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At the very minimum he should also apologise for blatantly lying and inventing conspiracy theories about their dead children and refund costs caused by his lying.
And also some reasonable compensation (maybe about 10 000 000 $ per slandered person?).
Why $10M is reasonable? I mean, spreading vile lies is without doubt despicable, but $10M is more than life earnings of most Americans, and that not taking into account future value discounts. Basically, it's a sum that moves you to a category of "never has to work again unless you want to" and maybe the same for their family (depending on the size). I could understand if that was presented as "reasonable punishment" - this is a ruinous amount for the liar, and if you want to ensure nobody lies in such manner ever, it's reasonable to use a huge fine to ensure that. However, as a compensation, I do not understand why it is reasonable that a person who was a victim of a lie (admittedly, a very vile and disgusting one, but still one lie), should instantly become top 1% rich just because of it? I mean, if they suffered huge economic or physical losses because of the lie, I'd understand this, but did they suffer losses like that?
I would not wish to be put through such thing (extreme lies about me and my dead children by someone influential enough to result in idiots and insane people harassing me).
Though I consider being willing to survive through years of that in exchange of massive amount of money such as 10 000 000 $ dollars.
Therefore it seems to me enough to offset damage caused.
And yes, I am not including murders itself in that.
Note also in general I think that transfer of funds to victim should be done more often. You hit someone with a car? That is not your car anymore but goes to a victim. It was not your car or some cheap wreck? 10% of income goes to victim unless huge amount of funds is paid, enough to offset damage you did. You robbed someone? 1000% of what you stole goes to the victims. (note: maybe this is done already in USA). You run automated call spam? Each victim is entitled to 500$. Wage theft? Worker is entitled to 10 times of what they were illegally not paid. Running fraud? You must give back 10 times what you stolen, etc etc.
(if I would be in power to legislate something - then maybe I would end with lower multipliers, but someone losing entire wealth after running large scale fraud seem much more reasonable than going to prison for few months and keeping stolen funds - again, maybe it is problem of local justice system)
"emotional damages" is overused but reasonable in this case. Being victim of top 0.05%* of harassment seems a good reason to get eye-watering amounts of money from chief harasser. In older times other solutions would be used, but this modern one seems preferable.
*1 in 5 000 harassment seems reasonable estimate to me in this case, as in "there are about 168 000 more harassed people in USA and 335 000 000 less harassed ones" but have not explored this one deeply and maybe I was mislead by what reached me.
There's plenty of extreme lies going around, and hardly any of them command such a high price. What does make this particular one cost so much? Is there any evidence it was arrived at through principles, rather than after the fact because people don't like Alex Jones?
I think that many other people should get 10 000 000$ fines for malicious lies. For example Musk for his "Sorry pedo guy. You really did ask for it." tweet and that child bride allegations[1].
And no, I do not buy explanation that convinced jury that "pedo guy" is some standard mild and generic South African insult rather than allegation of raping children.
And people who pushed risky financial instruments while claiming that they are risk-free[2]. With fines waived for unaware low-level pushers in call centers and going into millions for higher-level managers, going into 50 000 000$+ territory at level of CEO. Also when CEO ignored malicious behaviour at lower levels as long as they were profitable rather that ordered it. With jail terms for CEOs that ordered such behaviour. And death penalty for companies while I am at this hobby horse.
[1] Assuming that they were false, I have not verified it deeply.
[2] I got some offer of them and they were deeply misleading and whoever prepared this lies was clueless patsy or evil. Either way this banks would be fined into nonexistence in a just world and if that actions were deliberate by management - they would be all in jail.
Should CNN et al be sued out of existence due to Sandman?
Not familiar with this case, from quick look it does not appear to be as large scale or affecting as many people, or involving blatant log-term and blatantly obvious lies, so I would go with "no".
There was a young kid of even college age visiting DC for a pro life March.
A crazy Native American guy got into his face banging a drum. Sandman smirked.
Media with zero diligence signal boosted a short clip making Sandman basically the face of white supremacy. That is, they turned a young private kid into a national story.
Worse the whole video was available that wholly exonerated any perceived wrong doing by Sandman. Yet the media in their bloodlust didn’t do the tiniest of diligence ran with the story before vetting it at all. Kid was subject to a 2 minute hate based on such gross neglect.
Amazingly "optimistic" of you to think they didn't do any due diligence rather then that they did it and didn't care at all.
They had to watch the video to edit it down to what they showed.
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