Sean Hannity has some explaining to do.
To make their case that the company was defamed, attorneys working for Dominion deposed Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro last week. This week, those lawyers expect to have host Sean Hannity and former host Lou Dobbs testify under oath in depositions. Dominion will likely try to get them to admit that they knew what they were saying was false.
In a Wednesday statement, Fox News Media said,"We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”
Actual malice is a high and difficult standard to satisfy — as it should be. The law should err on the side of protecting speech, even if it is speech that the collective public generally reviles. But if a news network spreads lies about a company’s rigging an election, then we should also be able to punish that behavior. The harm of allowing the false speech to be uttered without consequence is greater than the harm of punishing that speech.