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 BestNetTech 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

Bipartisan Senators Want To Honor Charlie Kirk By Making It Easier To Censor The Internet

Free Speech

from the is-it-too-much-to-ask-you-to-understand-the-law? dept

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and Republican Senator John Curtis want to gut Section 230 to combat “political radicalization”—in honor of Charlie Kirk, whose entire career was built on political radicalization.

Kirk styled himself as a “free speech warrior” because he would show up on college campuses to “debate” people, but as we’ve covered, the “debate me bro” shtick was just trolling designed to generate polarizing content for social media. He made his living pushing exactly the kind of inflammatory political content that these senators now claim is so dangerous it requires dismantling core legal protections for speech. Their solution to political violence inspired by online rhetoric is to create a legal framework that will massively increase censorship of political speech.

Which they claim they’re doing… in support of free speech.

Almost everything about what they’re saying is backwards.

The two Senators spoke at an event at Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was shot, to talk about how they were hoping to stop political violence. That’s a worthwhile goal, but their proposed solution reveals they don’t understand how Section 230 actually works.

The senators also used their bipartisan panel on Wednesday to announce plans to hold social media companies accountable for the type of harmful content promoted around the assassination of Kirk, which they say leads to political violence.

During their televised discussion, Curtis and Kelly previewed a bill they intend to introduce shortly that would remove liability protection for social media companies that boost content that contributes to political radicalization and violence.

The “Algorithm Accountability Act” would transform one of the pillars of internet governance by reforming a 30-year-old regulation known as Section 230 that gives online platforms legal immunity for content posted by their users.

“What we’re saying is this is creating an environment that is causing all sorts of harm in our society and particularly with our youth, and it needs to be addressed,” Curtis told the Deseret News.

The bill would strip Section 230 protections from companies if it can be proven in court that they used an algorithm to amplify content that caused harm. This change means tech giants would “own” the harmful content they promote, creating a private cause of action for individuals to sue.

Like so many politicians who want to gut Section 230, Kelly and Curtis clearly don’t understand how it actually works. Their “Algorithm Accountability Act” would create exactly the kind of censorship regime they claim to oppose.

It’s kind of incredible how many times I’ve had to say this to US Senators, but repealing 230 doesn’t make companies automatically responsible for speech. That’s literally not how it works. They’re still protected by the First Amendment.

It just makes it much more expensive to defend hosting speech, which means they will take one of two approaches: (1) host way less speech and become much, much more restricted in what people can say or (2) do little to no moderation, because under the First Amendment, they can only be held liable if they have knowledge of legally violative content.

And most of the content that would be covered by this bill “speech that contributes to political radicalization” is, um, kinda quintessentially protected by the First Amendment.

Kelly’s comments reveal the stunning cognitive dissonance at the heart of this proposal:

“I did not agree with him on much. But I’ll tell you what, I will go to war to fight for his right to say what he believes,” said Kelly, who is a former Navy pilot. “Even if you disagree with somebody, doesn’t mean you put a wall up between you and them.”

This is breathtaking doublethink. Kelly claims he’ll “go to war” to protect Kirk’s right to speak while literally authoring legislation that will silence the platforms where that speech happens. It’s like saying “I’ll defend your right to assembly” while bulldozing every meeting hall in town.

Curtis manages to be even more confused:

What this bill would do, Curtis explained, is open up these trillion-dollar companies to the same kind of liability that tobacco companies and other industries face.

“If they’re responsible for something going out that caused harm, they are responsible. So think twice before you magnify. Why do these things need to be magnified at all?” Curtis said.

This comparison is absurdly stupid. Tobacco is a physical product that literally destroys your lungs and causes cancer. Speech is expression protected by the First Amendment. Curtis is essentially arguing that if political speech influences someone’s behavior in a way he doesn’t like, the platform should be liable—as if words and ideas are chemically addictive carcinogens.

The entire point of the First Amendment is that we don’t consider speech to be harmful.

What Curtis is proposing is holding companies liable whenever speech “causes harm,” which is fucking terrifying when Trump and his FCC are already threatening platforms for hosting criticism of the administration.

The political implications here are staggering. Kelly, a Democrat, is signing onto a bill that will let Trump and MAGA supporters (the bill has a private right of action that will let anyone sue!) basically sue every internet platform for “promoting” content they deem politically polarizing, which they will say is anything that criticizes Trump or promotes “woke” views.

And why is he pushing such a bill in supposed support of Charlie Kirk, a person whose only job was pushing political polarization, and whose entire “debate me bro” shtick was entirely designed to push political polarization online?

What are we even doing here?

This entire proposal is a monument to confused thinking. Kelly and Curtis claim they want to honor Charlie Kirk by passing legislation that would have silenced the very platforms where he built his career. They claim to support free speech while authoring a bill designed to chill political expression. They worry about political polarization while creating a legal weapon that will be used almost exclusively by the most polarizing political actors to silence their critics.

Rolling back Section 230 will lead to much greater censorship, not less. Claiming it’s necessary to diminish political polarization is disconnected from reality. But at least it will come in handy for whoever challenges this law as unconstitutional—the backers are out there openly admitting they’re introducing legislation designed to violate the First Amendment.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, algorithms, charlie kirk, free speech, john curtis, mark kelly, political polarization, section 230

Trump, Brendan Carr Threaten To Censor Some More Comedians For The Crime Of Comedy

Free Speech

from the thin-skinned-babies dept

Donald Trump and his earlobe nibbler (FCC boss Brendan Carr) are threatening to try and censor some more comedians after their efforts to cancel Jimmy Kimmel went so well (read: not well at all).

Over at the right wing white propaganda website formerly known as Twitter, Brendan Carr retweeted some whining from Donald Trump calling for the termination of late night comedian, Seth Meyers. In the tweet, Trump calls for NBC (which is hoping to gain Trump regulatory approval for an acquisition of Warner Brothers) to fire Meyers immediately for the criminal offense of… jokes:

That’s Carr posting a screenshot of Donald Trump posting to Truth Social:

NBC’s Seth Meyers is suffering from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). He was viewed last night in an uncontrollable rage, likely due to the fact that his “show” is a Ratings DISASTER. Aside from everything else, Meyers has no talent, and NBC should fire him, IMMEDIATELY!

Also, the weird thing is that Trump posted on November 15th that he viewed Meyers “last night,” which is impressive since Meyers’ didn’t even have a new show airing on the 14th.

Trump has made it clear that he’d prefer it if his billionaire friends the Ellisons (new owners of CBS and Paramount) offer the winning bid to buy Warner Brothers (and HBO and CNN) so they can further expand their right wing infotainment and propaganda safe space.

That means that to win DOJ and FCC approval of their own bid, Comcast/NBC Universal will need to kiss Donald Trump’s ass with extra vigor, something that’s apparently already started with a big fat Comcast donation to Donald Trump’s extraction class corruption ballroom.

It’s unlikely that NBC/Comcast executives would heed a call to fire Meyers to gain regulatory approval, but it’s unsettling that in this age of immense corporate cowardice, you really can’t be sure. Carr has certainly made it clear that he’s more than willing to illegally abuse the FCC merger approval process to try and bully companies into kissing Donald Trump’s ass. And Comcast is… Comcast.

So it’s certainly possible that NBC executives could fire Seth Meyers in order to gain regulatory approval of Warner Brothers, but they, of course, won’t admit there would be any connection between the two. But even then, it would be quite a gambit with Trump’s popularity cratering.

You might recall that Trump and Carr worked with weak-kneed ABC executives and some right wing ABC affiliate companies to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel for some innocuous comments about a dead racist influencer. Ultimately, after massive public backlash, the right wingers got absolutely nothing they asked for. If anything, it pushed Kimmel’s comedy to a broader audience, and cost the companies money.

So if they’re keen on making Seth Meyers more popular than ever, they should definitely proceed.

The great irony is it’s not like the comedians that most rile the president are even particularly edgy or boundary pushing in literally any way. Most of the stuff that deeply riles our toddler king is pretty basic observational late night comedy. Which makes you wonder how Trump would respond to modern U.S. comedy if it actually had some George Carlin, Richard Pryor, or Lenny Bruce style teeth.

Outside of a smattering of light criticism of hackish “anti-woke” comedians by the likes of Anthony Jeselnik, Marc Maron, and the Elephant Graveyard guy, U.S. comedy — much like U.S. media more broadly — has been a feckless mess when it comes to challenging authoritarianism. Which is unfortunate given how even the lightest mainstream jokes about their competency clearly gets under their very thin skin.

Filed Under: brendan carr, comcast nbc universal, comedy, donald trump, fcc, free speech, jimmy kimmel, media, mergers, seth meyers, warner brothers
Companies: comcast, nbc, nbc universal

Judge Dismisses Bullshit Lawsuit Claiming Pollster Committed Fraud By Being Wrong

Legal Issues

from the frivolous-slapp-nonsense dept

Last year, we wrote about Donald Trump’s bullshit lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer for releasing surprising polls right before the 2024 election suggesting that Kamala Harris might actually beat Donald Trump in Iowa. The polls turned out to be wrong—as polls sometimes are—and Trump decided this was grounds for a lawsuit. That case continues with a bunch of nonsense legal gamesmanship.

But Trump’s lawsuit wasn’t the only one. A separate “class action” lawsuit was filed against Selzer and the Des Moines Register by Dennis Donnelly, a random Des Moines Register subscriber who claimed the poll constituted “fraud,” “professional malpractice,” and—even more ridiculously—”interference with the right to vote.” It was basically a copycat lawsuit of Trump’s to try to put more pressure on Selzer and the Des Moines Register.

Last week, a judge rightly dismissed the case as complete nonsense.

Polls, like nearly all speech, are protected by the First Amendment. To get past that rather large hurdle, a plaintiff would need to show the poll was somehow both false and made with “actual malice”—not that it was mean-spirited, but that Selzer basically knew it was “false” when she published it.

That’s a problem when the “expression” in question is a poll based on data Selzer actually collected. It’s an opinion derived from methodology, not a factual claim that can be “false.”

Finding actual malice requires Donnelly to plausibly allege Defendants sacrificed decades of work in cultivating this reputation for accuracy by “knowingly or recklessly” manufacturing a poll they knew was incorrect in pursuit of an unclear goal. See ECF No. 36 at 33. With no factual allegations to support such an assertion and mere conclusory statements, Donnelly asserts only a bare legal conclusion accompanied by actual malice buzzwords that Defendants acted knowingly or recklessly. This is insufficient to meet the plausibility standard….

The court’s response to the “fraudulent misrepresentation” claim is even more brutal:

No false representation was made. Defendants conducted a poll using a particular methodology which yielded results that later turned out to be different from the event the poll sought to measure. The results of an opinion poll are not an actionable false representation merely because the anticipated results differ from what eventually occurred…. Donnelly, and all other readers, knew how the poll was conducted because the poll results were accompanied by a thorough discussion of methodology…. Donnelly does not claim the disclosed methodology was not followed, that results were falsified, or that Defendants altered the poll in some other way which did not reflect the publicly disclosed methodology. Defendants told readers exactly what they did and how they did it. Therefore, no false representation was made.

The court then highlights the absurdity of Donnelly’s position by applying his own logic to the polls he cited favorably:

Donnelly cites to several other polls which had then-candidate Trump ahead by between seven and nine points…. The actual margin of the election was thirteen points…. Donnelly cites these other polls favorably, yet, by his definition of misrepresentation, every single one of these polls cited also “was all wrong.” … These polls were not fraudulently misrepresenting the state of the race, they merely used different methodologies in an attempt to best capture a snapshot of a dynamic race. … Donnelly fails to cite to any authority finding an opinion poll of a future event constitutes a false factual assertion.

The “professional malpractice” claim fares no better. The court compares it to suing a weather forecaster for an incorrect prediction and walks through the parade of absurdities that would follow:

Donnelly’s claim also fails because political opinion polls are predictive and inherently uncertain. Defendants here carried out a randomized survey and published the results along with a full explanation of the poll methodology. Donnelly’s novel attempt to impose liability for news prediction is similar to Brandt v. Weather Channel, Inc. in which a plaintiff sought to hold a news channel liable for an inaccurate weather forecast…. That court noted “to impose such a duty would be to chill the well established first amendment rights of the broadcasters.” Id. at 1346. The court in Brandt further observed the litany of absurd suits which could follow from imposing such a duty, such as construction workers suing when they pour concrete in reliance on a weather report forecasting no rain or commuters suing when they are stuck in traffic and late to work because the news reported there would be light traffic. Id. Finding for Donnelly here would permit similar absurdity. The Court declines to permit such absurdity and finds Defendants owed no such duty to Donnelly.

This ruling doesn’t just dismiss Donnelly’s lawsuit—it preemptively demolishes every argument Trump is using in his own case. As Jacob Sullum at Reason points out, Trump’s lawsuit is even weaker than Donnelly’s already pathetically weak case:

If anything, Trump’s fraud claims are even less plausible than Donnelly’s. Donnelly, who sued on behalf of all Des Moines Register subscribers, actually has a commercial relationship with the newspaper. Trump, by contrast, does not seem to have any such connection with the Register or Selzer. But both lawsuits suffer from the same basic problem: Because they treat misleading journalism as actionable fraud, they amount to thinly veiled assaults on freedom of the press.

Of course, these lawsuits were never really about having plausible claims. These lawsuits exist to send a message: publish anything that favors a political opponent of Donald Trump, and he and his MAGA allies will bury you in litigation. It doesn’t matter if the cases are frivolous. The process is the punishment, and the threat of more lawsuits is the deterrent. That’s not a legal strategy—it’s a censorship campaign dressed up in legal paperwork.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, actual malice, dennis donnelly, donald trump, fraudulent misrepresentation, free speech, iowa, kamala harris, misleading polls, polls
Companies: des moines register