Matt Taibbi nails it: Punish the Right-Wing Liars

[CatWoman]

If the right-wing media keeps spreading lies like the one about Barack Obama supposedly going to a madrassa as a child, it's time to consider hiring the meanest lawyers on the planet to fight these creeps.

"Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?" -- From Hannity.com, long after the "madrassa" story had been debunked

Nearly two years before the next presidential election, we've already set the tone: Even the most outrageous media fictions about candidates are apparently going to go unpunished.

At least that was my thought, after watching last week's unfolding of the Obama-madrassa scandal -- the unofficial starting gun for the Great Slime Race, as the 2008 presidential campaign will someday be known. I found the entire affair puzzling. I know for sure that if I made a journalistic "mistake" of that magnitude, I'd be spending the rest of my life picking strawberries in the Siberian tundra.

Most print journalists I know would expect the same thing; the legal ramifications alone of intentionally going to print with a story that missed by that much would guarantee that 80 cents out of every dollar you made for the next ten years would go to the victim of your libel. That's unless you're Tom Friedman and you can use congenital idiocy as a defense in court.

For some reason, however, we never see full-blown libel suits in high-level political journalism. Moreover, there appears to be a completely different standard for talk-radio and TV talk-show hosts, who are somehow allowed to lie and fuck up with impunity, and still remain employed. I get the feeling that as a society we have decided to give a collective pass to serial media swindlers like Sean Hannity simply because we never expect them to actually document the "facts" that come spewing in mass volumes out of their zoster-covered mouths every day. We actually expect them to pull most of their material out of their asses, and are mostly content to address the problem by pompously correcting their errata post-factum in whiny media-crit outlets like...well, like this one. Actual real punishment never seems to be forthcoming.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/47453/

[conscious evolution]

1. hit em where it hurts

And their wallets would hurt.
Besides didn't Faux once say,in court no less,that they are entertainment and not a news channel?

[redqueen]

2. Who's supposed to hire these lawyers?

It does puzzle me why they are allowed get away with it... but celebrities will often fight back against tabloids about less important matters.

[blm]

5. The Dem party should have a stable of lawyers set up to combat lies against ALL Dem

lawmakers.

[CatWoman]

6. excellent observation/point, B

:hi:

if they won't use the lawyers to ensure a fair vote count, they could at least use them to combat the rabid right's slurs.

[redqueen]

12. That's a great idea.

You'd think someone who gets paid to develop strategy might have come up with a bit sooner.

Thanks... I'll write a few letters. :hi:

[blm]

13. It does seem simple. Dems admire all the WRONG things about the GOPs and ignore

what REALLY made them strong all those years.

I say we stop emulating the wrong, sleazy things and start emulating their defense of and loyalty to each other. That's the trait that actually kept them stong as a party for so long.

[blogslut]

3. He's so right

If the press is serious about saving itself as a social institution, it has to start policing its own business. We all have to encourage the likes of Barack Obama to hire the meanest lawyers on the planet and to file the hairiest lawsuits imaginable against the Hannitys, Gibsons, and Savages of the world. We have to impress upon the victims of these broadsides that choosing to ignore that style of libel is a betrayal of the public trust and an act of political cowardice that the rest of us end up paying for in spades. That's the ugly truth: Until one of those monsters goes down in a fireball of punitive litigation, we are all fucked. And it's not going to happen anytime soon.

[Jacobin]

4. Taibbi owes me a keyboard

"That's unless you're Tom Friedman and you can use congenital idiocy as a defense in court."


:rofl:

:rofl:

[CatWoman]

8. rofl

missed that!!

:rofl:

[DU9598]

7. Dan Rather

How is what FAUX News did against Obama any different from what Dan Rather did to GWB? I guess the only difference is that Dan Rather's story was supported by significant and credible circumstantial evidence despite a fake document. However, FAUX simply made up a story that has no real or circumstantial evidence supporting it.

We really need a Left Wing sound machine because this incident should be the end of FAUX.

[NewJeffCT]

11. Big difference

If you run a story that criticizes a Republic, even forgetting to dot an "i" or cross a "t" is enough to discredit a report that is the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

However, if you run a story that criticizes a Democrat, the only standard is if somebody breathing told you something that they heard from somebody else's brother or sister, that makes the entire story credible.

[NewJeffCT]

9. Don't you have to prove intent?

Insight magazine can just claim, "ooops, we made a mistake. and, it came from somebody in Hillary's camp."

And then Fox can say, "well, we went with a report that was later found to be in error. Sorry."

[Dogmudgeon]

10. We need to be careful. And extremely clever.

Right-wingers used to do this themselves, back in the 1970s. They used to sue high-visibility targets for defamation and celebrate like football players who had just made a touchdown.

Then, right after a couple lefties did the same thing, the Right started with their "litigious society" campaign.

What we have to do is to keep tabs on rightist hate campaigns, then select about five or more in a short period of time. They should be slam-dunk cases of big-name wingnuts going after small-peanuts private citizens using outrageous language. And there should be more than one wingnut case, in different circuit courts if possible, to prevent martyrdom and to assure at least one solid victory.

The law is loath to take on political cases, and with good reason. But a couple well-executed lawsuits against a few of the most egregious potty-mouths would be enough -- and oh-so satisfying!

--p!