[This piece will be running as an op-ed in newspapers in my very red congressional district in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Lynchburg.]
*******************************
The legal idea of “standing” creates a problem.
According to the principle of standing, no one can sue for damages unless they’ve suffered an identifiable, concrete injury that can be measured in dollars and cents.
Dominion is suing FOX News for damages they’ve suffered as a result of FOX defaming the company with accusations FOX knew were false. That injury gives Dominion standing.
That standing enabled Dominion to compel FOX to show themselves through internal documents and testimony given under oath.
That evidence, in turn, has enabled Dominion to present a picture of FOX News that has stunned the world. (Except, of course, for FOX’s own audience—as FOX isn’t telling its viewers the story that exposes the company.)
FOX’s own words expose the utter moral corruption of that corporation:
- From the anchors to the executives to the Board to Rupert Murdoch – FOX knew they were lying to their viewers about the election being stolen. (Anchors like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, and Sean Hannity used words like “insane” and “nuts” to characterize the people and ideas they brought onto the air to spread what those FOX stars knew were lies.)
- Former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, on the Board of FOX, pleaded with the Murdochs to stop spreading lies about the (legitimate) election being stolen.
- In sworn testimony, Rupert Murdoch (Chairman of FOX) admits he knew FOX was spewing lies but did nothing to stop it.
- FOX shows itself not about truth but about money. (Murdoch declared “It’s not about red or blue—but green,” meaning Money.)
- But it was also about “red,” in that promoting Trump’s Big Lie -- the first loser of an American presidential election to refuse to accept defeat – was a continuation of the years-long, open partnership between Trump and FOX.
The picture of this “news” organization is vivid in the clarity of its ugliness:
- Its willingness to deceive and exploit its audience (and its contempt for its audience).
- Its lack of respect for the truth, and for the ethics of the profession of journalism that are supposed to apply to a news organization.
- Its willingness to abet an assault on the American constitutional order if that’s what the path to more money and power requires.
One can reasonably hope that some good will come out of the ugly truth about FOX being laid bare-- an amoral, dishonest, opportunistic force, willing to help overthrow the constitutional order by lying to the people who trust them.
But, whatever may be the beneficial results of what Dominion’s suit is uncovering, that truth could so easily have remained buried. It only came out because FOX went after a particular corporation and inflicted a clear injury.
But FOX could have sold that same dangerous lie about the election to its viewers without defaming Dominion, or anyone else who would have the “standing” to sue. (FOX was already selling its viewers falsehoods about foreign meddling --– from Italy to China to Venezuela – and other lies that would not have resulted in anyone compelling FOX to show what FOX wanted kept hidden.)
That’s what shows a big problem with “standing.” There are that FOX has inflicted on the nation compared to which the injury suffered by Dominion is trivial.
Dominion will probably get the $1.6 billion in “compensatory damages” for which it is suing FOX. But
- What monetary value can we put on the damage done to the American nation by what FOX did, in knowingly feeding lies to their viewership that fed the fires that resulted in an armed attack on the U.S. Capitol and the constitutional process? (It can plausibly be argued, that had FOX not knowingly fed its viewers those lies, there’d have been no violent insurrection.)
- How much would Americans need to be paid to compensate for the damage done to the nation because tens of millions of Americans – believing the lie that Biden stole the election – will not accept the legitimacy in occupying the very important role of President of the United states for a four year term?
- And what monetary value could compensate our nation for how much this Big Lie has strengthened a tendency, increasingly visible in our politics, for one Party not to respect the outcome of any election they lose?
FOX not only knowingly deceived its viewers, but FOX’s lies were of the most dangerous kind imaginable.
We citizens surely lose much of value when a powerful company willfully lies in ways that steal our precious heritage from us. And some appropriate way should be found to give standing to those suffering such injury—deeper than dollars and cents.
I don’t claim to know what should be done about “standing.” But it seems clear to me that it is not OK that a company could act in so destructive away – selling lies that threaten American democracy -- and simply get away with it (as FOX might easily have done).
So the question needs to be asked: What can be changed in the law so that citizens can compel a company -- that has injured them by knowingly selling lies to assault our constitutional order – to expose who they are, as Dominion has done with FOX? And so that we citizens can also, in some appropriate way, compel to pay a price for such despicable conduct?