349
Mark Robinson sues CNN over report he wrote racist posts on porn website
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
349 points (98.6% liked)
News
23287 readers
3795 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Maybe for other countries, but this was filed in the US where that's not the case at all. You need it to not only show it's false, but that the person making a false statement knew it was false be or acted with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not
The CNN report was pretty damning and with how extensively they laid out the evidence that tied Robinson was to it, it'd likely be extremely difficult to show 1) that it was false or 2) that they acted recklessly when they were pretty through
EDIT: and to clarify the "person making a false statement knew it was false be or acted with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not" is the standard for finding fault with the person making defamation when the actual malice is used (which is the case for government officials or public figures)
I dunno about that, because many statements are unfalsifiable. If someone accuses me of being a witch, how can I be expected to "show it's false"? If you can show that they
Then it's not necessary to prove that it's false.
I understand and agree that the burden for proving defamation in the US is quite high, but it's not always possible or necessary to demonstrate that the accusation is absolutely false.
That's not the alternative to proving it being false, that's the alternative to it being knowingly false. You have to show all four of these things for US defamation
It's the 3rd fault one that is the knowingly false or reckless disregard for the truth
https://www.carter-ruck.com/law-guides/defamation-and-privacy-law-in-united-states/
Good stuff, it seems that he probably has no chance with this lawsuit. But still
Leaves a lot of wiggle room. How is "a false statement" defined? It's ultimately a matter of semantics.
I read this article which indicates that the truthfulness of the statement isn't even the relevant legal issue, and even if it were partially false it would still not constitute defamation.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/defamation-and-false-statements-overview
This agrees with what you are saying about knowingly false statements. But I never meant to say he could prove defamation, I just thought it was easier to claim than falsehood, because the story is obviously true 😅
But I guess defamation is actually harder to prove than I thought.
In the US, absolutely. Much of the stuff you hear about people being terrified to be accused of defamation comes out of the UK, where the burden of proof is almost completely flipped.