By Chris Roberts
It’s hard to think that $1 billion will actually ever be paid to victims of Alex Jones’ libelous speech about the parents whose children died in mass shootings, but it’s easy to recognize that our First Amendment right to free speech does not mean speech has no consequences.
Here’s the FoxNews.com story about the verdict, published Oct. 12, 2022.
I use the Fox version because to note that FoxNew.com never published the story about the jury’s findings especially high on its home page.
As I write this, less than 20 hours after the verdict, there’s no mention of the $1 billion verdict on its homepage. There’s also nothing on its “media” home page. Or its “politics” home page.
Fox’s main page currently has multiple stories involving speech acts, but nothing about what may be the largest verdict for a speech act ever. It includes a story about former President Trump threatening a lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board for awarding stories about Trump, but nothing about an actual libel lawsuit result that reached into nearly 10 digits. And as for stories about lawsuit threats, I worked for news organizations that wouldn’t report about lawsuit threats but only considered a story when a lawsuit was filed.
Anyone who thinks about ethics — regardless of the ethical approach — will argue that Jones’ speech was much more morally bankrupt than he claims his businesses are. For more information and a case study, take a look at this case study from Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins published long before this week’s $1 billion verdict.
Law.com wrote about the ethical and legal implications for his lawyers, too.
This will be a story that ethics professors will talk about for years – but not as an example with any shade of ethical gray.