Fox News may be secretly relieved that Sarah Palin's NYT libel lawsuit failed -- here's why
After losing her libel lawsuit against the New York Times, Sarah Palin has the option to appeal the case, and she might decide that it's worth the effort if she can eventually make her case before the United States Supreme Court.
As Bloomberg News reported Tuesday afternoon in the wake of her complaint's defeat, "Palin has suggested she saw her case in part as a vehicle to try to get the law changed by today's more conservative high court."
New York Times reporter Jermey Peters, in an earlier analysis of Palin's complaint, also believed that Palin's larger goal was to make it easier to sue news outlets.
"But those fundamental First Amendment issues loom over the trial. And lawyers for Ms. Palin, through legal briefs and public statements, have made no secret of the fact that they want to see the courts rethink the legal leeway that media organizations have to make an unintentional error," said the report. "The law currently considers an occasional mistake a natural result of a free press."
According to "Overruled" host Adrienne Lawrence, that could have dramatic consequences for conservative media who write under the guise of "opinion."
"If if the Supreme Court were to lower the bar, Fox News would suffer," wrote Lawrence. "It needs the high legal standard, so it can continue to play fast and loose with facts."
The prime-time hosts on Fox are all treated as opinion hosts and not news hosts. Tucker Carlson, for example, was involved in a libel lawsuit in which lawyers claimed his show was not about informing views and not "stating actual facts" but engaging in "exaggeration and non-literal commentary."
"Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.
Lawrence explained that Palin is well aware that some conservative Supreme Court justices want to lower the standards for libel -- even if it means suing publications over opinion articles they write.
Given that Carlson and other Fox prime-time hosts are also opinion-centered shows, it would mean that they could also be held liable for spreading false information about the people they're criticizing.
"[Palin will] likely ask the court to lower the standard even if it means Fox News's current business model would fail and all journalists would have to be tighter with their game," Lawrence said. "Given how a number of justices appear to take issue with how the media has covered them, I'd not be surprised if SCOTUS welcomes Palin's challenge and uses it to lower the (NYT v. Sullivan) bar as a way to rein in journalism. The outcome would chill many voices."
In the New York Times case, being able to prove malice was a major problem because the Times made a good-faith effort to quickly correct the story and acknowledge the mistake in the piece.
Carlson and other Fox hosts have a long history of not backing down from claims even after they've been proven false -- which could make them even more vulnerable under loosened libel laws than the New York Times.
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