...who Walter Conkite was."Anyone with a Youtube account...can reach more people than Walter Cronkite...So what we're doing is standing up an organization called @Law4Truth, it's going to serve as the sheriff in this new frontier," said our own John Langford on @NPRWeekend.https://t.co/2ZHSXz5eZO
— Protect Democracy (@protctdemocracy) March 14, 2022
As for the question raised in the NPR tweet: no. Libel suits will be as useless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Unless you can sue YouTube (no, you can’t), it’ll be an international game of whack-a-mole. Lawsuits are slow, tedious affairs. Lies pop up like mushrooms 🍄 and spread like kudzu. By the time one suit has reached the verdict stage (and you’re suing individuals, not corporations. Good luck ever collecting your damages. That can be practically a lawsuit in itself.), thousands more will beg to be started.
A lie is halfway around the world by the time truth is getting its boots on. And so on and so on. That’s why I say libel suits are for the British upper class twits who think their standing in society depends on their unblemished reputations. They sue to prove themselves pure, and being rich snobs on a small island with centuries of tradition behind their status, might actually win redemption.
In America? Nobody even knows you went to court, or will remember the verdict ten minutes later if they do know. Law4Truth is not going to be the law west of the Pecos. It's going to be mostly useless and ignored.
Case in point: Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook families. They won a judgment, mostly by default (not to say they wouldn't have won on the merits, but Jones saved them (and himself) the expense of the trial). They had to get a court order to get Jones to sit for a deposition so they could seek property to seize for the judgment. He responded by filing for bankruptcy, presumably individually but I only heard he'd filed for three businesses he owns (reporting on legal matters is usually worse than useless). The families allege he moved an ungodly sum of money off his books before that judgment was entered. If it was recent enough, the bankruptcy court could claw that back to pay Jones debtors (they now "own" his property, not him; except for broad exceptions under Texas law). But the families are an unsecured creditor; they move to the back of the line, and may find their claims discharged by the court.
And Alex Jones is still spreading lies. Maybe that's because he's well to the east of the Pecos. Sheriffs really don't have a very wide-ranging jurisdiction, ya know....
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