Topic: can the media be sued for falsifying serious information? (Read 194 times)

depending on how much loss is suffered, the media also has journalistic ethics which depend on legal consequences. There are two steps if they are found guilty of defamation, material and non-material claims that must be processed, and the defendant's obligation to publish a full-page apology in a national newspaper. The law on information and electronic transactions has been very strongly used as a foothold for prosecution.

Can and can not..

Media use words to attract us consumers, false or truth will not be recognized if they're good at playing words. But beside the question can media be sued for falsifying serious information?

here's a branch question for you :
1. What kind of false and truth are you talking about as all truth is a subjective truth and as long as someone able to play victim ,play the words, have a good lawyer with sweet mouth?
2. How can an information be considered as serious or not so serious/ important?

For example you saw a clickbaiting news and it seems like the writter/ media side on the killer. This media is 1 out of 20 who defend the killer and wrote about a case from the killer's side.
 
Let's say in this case- the reality is, what happened is- the killer is on news is not the actual killer. he became the killer because he's a good victim to be blame on. he's poor, he's on the wrong place at a wrong time, and he have nobody to defend.

Who justified the truth and false? Us who see, but from us who see- what kind of benchmark do we use?

Of course, slander. That's why when reporting on someone who obiosly is the perpetrator of crime, they have to say allegedly.

 

They can always do, actually anyone as long as there is an evidence of fake news.
Media suppose to give free and unbias news for the people, fake news mislead people and there's a big effect on their decision making, so they should be punish as long as it's proven,.. however, this is gonna be long fight as we know how corrupt this world is and big media will try to play using their power which is money.

Some more detail on the legal standards...

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-libel-slander-key-elements-claim.html

Pretty sure intent would only have to be shown in regards to a public figure, which is very hard to do. Think of someone like Clinton or Trump trying to prove slander from the media, they'd have to hit the higher bar of showing intent to hurt them.

But for people like us, we'd just have to show that it was false and it could have reasonably of been known to be false at the time of showing. Still not easy, but most of the time the news companies are just going to settle with you -- as they did Jewell -- because it's much easier to just pay and move on rather then to pay the lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars and then still have to make a massive pay out.

You can definitely claim a civil suit or libel, defamation etc. and they would be forced to retract any of such statements.
There has been lots of precedents to this and you can do it as well.
But sometimes it can be hard to prove it.

This is true, but from what I understand, you also need to establish intent, which is a quite difficult standard that often could require significant surveillance to be accomplished, unless you get lucky and find some one who is very incompetent as well as corrupt.

I wouldn't use this as the case for an example, because we're unable to know what the outcome is at the time. I'd use one that's already done with -- the Story of Richard Jewell (True Story). Don't know if anyone is heard about it, though the entire story is in theaters right now and it's a Clint Eastwood movie, I've heard good things but I'll move on.

So this surrounds the 1996 Olympics, where Richard Jewell, a security guard in the area finds a bomb in the area. He clears out the area and saves most people from the blast. In the media he's said to be a hero securtity guard who saved tons and tons of people from death. Great, great.

But this narrative quickly shifts, as people in Law Enforcement and in the media think that this is 'too much' out of a local security guard. They start to accuse him of planting the bomb to move up in society, pretty much saying that his life was bad before this and he set the bomb so he'd be able to find it and get some real recognition in his life.

No evidence of any of it, but the FBI / Local Law Enforcement / The Mainstream Media ran with the story and it almost ruined the guys life. The FBI even almost coereced him into admitting to doing it through tricking him into thinking that he was helping them.

At the end of all of this, a Federal Attorney had come out and cleared Jewells name and said that there had been no merits to the accusations and that the people had been wrong. Unsure of if they caught the person who had really planted the bomb.

BUT onto the lawsuits. Jewell had sued a good deal of the major news networks, they had settled with him for I think in the realm of 500-800k each per news company. Sad story though, as the guy died like 2 years after the judgement at age 44.

I'd recommend seeing the movie.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/movies/richard-jewell-bombing-atlanta.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/12/17/richard-jewell-movie-exoneration-people-wrongly-think-hero-tied-bombing/4411942002/

Of course yes. In the media profession, there are codes and ethics of the profession that needs to be complied with and the same time, there are laws that guides against making false accusation and even now, with the advent of the social media which has been responsible for the dissemination of information in a way that is unimagined which can spread beyond territories of the world, there are now Social Media Bills to regulate such actions. So, its to find a very good constitutional lawyer to ensure that such body or organisation would not go without paying for their actions.

if your talking about media coverage of bitcoin over the last few year of the linkage to terrorists, blackmarkets and such

we wish we could sue media but the issues are
1. there is no single entity called bitcoin that has been personally victimised
2. media have proof that bitcoin was linked to blackmarket(silkroad)

so although 'bitcoin' cannot control who uses it and had no intent on being used only for blackmarket stuff, and had no intent on causing people investment loss or gain. media are aware that people lost investments and there was blackmarket involvement

so although bitcoins intent was to offer anyone another option to fiat. where good people could use it and could make profit. it still does not make the info media have wrong. just limited to their knowledge

its like Yelp reviewers who had a bad experience. the restaurant may have had 364 good days but on that one bad day customers wrote reviews of their bad experience. customers can't be sued for their experience.

media always get it wrong. yet they are still in business because they understand the laws better than anyone

just because you financially lost due to their media coverage is not defamation. you have to prove that they are liars and that evidence was available to them publicly that could have disproved their assertion and they wilfully ignore it due to them having a vengeful plan to destroy our reputation

this means if they lied while fully knowing the truth, but said the opposite.. where their intent was not to give an opinion for the best of public interest base on the only information they had.. but purely to hurt your rep.

however if they are just reporting that some of your customers got 'scammed' or were not 'treated fairly'. and the only information they had was your customers story of their experience. that in of itself is not a lie.
(they have proof of what formed their opinion)
even if you knew the customers had a bad experience due to something not previously known to the customer or media.
the customer or media was unaware of the real reason for the bad experience.

meaning their story/account is accurate based on their knowledge and experience they have available

EG
say you froze someones account due to regulatory investigation of possible KYC/AML stuff. but by regulation requirements could not explain that to anyone publicly because it was under investigation

all the customer knows is that your holding the money and not explaining why. a customers experience is that you stole the money and acted scammy(taking funds nd not responding with answers). which all evidence available to the customer supports their experience

if media then quote the customers experience and finds other customers with the same experience then the media's opinion becomes that your scammy. because all evidence they gathered supports it

so by media's side they do not know the real reason all they know is your holding peoples funds. they have proof you were holding funds so media's story is accurate based on media's research

so like i said its not about if something is factually true as not all the facts were available to them, its about which side had public proof to make such a statement false/true based on what info was available

..
this is why companies cant sue media when their stock makes a little dip and causes financial media to scream 'dump them dump them dump them' because although the company can later explain that the dip was just a temporary blip. the public opinion shows the dip did occur and so media's publicly available info was that people should sell

so just be aware of what information was publicly available to form the opinion media made

Yes we can!  Problem is, they'd try to bury you. There'd be more misrepresentation of you. Even politicians or big businesses have a hard time dealing with these.

For regular people like us, we just have to be careful, especially in public with the ubiquitous phones. It's very easy to be painted in a bad light these days. Just look at what the Covington kids went through.


They do this yes, but usually they add just a very small note to their online article (if they don't outright remove the article) or if it makes it into TV, a very short mention. By then the damage has been done and it's less likely for people to hear about the retraction.

Formally, yes. But sometimes it's not possible in reality. This is especially correct for "liberal" or "socialist" press all over the world. Think about that as private-owned version of juche. Their distortion of both liberalism and socialism became a new kind of totalitarianism, which is literally run by the private organizations rather than enforced by government. You're simply not "allowed" to criticize these guys because they can't be wrong. "Allowed" isn't precise word here because, formally, you still have freedom of speech and able to tell your point of view. But they don't care about ether law or formalities. If they can't win legally they'll describe you as corrupt, pedophile, nazi or just a mentally ill person, in order to make your words look stupid and untrustworthy. Therefore, if you have a problem with Washington Post or something similar, then you literally have no chances. Even if you win the legal case, you'll be a target for their attacks for the rest of your life. They'll use any of your smallest mistakes to destroy your life and ruin your reputation. Unlike legal actions of classical totalitarian regimes, which are limited by their own agenda and legislation, the media activity won't be sticked to your person. Your family, friends as well as loved ones will be targeted as well.

So be really careful with media, these guys are worse than Hitler and Mussolini combined.

Lovely. Now i gotta get some scientific results back to make sure that we have a case. Thank you very much

There have been many cases of media being sued.  If you could prove, the written, audio, video are a great evidence to justify your claim.
If the wrong statement has caused damage, you can claim a compensation.


Yes, if proved false, they need to take back their statement.

So if you had a group of individuals who work in a specific industry who the media is slandering , and if all of them were to build a class action lawsuit against them , and all of them came together to sue together with their financial losses of Q1-4 etc...

Is there a way for them to take back their statements on national television as well as money for their slander?

Yes.   Slander, defamation and libel can be claimed in a suit. Case would be stronger if you can show financial loss.

If anyone's done it, I'm sure they have.

Think that one kids family sued CNN. (The kids who 'smirked" at the Indian dude who was harassing him

So lets say an entire industry is affected by their false claims. Can others who work in said industry file a class action lawsuit against all of the media companies?

Has anyone ever tried?