Fakenews
Super Anarchist
- 14,062
- 2,006
Can’t imagine it’s that high it’s by no means a high growth company. They claim total profit lost of 88M. I’m thinking a valuation of less than 500M
Dominion vs. Bullshitters
- Thread starter Sol Rosenberg
- Start date
Fah Kiew Tu
Curmudgeon, First Rank
I'm not disputing any of that and Tom is sealioning a lot too.
But ignoring what he brings forward about abuses of qualified immunity, the 4th amendment right to privacy and abuse of eminent domain - from my distant POV in Oz, they're all real and very serious issues.
Not to mention legalised theft described as civil forfeiture - that has been abused endlessly.
It's good to keep an eye on this stuff because some half-bright RWNJ might get the idea of doing the same here. God knows we went down the anti-drug hole with great enthusiasm, with the same result. More crime and corruption.
So from my POV he's right on all of those issues and ignoring them simply because he's a nutcase on gunz does you a disservice.
Whatever.
FKT
Fah Kiew Tu
Curmudgeon, First Rank
Well, yeah, it's like identifying as a Hindu, Islamist, Christian or a Communist.
Nice religion, little or no congruence with reality.
FKT
Fakenews
Super Anarchist
- 14,062
- 2,006
Regale me with your knowledge…
Goodvibes
under the southern cross I stand ...
- 2,306
- 806
Blue Crab
benthivore
Tom had some good points. What he did here was just quiet his main critics.
Pertinacious Tom
Importunate Member
Crystal Clear would be an excellent stripper name.
Rain Man
Super Anarchist
What Tom does is flip through the NRA talking points manual in response to his critics. They have an answer in there for everything, but most of the answers are just obfuscation, and the main tactic is bait and switch.
Ain't nobody got time for that. It's the guns, stupid.
Fox is not a news network but a propaganda outlet
“Fox News” is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial.
I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes.
This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.
After the 2020 election, Fox repeatedly aired wild, unsubstantiated and patently false allegations about Dominion’s voting machines having “stolen” votes — and, by extension, the presidency — from incumbent Donald Trump.
In a ruling on Friday sending the case to trial, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis wrote that the evidence produced so far makes it “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
The lies pushed by Fox’s hosts and guests included claims that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for dictator Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, and that the company’s machines used some kind of algorithm to change Trump ballots into votes for Joe Biden. These and other false statements, Davis ruled, were presented by Fox as fact rather than opinion and — to state the obvious — were harmful to Dominion’s reputation.
What is most stunning about the voluminous evidence presented thus far by Dominion is how differently Fox operates from any news organization I’ve encountered in all my years as a journalist. (I should mention that I am a regular commentator on MSNBC, which competes with Fox.)
Text messages, emails and other internal Fox communications show that in the weeks after Election Day, as Trump and his advocates pushed the “stolen election” lie, the network’s most senior executives — including Murdoch himself — and its most popular hosts were less concerned about reporting the truth than about having Fox’s huge, lucrative, Trump-supporting audience stolen away by even more MAGA-friendly outlets, such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN), with even fewer journalistic scruples.
Dominion court filings revealed a Nov. 12, 2020, text chain among prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. In it, Carlson complained about a tweet from a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, in which she said there was no evidence of voter fraud by Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” wrote Carlson, whose show is among the network’s highest-rated. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
At legitimate news organizations, senior figures do not seek to have staff members fired for telling the truth. At Fox, however, this appears to be business as usual. During the 2020 vote count, Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Biden — which all but extinguished any chance for Trump to win an electoral majority and sent him into a rage. Real news organizations take pride in being first — and right — on an election call. Fox, by contrast, ended up firing the politics editor who oversaw the Arizona call, ostensibly as part of a bureaucratic reorganization.
Meanwhile, Fox hosts and executives were privately dismissive and even contemptuous of the Trump mouthpieces, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were making false claims about Dominion. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Yet Fox kept putting Giuliani and Powell on the air.
In another set of internal Fox communications revealed by the Dominion suit, the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, complained in early December 2020 about an anchor who had fact-checked some of Trump’s false “stolen election” claims. “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [of] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
I repeat: This is not journalism.
If your practice is to tell people what they want to hear rather than what you know to be true, you are not a journalist. You are an infotainer or a propagandist. Perhaps both.
I don’t believe this case threatens the protections accorded to journalists. My only worry is that some people might get the idea that actual news organizations think and act like Fox. We do not.
“Fox News” is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial.
I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes.
This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.
After the 2020 election, Fox repeatedly aired wild, unsubstantiated and patently false allegations about Dominion’s voting machines having “stolen” votes — and, by extension, the presidency — from incumbent Donald Trump.
In a ruling on Friday sending the case to trial, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis wrote that the evidence produced so far makes it “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
The lies pushed by Fox’s hosts and guests included claims that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for dictator Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, and that the company’s machines used some kind of algorithm to change Trump ballots into votes for Joe Biden. These and other false statements, Davis ruled, were presented by Fox as fact rather than opinion and — to state the obvious — were harmful to Dominion’s reputation.
What is most stunning about the voluminous evidence presented thus far by Dominion is how differently Fox operates from any news organization I’ve encountered in all my years as a journalist. (I should mention that I am a regular commentator on MSNBC, which competes with Fox.)
Text messages, emails and other internal Fox communications show that in the weeks after Election Day, as Trump and his advocates pushed the “stolen election” lie, the network’s most senior executives — including Murdoch himself — and its most popular hosts were less concerned about reporting the truth than about having Fox’s huge, lucrative, Trump-supporting audience stolen away by even more MAGA-friendly outlets, such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN), with even fewer journalistic scruples.
Dominion court filings revealed a Nov. 12, 2020, text chain among prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. In it, Carlson complained about a tweet from a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, in which she said there was no evidence of voter fraud by Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” wrote Carlson, whose show is among the network’s highest-rated. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
At legitimate news organizations, senior figures do not seek to have staff members fired for telling the truth. At Fox, however, this appears to be business as usual. During the 2020 vote count, Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Biden — which all but extinguished any chance for Trump to win an electoral majority and sent him into a rage. Real news organizations take pride in being first — and right — on an election call. Fox, by contrast, ended up firing the politics editor who oversaw the Arizona call, ostensibly as part of a bureaucratic reorganization.
Meanwhile, Fox hosts and executives were privately dismissive and even contemptuous of the Trump mouthpieces, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were making false claims about Dominion. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Yet Fox kept putting Giuliani and Powell on the air.
In another set of internal Fox communications revealed by the Dominion suit, the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, complained in early December 2020 about an anchor who had fact-checked some of Trump’s false “stolen election” claims. “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [of] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
I repeat: This is not journalism.
If your practice is to tell people what they want to hear rather than what you know to be true, you are not a journalist. You are an infotainer or a propagandist. Perhaps both.
I don’t believe this case threatens the protections accorded to journalists. My only worry is that some people might get the idea that actual news organizations think and act like Fox. We do not.
Pertinacious Tom
Importunate Member
Not sure how this sheds light on how terrible I am? That was the subject, wasn't it?
Attacks on Dominion Voting Persist Despite High-Profile Lawsuits
With a series of billion-dollar lawsuits, including a $1.6 billion case against Fox News headed to trial this month, Dominion Voting Systems sent a stark warning to anyone spreading falsehoods that the company’s technology contributed to fraud in the 2020 election: Be careful with your words, or you might pay the price.
Not everyone is heeding the warning.
“Dominion, why don’t you show us what’s inside your machines?” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent election denier, shouted during a livestream last month. He added that the company, which has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him, was engaged in “the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in United States history — probably in world history.”
Claims that election software companies like Dominion helped orchestrate widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been widely debunked in the years since former President Donald J. Trump and his allies first pushed the theories. But far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media have continued in recent weeks and months to make unfounded assertions about the company and its electronic voting machines, pressuring government officials to scrap contracts with Dominion, sometimes successfully.
The enduring attacks illustrate how Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims have taken root in the shared imagination of his supporters. And they reflect the daunting challenge that Dominion, or any other group that draws the attention of conspiracy theorists, faces in putting false claims to rest.
The attacks about Dominion have not reached the fevered pitch of late 2020, when the company was cast as a central villain in an elaborate and fictitious voter fraud story. In that tale, the company swapped votes between candidates, injected fake ballots or allowed glaring security vulnerabilities to remain on voting machines.
Dominion says all those claims have been made without proof to support them.
“Nearly two years after the 2020 election, no credible evidence has ever been presented to any court or authority that voting machines did anything other than count votes accurately and reliably in all states,” Dominion said in an emailed statement.
Last Friday, the judge in Delaware overseeing the Fox defamation case ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that Fox News and Fox Business had made false claims about the company — a major setback for the network.
Many prominent influencers have avoided mentioning the company since Dominion started suing prominent conspiracy theorists in 2021. Fox News fired Lou Dobbs that year — only days after it was sued by Smartmatic, another election software company — saying the network was focusing on “new formats.” Mr. Dobbs is also a defendant in Dominion’s case against Fox, which is scheduled to go to trial on April 17.
Yet there have been nearly nine million mentions of Dominion across social media websites, broadcasts and traditional media since Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January 2021, including nearly a million that have mentioned “fraud” or related conspiracy theories, according to Zignal Labs, a media monitoring company.
Some of the most widely shared posts came from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who tweeted last month that the lawsuits were politically motivated, and Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, who has advanced voter fraud theories about election machines since her defeat last year.
Mr. Lindell remains one of the loudest voices pushing unproven claims against Dominion and electronic voting machines, posting hundreds of videos to Frank Speech, his news site, attacking the company with tales of voter fraud.
Last month, Mr. Lindell celebrated on his livestream when Shasta County, a conservative stronghold in Northern California, voted to use paper ballots after ending its contract with Dominion. A county supervisor had flown to meet privately with Mr. Lindell before the vote, discussing how to run elections without voting machines, according to Mr. Lindell. The supervisor ultimately voted to switch to paper ballots.
In an interview this week with The New York Times, Mr. Lindell claimed to have spent millions on campaigns to end election fraud, focusing on abolishing electronic voting systems and replacing them with paper ballots and hand counting.
“I will never back down, ever, ever, ever,” he said in the interview. He added that Dominion’s lawsuit against him, which is continuing after the Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal, was “frivolous” and that the company was “guilty.”
“They can’t deny it. Nobody can deny it,” Mr. Lindell said.
Joe Oltmann, the host of “Conservative Daily Podcast” and a promoter of voter fraud conspiracy theories, hosted an episode in late March titled “Dominion Is FINISHED.” In it, he claimed that there was a “device that’s used in Dominion machines to actually transfer ballots,” offering only speculative support.
“This changes everything,” Mr. Oltmann said.
Dominion sent Mr. Oltmann a letter in 2020 demanding that he preserve documents related to his claims about the company, which is often the first step in a defamation lawsuit.
In a livestream last month on Rumble, the streaming platform popular among right-wing influencers, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was indicted on 10 charges related to allegations that she tampered with Dominion’s election equipment, devoted more than an hour to various election fraud claims, many of them featuring Dominion. The discussion included a suggestion that because boxes belonging to Dominion were stamped with “Made in China,” the election system was vulnerable to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Oltmann and Ms. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.
The Fox lawsuit has also added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.
Far-right news sites have largely ignored the finding that Fox News hosts disparaged voter fraud claims privately, even as they gave them significant airtime. Instead, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known for pushing voter fraud theories, focused on separate documents showing that Dominion executives “knew its voting systems had major security issues,” the site wrote.
The documents showed the frenzied private messages between Dominion employees as they were troubleshooting problems, with one employee remarking, “Our products suck.” In an email, a Dominion spokeswoman noted the remark was about a splash screen that was hiding an error message.
In February, Mr. Trump shared the Gateway Pundit story on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, stoking a fresh wave of attacks against the company.
“We will not be silent,” said one far-right influencer whose messages are sometimes shared by Mr. Trump on Truth Social. “Dominion is the enemy!”
With a series of billion-dollar lawsuits, including a $1.6 billion case against Fox News headed to trial this month, Dominion Voting Systems sent a stark warning to anyone spreading falsehoods that the company’s technology contributed to fraud in the 2020 election: Be careful with your words, or you might pay the price.
Not everyone is heeding the warning.
“Dominion, why don’t you show us what’s inside your machines?” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent election denier, shouted during a livestream last month. He added that the company, which has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him, was engaged in “the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in United States history — probably in world history.”
Claims that election software companies like Dominion helped orchestrate widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been widely debunked in the years since former President Donald J. Trump and his allies first pushed the theories. But far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media have continued in recent weeks and months to make unfounded assertions about the company and its electronic voting machines, pressuring government officials to scrap contracts with Dominion, sometimes successfully.
The enduring attacks illustrate how Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims have taken root in the shared imagination of his supporters. And they reflect the daunting challenge that Dominion, or any other group that draws the attention of conspiracy theorists, faces in putting false claims to rest.
The attacks about Dominion have not reached the fevered pitch of late 2020, when the company was cast as a central villain in an elaborate and fictitious voter fraud story. In that tale, the company swapped votes between candidates, injected fake ballots or allowed glaring security vulnerabilities to remain on voting machines.
Dominion says all those claims have been made without proof to support them.
“Nearly two years after the 2020 election, no credible evidence has ever been presented to any court or authority that voting machines did anything other than count votes accurately and reliably in all states,” Dominion said in an emailed statement.
Last Friday, the judge in Delaware overseeing the Fox defamation case ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that Fox News and Fox Business had made false claims about the company — a major setback for the network.
Many prominent influencers have avoided mentioning the company since Dominion started suing prominent conspiracy theorists in 2021. Fox News fired Lou Dobbs that year — only days after it was sued by Smartmatic, another election software company — saying the network was focusing on “new formats.” Mr. Dobbs is also a defendant in Dominion’s case against Fox, which is scheduled to go to trial on April 17.
Yet there have been nearly nine million mentions of Dominion across social media websites, broadcasts and traditional media since Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January 2021, including nearly a million that have mentioned “fraud” or related conspiracy theories, according to Zignal Labs, a media monitoring company.
Some of the most widely shared posts came from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who tweeted last month that the lawsuits were politically motivated, and Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, who has advanced voter fraud theories about election machines since her defeat last year.
Mr. Lindell remains one of the loudest voices pushing unproven claims against Dominion and electronic voting machines, posting hundreds of videos to Frank Speech, his news site, attacking the company with tales of voter fraud.
Last month, Mr. Lindell celebrated on his livestream when Shasta County, a conservative stronghold in Northern California, voted to use paper ballots after ending its contract with Dominion. A county supervisor had flown to meet privately with Mr. Lindell before the vote, discussing how to run elections without voting machines, according to Mr. Lindell. The supervisor ultimately voted to switch to paper ballots.
In an interview this week with The New York Times, Mr. Lindell claimed to have spent millions on campaigns to end election fraud, focusing on abolishing electronic voting systems and replacing them with paper ballots and hand counting.
“I will never back down, ever, ever, ever,” he said in the interview. He added that Dominion’s lawsuit against him, which is continuing after the Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal, was “frivolous” and that the company was “guilty.”
“They can’t deny it. Nobody can deny it,” Mr. Lindell said.
Joe Oltmann, the host of “Conservative Daily Podcast” and a promoter of voter fraud conspiracy theories, hosted an episode in late March titled “Dominion Is FINISHED.” In it, he claimed that there was a “device that’s used in Dominion machines to actually transfer ballots,” offering only speculative support.
“This changes everything,” Mr. Oltmann said.
Dominion sent Mr. Oltmann a letter in 2020 demanding that he preserve documents related to his claims about the company, which is often the first step in a defamation lawsuit.
In a livestream last month on Rumble, the streaming platform popular among right-wing influencers, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was indicted on 10 charges related to allegations that she tampered with Dominion’s election equipment, devoted more than an hour to various election fraud claims, many of them featuring Dominion. The discussion included a suggestion that because boxes belonging to Dominion were stamped with “Made in China,” the election system was vulnerable to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Oltmann and Ms. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.
The Fox lawsuit has also added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.
Far-right news sites have largely ignored the finding that Fox News hosts disparaged voter fraud claims privately, even as they gave them significant airtime. Instead, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known for pushing voter fraud theories, focused on separate documents showing that Dominion executives “knew its voting systems had major security issues,” the site wrote.
The documents showed the frenzied private messages between Dominion employees as they were troubleshooting problems, with one employee remarking, “Our products suck.” In an email, a Dominion spokeswoman noted the remark was about a splash screen that was hiding an error message.
In February, Mr. Trump shared the Gateway Pundit story on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, stoking a fresh wave of attacks against the company.
“We will not be silent,” said one far-right influencer whose messages are sometimes shared by Mr. Trump on Truth Social. “Dominion is the enemy!”
tybee
Super Anarchist
if the MAGATS only had some evidence....
P_Wop
Super Anarchist
And that is exactly what they will be asked to provide in court later this month. Good luck to them.
Sol Rosenberg
Girthy Member
- Thread starter
- #336
Bullshitters demand more bullshit from their supplier. Hilarity ensues.
Settlement reached in defamation lawsuit against Lou Dobbs, Fox News
A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential elect…
thehill.com
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
How much?
tybee
Super Anarchist
A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential election.
In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Louis Lee Stanton filed in the Southern District of New York over the weekend, lawyers for the two parties wrote they had reached an agreement to resolve the matter. Financial terms of the agreement were not specified.
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
Any speculation or educated guesses as to how much?
What was the original demand?
What was the original demand?
