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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.
Large damages are often reduced, and perhaps what Jones said should be protected speech, or perhaps emotional damages should never be recoverable. But if you are going to make the claim, you probably should look into what actually happened, because you seem to be very much understating both what Jones did and the emotional suffering experienced by the plaintiffs, both of which were way beyond the bar normally needed to recover for emotional damages for defamation in the US.
I think it should be covered under the same parody laws that protected Hustler when they got sued after claiming Falwell lost his virginity with his mom.
Jones is a clown no one should be taking him seriously. Just like Stern and Opie and Anthony and all the other shock jocks who do wild and stupid stuff designed to generate an emotional response for entertainment.
I'm going to guess there's no serious expectation that anyone reading the Hustler story about Falwell having sex with his mom believed this actually reflected reality, that it was a journalistic effort to uncover Falwell's legacy of incest that actually happened. I'm also going to guess that there is a serious expectation that people who listened to Jones claiming that Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors would seriously believe that this indeed reflected reality, that the supposed parents were really a part of some grand conspiracy.
No should listen to Alex Jones and seriously believe his statements are news, any more than Homer is representing a true history of Odeseus' voyage home or the Aneid is the history of how Rome was founded. It's entertainment for people who want their stories to be larger than life.
Then he doesn't get to have it both ways - just like Jon Stewart and 'Clown Nose On, Clown Nose Off'. You can't claim to be telling the truth about what is really going on, the truth that the powerful don't want you to know, then claim "oh no, I'm only a comedian and this is an entertainment show, not a news show, nobody is meant to believe the stories" when it suits you.
'The Lizard People run the world from their secret Moon base that was built by the Nazis' is an entertainment story. 'This shooting never happened, there were no dead children and the people claiming to be their parents are all actors' is not.
What if the entertaining aspect is exaggerating and dramatizing the news until it becomes absurd? I think there should be room for that in the 1st.
Pollution is wrecking frog DNA enough to alter secondary sex characteristics as serious news, expressed as the absurd, the powers that be are so evil they turn frogs gay simply for their twisted delight is an absurd exaggeration, to use a less controversial examples.
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