Fox News was hit with another defamation lawsuit Wednesday. It was a lawsuit from a woman who claimed the agency encouraged her to lie about herself, which posed a serious threat to her safety and undermined her career prospects.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Nina Jankowitz, former executive director of the short-lived Department of Homeland Security division charged with coordinating efforts to monitor and address disinformation threats to national security. Right-wing pundits and politicians have mistakenly portrayed her group as part of an Orwellian plot to control the speech and thought of ordinary Americans.
Jankowicz, a prominent expert in Russian disinformation and online harassment, was the main target of their attacks. In the course of being mentioned 300 times over eight months on Fox last year, she was repeatedly insulted and defamed in very personal terms, the lawsuit alleges. The moderators said her job was to “silence critics of the Biden administration” and possibly, as Mr. Carlson warned, “make men with guns say ‘shut up’.” He said there might even be.
A division called the Disinformation Governance Board, temporarily headed by Mr. Jankowicz, had no such authority, and no direct authority. authority affect speech. The ministry created the body to consolidate and oversee existing efforts by various departments to monitor and defend against disinformation from foreign agents seeking to influence elections. A cartel that promotes human smuggling activities. Those who seek to undermine the government’s commitment to public health and safety.
The lawsuit alleges that after Jankovitz resigned to escape the onslaught of criticism (causing the abrupt suspension of the board’s activities), Fox hosts and guests falsely claimed she had been fired.
“Even after they achieved their stated goal of removing me from the government and abolishing the board, they continued to use me as a punching bag,” Jankowitz said in an interview Wednesday. “We shouldn’t just accept that the world’s most powerful cable network can attack individuals at will and ruin their lives with no harm done.”
Jankowitz, 34, filed a lawsuit in the same Delaware state court where Dominion Voting filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. The network settled that case for $787.5 million last month, avoiding a long and painful trial. (The Jankowitz suit seeks unspecified damages.)
The deal represents a tacit admission that Fox’s false claims about election fraud in the 2020 election were wrong. But the document proves the high legal standard required for Dominion to win a defamation suit: that the person who said it knew or didn’t want to know it was false. Didn’t answer the question of whether it was possible.
Jankowicz must meet the same criteria. Fox declined to comment on Wednesday.
Nonetheless, her lawsuit represents an ongoing legal threat to the network, likely exacerbated by the Dominion lawsuit. A large number of internal Fox News communications were generated showing what they knew was in fact false.
Jankowitz’s lawsuit specifically cites the Dominion case, saying Fox’s story about her “is consistent with Fox’s practices in other contexts, including election denial and related defamation of the Dominion voting system.” rice field.
In a letter to Fox’s general counsel this week, Jankowitz’s attorneys asked the network to preserve all correspondence, including text, notes and search histories about him and his positions on the board. .
Jankowitz’s attorney, Riley Sommers Flanagan, said in an interview that the Dominion case “shows that there is a way out” for defamation lawsuits against the network. “Dominion shows just how awful the internal conversations going on at Fox are. Fox News shows a complete disregard for the truth related to ratings.”
Fox argued that he had not recklessly ignored the truth in the Dominion lawsuit (which would have been decided in court), but the judge in the lawsuit ruled that the statements at issue in the lawsuit were false. In the settlement proposal, they acknowledged that they had done so.
All media outlets Fox faces similar lawsuits, but the Dominion lawsuit stands out for its intensity, size of settlement, and ongoing aftermath. Fox faces two shareholder lawsuits related to the Dominion lawsuit, and another one alleging hostile workplaces by employees. Former Carlson producer Abby Grossberg.
It also led to the cancellation of Mr. Carlson’s show. Carlson, now seeking to terminate his contract with Fox (allowing the agency to keep him on the bench while continuing to pay his salary), has about 40 people mentioned in Jankovitz’s lawsuit. be one of the hosts and guests of a person.
Besides suggesting that Jankovitz was, as Hannity puts it, “the person who watches over our thoughts,” the combination of host and guest created a fun atmosphere. misleading video clip Falsely claiming she has plans to “start editing your tweets,” as Fox News host Jeanine Pirro put it.
At its inception, the Disinformation Commission aroused concern even among liberals, questioning the powers such a commission might have under future Republican administrations, but it was overwhelmed by partisan Republican attacks. caused a tsunami that continues to this day.
Much of it focused on Ms. Jankowitz. A former Fulbright researcher who advised the Ukrainian government in 2017, she wrote a book on online attacks against women and Russian disinformation. She was criticized by conservatives. The Effectiveness of Hunter Biden’s Laptop Some have even commented on Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter.
March, House Judiciary Committee issued a summons Jankowicz forced her to testify about her short-lived board job.
Fox could argue that the relentless press coverage of her role reflected political debate on the issue. It was reportedly written with descriptions such as “convenient idiot” and “wicked witch”.
According to Jankowicz’s complaint, Fox’s reporting “resulted in and continues to provide immediate harassment and intimidation online,” and continued misogynistic, anti-Semitic and violent messages. It is said that a campaign to expose personal information was carried out.
“This It has a huge impact on my family. Jankowitz said Wednesday. “We would like to emphasize that this kind of disinformation and hate campaigns by him do not exist in American media or in American politics. This is not something we endorse.”
