We all know - well, anybody who doesn't live in a cave knows - that lawsuits are pending in regard to the media coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse.
The case that most people, including me, decided to focus on when it comes to a recent defamation case in which the media companies that were sued decided to settle was the Nick Sandmann case. For those who don't remember, Nick Sandmann was the high school kid who was shown smirking and wearing a MAGA hat as a native American man sang and beat a dumb in his face.
The thing is, I realized that I hadn't done my homework on the Sandmann case. Now I have and it's brought some interesting nuance going forward.
When I was a teenager, I would have made the same assumptions that Sandmann and Rittenhouse made. I would have figured that the most serious and baseless lies told would be the greatest grounds for a lawsuit. Being called a "racist" is just about the worst thing that you can be called. In both the Sandmann and Rittenhouse cases, they were accused of racism with no basis.
Still, you're never going to win a defamation suit with that. Rittenhouse might have a prayer if a major news organization reported that he was shouting the N-word when it was clear that he didn't (Rosenbaum did). But, if every moron who resorted to shallouting "racist" instead of making an argument could be sued, every leftist in the country would be in court in fifteen minutes.
Rittenhouse is and always was clearly innocent of murder and he's understandably angry that people keep lying and smearing his name; but, it's not illegal to be a moron and it shouldn't be. Unless a news network starts reporting that Rittenhouse is a convicted murderer, he doesn't have much of a case. People are free to express their opinions that he is a murderer despite what the law says no matter how wrong they are.
What most people, including me, missed about Sandmann is that the most viscous lies and comments made about him carried no legal weight.
What happened was that, out of the thirty-three items submitted in the lawsuit, it was determined that three statements could be defamatory in that it was reported that Sandmann stepped in front of the man and wouldn't allow him to move. This was shown to be demonstrably false; so, a discovery process was authorized. Companies have to comply with discovery with their own money and that can often be millions of dollars. So, most of the mainstream media companies probably settled to avoid the discovery process and legal fees. That's not evidence that Sandmann's case would hold up in court.
With Rittenhouse, there are a few claims that were repeated by several news organizations as nauseum which I think qualify as not being opinions but were demonstrably, factually false.
One is that he crossed state lines with a gun. He didn't. The gun never left Wisconsin.
Two is that his possession of the gun was illegal. That's false. Still, this would be a weak case for Rittenhouse to make being that he was charged with illegal possession of the firearm until just before closing arguments.
Three is that his mother drove him to Kenosha. That's false. It's also clear that his mother has been subjected to an onslaught of slander and ridicule due to that lie.
Now, the most egregious lie came from The Young Turks who repeated over and over that Rittenhouse chased down and killed Rosenbaum. This is clearly false and it manipulated a lot of people's perceptions of the case. Maybe a judge will throw that out because Ana Kasparian issued a retraction half way through the trial and admitted that Rosenbaum was chasing Rittenhouse; still, maybe there will be enough there to get TYT to settle.
We don't know how much Sandmann got in his settlement. It probably wasn't millions. I'm guessing that Rittenhouse won't get millions either.
Still, defamation is one of the most important and interesting conversations that we can have about free speech. It's an area where even the most vocal defenders of free speech can start to, as Sir Thomas More said in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons, "...cut a path through the law..." At least the temptation is always there.
There is little doubt in my mind that Joy Reid, Cenk Uyghur, Ana Kasparian, MSNBC in general are malicious. I absolutely believe that they knowingly packaged lies as facts knowing that the law would view the most viscous lies as mere opinions. They are absolutely guilty of attempting and possibly succeeding in causing mental and material damages to innocent people. They should be reviled, ridiculed, metaphorically dragged through the mud in every way that they dragged their victims.
Nonetheless, I will not advocate for broadening the USA's laws of defamation to see these people legally punished. We should vote with our dollars and vote for independent journalists who don't think of themselves as too big to fail. When Joy Reid is on the tube, turn it off. Don't watch The Young Turks. Don't watch MSNBC, CNN, or Fox news.
We are not the government; but, we are all market actors. That's where the power lies.
I wish these innocent young men the best. I also do hope that Rittenhouse gets something from these corporations. I also hope that somebody at MSNBC ends up in prison over the whole attempt to intimidate a jury; but, I won't hold my breath.
What I hope for the most is that our people will grow up and settle down to the point that we can all see the truth when it's presented to us in plain view. Once we do that, we can take down the liars with power together. We can hit them where it hurts - their bank accounts - in the most effective way.