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Alex Jones just lost a lawsuit for defamation for claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the reward was $965bil (after a previous $50mil verdict so its over a billion) for defamation and emotional damages. Jones is a kook, and his claim was both false, and outrageous; but I'm not 100 percent sure he even should have lost. Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say. As far as the defamation part if he claimed particular people created the hoax then I can understand a loss of a defamation lawsuit, but if its just a general comment along the lines of "I think it's a hoax" I don't think he should face any legal penalty for it. And a billion dollars for spouting off some nonsense seems ridiculous to me.
I suspect that he will appeal (I understand he tried to appeal the previous case all the way up to the Supreme Court, who refused to accept the case), and that the case won't be overturned on appeal, but perhaps the damages will be reduced.
There was also some talk about harassment and death threats against people suing Jones. If it can be proven that Jones was behind it I suppose that could be ground for a lawsuit (and perhaps even criminal charges depending on the details), but that would be a separate issue than defamation or emotional distress over the original comment.
I hate these huge judgements. Justice can still be served without having to destroy someone's career which otherwise should be protected by the 1st amendment. Did these survivors and victims really experience $1 billion worth of trauma? At what point does justice cross into thirst for revenge? I hope Alex Jones fights this successfully to get it reduced to something that will not totally ruin him, not even because I agree with him, but this has a chilling effect on anyone whose career involves speech.
Where does the 1st come into this? Rather, how does the amount of a judgment make it more or less relevant?
I don't think anyone's claim to emotional trauma should be sufficient to ruin someone's career, which should have 1st Amendment protections. How much responsibility does Alex Jones have over how his listeners respond to one of his conspiracy theories? What if 911 victims and survivors felt traumatized, should they also get a share of his income? You put some guy on the stand who he alleges was traumatized despite no laws having been broken and the jury will eat it up.
The Supreme Court has decided that false claims that cause harm to other people are not protected by the First Amendment. Sure, sometimes it's hard to discern whether or not a claim is true, and it's fair to say courts should avoid intervening in those cases. But in this case, the claims were egregious, obvious lies that caused people to have to flee their homes multiple times for their own personal safety. What would be the public benefit in protecting such speech?
The public benefit is that having people like Alex Jones active in media space makes it harder for the government (or private entities for that matter) to state fake tragedies. I can sleep easy knowing that Sandy Hook was real, because if there was good evidence it was fake Alex Jones would have found it.
This is an interesting argument. But what I wonder is can there be "professional conspiracy theorists" in the ilk of Alex Jones who would perform due diligence in finding potential fake tragedies if they didn't have to publish these egregiously false reports. In this case, Alex Jones did some level of research on the topic (how much real research I have no idea), but then reported obviously false claims and really did do massive harm to the victims of an already grieving family.
In an attempt to have the cake of your argument and eat it too. Alex (or others of his kind) would need to do this verification research, but not publish unless they find real evidence. But my understanding is that these Alex-like people get most of their income by being loud and boisterous, so idk if they could substantiate good evidence without parading around the falsities like Alex did in this case.
And moreover, I'm curious if you (or anyone else here) can think of an example where a conspiracy theorist in this modern internet age has actually uncovered a real faked tragedy before. Cause if Alex and his ilk are 0/n on cases. It doesn't really prove their track record, and the cost of their proceeding wouldn't be worth the peace of mind that your outlining here.
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