entirely “change the words coming out of Trump’s mouth,” because he actively did vocally support a violent insurrection against the government. They did however cobble together two different parts of a speech to make it sound like they were said all at once, something the documentary editors should have known better than to do given king dingus’ litigious nature.

Granted Trump may not have as much fun in British courts, where Justices and Judges are likely to be less receptive to Donald’s incoherence. UK defamation laws are also an entirely different affair, with Trump being particularly challenged by the fact the BBC edits occurred more than twelve months ago, and defamation action in UK courts must occur within twelve months of the alleged offense.

Last week we noted how the BBC’s over-groveling undermined the most important thing: that Donald Trump really did actively incite a violent insurrection resulting in $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol, 174 assaulted police officers, and four belated law enforcement suicides. And he’s abusing the courts to stifle journalism critical of his radical extremist authoritarianism.

It sounds like BBC leadership isn’t entirely invertebrate. While BBC officials like Chair BBC chair Samir Shah admit the edits were an “error of judgment” (unlike executives at CBS) it appears they’ll actually be putting up a fight in court of Trump follows through:

“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”

As Trump’s health, power, and influence wanes, this sort of bullying is only going to become less and less effective and more and more toothless. In the interim, it would be nice if some major media institutions could dig deep and find a little backbone; especially given how many lawyers and donors would be happy to help fund a pro bono acceleration of Donald Trump’s inevitable collapse.

Filed Under: defamation, documentary, donald trump, insurrection, journalism, lawsuit, media, uk
Companies: bbc