Right-wing media that became the purveyors of propaganda and enhanced false accusations as Donald Trump thwarted the election’s outcome are now facing new legal challenges or facing legal ones.
A few well-known bangs media outlets have experienced court losses in just a few months.
In April, The Gateway Pundit, a powerful far-right news website, filed for bankruptcy in response to defamation lawsuits alleging the business had suggested poll workers had engaged in scam during the previous presidential election. Voting equipment manufacturer Smartmatic settled its slander lawsuit against One America News Network, which allowed false election fraud claims to be broadcast, in the same month. Newsmax and Fox News are both facing defamation lawsuits worth$ 2.7 billion. Both Newsmax and Fox News deny Smartmatic’s complaints.
Fox News last year paid another company, Dominion Voting Systems,$ 787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. The network refused to make any distinct assertions.
Right-wing political commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s book and film” 2000 Wagon” was pulled by the editor Salem Media Group in May, and the publisher publicly apologized to a Georgian who is suing the writer and editor on slander accusations after he was accused of ballot packing. That scenario is still continuous.
Another liberal media outlets that promoted right-wing propaganda in the 2020 vote are experiencing financial issues related to those events. Alex Jones, a conspiracy theory and Infowars network, agreed to sell off his possessions this week to pay$ 1.5 billion in slander orders related to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School murder. Jones previously warned that his business might locked down.
Federal prosecutors allege that a senior Epoch Times employee laundered millions of dollars.
The Justice Department said the charges against Weidong” Bill” Guan, the bank’s chief financial officer, are related to its newsgathering pursuits, and an Epoch Times spokeswoman said it plans to “fully engage with any research dealing with the claims”. However, one of the most well-known pro-Trump stores is brought under investigation by the prosecution. Guan has entered a not-guilty plea, and a public defender appointed to his situation was subsequently asked for opinion.
” Right- aircraft media has finally faced the implications of running propaganda efforts”, said Yunkang Yang, an associate professor of conversation at Texas A&, M University. Some of them are now being held responsible for the sits they spread.
Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of conversation at the University at Buffalo who studies propaganda and extremism, said he is encouraged by the effects of “misinformation contaminates our information culture, leads to genuine harms, and erodes faith in institutions and the government.”
The recent lawsuits brought against those who spread lies and fabrications will hopefully help to stop some of the propaganda that we can believe in 2024 from spreading.
However, researchers say it’s still to be seen whether that will change the way the November election and post-Election Time insurance are.
Trump has spoken out about his concerns about the 2020 election in recent interviews and at rallies, saying it’s necessary to challenge election results when the process is n’t fair. The former president made the false claim that” Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020″ at a campaign rally in Michigan last month, adding that” we’re never going to allow them to rig the national vote in 2024.”
But as for businesses that would want to avoid further dispute, Yang said,” If Trump loses suddenly, and denies the vote again, if that does happen, I think they’ll be more careful”.
However, “right- flap advertising does n’t have to say the election was stolen”, Yang added,” but they can let the audience say the quiet part out loud”.
He claimed that this was now happening on some right-wing websites, and that some of them “rely on a smaller group of highly energetic commenters to provoke online discussion, draw attention to secretive comments, bolster secretive beliefs, and encourage the sharing of propaganda content on social media.” He added that this was now happening in a 2023 report.
Amid their legal issues, some sites are hitting back, suggesting to their audiences they’re being unfairly targeted because of their ideologies.
Jim Hoft, the founder of The Gateway Pundit, blamed “progressive liberal lawfare attacks” for leading the outlet to file for bankruptcy, and said doing so did not indicate” an admission of fault or culpability” in the lawsuits.
The suit, which involves two former Georgia election employees and was the subject of debunked voter-rigging conspiracy theories, is currently on trial. A former Dominion Voting Systems executive filed another lawsuit against Gateway Pundit and other well-known defendants in Colorado, which is still pending.
Although Hoft has vowed to continue publishing, Gateway Pundit’s request for comment on its financial situation prior to filing for bankruptcy was not immediately returned.
” Despite the radical left’s efforts to silence The Gateway Pundit through censorship, de- platforming, de- banking, cut- off from advertisers, and other financial strategies, we will not be deterred from our mission of remaining fearless and being one of the most trusted independent media outlets in America today”, Hoft said in a statement.
According to A. J. Bauer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama who focuses on right-wing media, this rhetoric is in line with how Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has pursued his political foes as he awaits sentencing on 34 felony counts in his historic hush money trial.
Trump has repeatedly asserted without any proof that the prosecution spearheaded by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was a part of President Joe Biden’s administration’s plan to stifle his election chances.
Fox News positioned itself as a ratings powerhouse over its rivals as a result of the coverage of Trump’s trial and unprecedented verdict.
Attorney General Merrick Garland vehemently criticized a House panel led by Trump’s congressional allies on Tuesday, noting how some Republicans are repeating unfounded conspiracy theories.
To claim that a New York jury’s verdict was” somehow controlled by the Justice Department” is” an attack on the judicial process itself”, Garland said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R- La., had called Trump’s trial a” sham” and proclaimed a “weaponization” of the justice system against Trump.
Bauer claimed that the former president does n’t necessarily need those media outlets that can be “loose with the facts” to support his beliefs because Republican leadership continues to support Trump ahead of the election.
Bauer claimed that social media users on platforms like X and online live-streamers who cover Trump’s events ( one well-known YouTube channel, Right Side Broadcasting Network, has more than 1.65 million subscribers ) are yet another type of broadcasting that has evolved since the last presidential election. Trump also started his own social media platform, Truth Social, after he was banned by Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In the fall of last year, Truth Social reported an accumulated loss of tens of millions of dollars.
In the interim, conservative and right-wing news sites have reportedly struggled with traffic amid larger financial struggles across the entire legacy and digital news media industry, as once-reliable traffic sources like Facebook and Instagram restrict “political content” to users ‘ feeds.
On the other hand, last month, the progressive advocacy website Media Matters for America fired dozens of staff members, with its president blaming a “legal assault on multiple fronts,” including a lawsuit brought by X owner Elon Musk last fall over an investigative report about advertising on the social media platform.
” The terrain on which this election is being run is fundamentally, materially different than four years ago”, Bauer said.
Ophir, the University at Buffalo researcher, said that while the public’s right to free speech and the media’s ability to remain independent must be considered, social media companies can also remove “harmful content” and media outlets spreading false propaganda can be held responsible, at least through the courts.
However, he added that “without a systematic change, the public will continue to suffer from misinformation in the years to come.”
