Alex Jones is facing a steep price for his lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre – $49.3 million in damages and counting, for claiming the most The country’s murderous hoax was a punitive salvo in a nascent war against harmful misinformation.
But what does this week’s verdict, the first of three Sandy Hook-related cases against Jones to be decided, mean for the broader disinformation ecosystem, a world of social media-fueled election denial, skepticism COVID-19 and other dubious claims the conspiracy theorist Infowars helped build?
“I think a lot of people see this as kind of a swipe at fake news, and it’s important to realize that defamation law deals with a very particular type of fake news,” said Eugene Volokh, professor of the First Amendment at UCLA. Law School.
US courts have long held that defamatory statements – lies that harm a person’s or company’s reputation – are not protected as free speech, but lies about other matters, such as science, history or government are. For example, saying that COVID-19 isn’t real isn’t defamatory, but spreading lies about a doctor treating coronavirus patients is.
That distinction is why Jones, who attacked parents of Sandy Hook victims and claimed the 2012 shooting was staged with actors to enforce gun control, is being forced to pay while Holocaust deniers of the Holocaust, flat earthers and vaccine skeptics are free to publish their theories. without too much fear of a judgment of several million dollars.
“Alex Jones was attacking individuals,” said Stephen D. Solomon, a law professor and founding editor of New York University’s First Amendment Watch. “And that’s important. A lot of misinformation does not target individuals.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, the parents of one of the 20 freshmen killed at the Connecticut school in 2012, said they hoped a large-money verdict against Jones would have a chilling effect on him and others who peddle false information for profit.
“I ask that you remove the mouthpiece of Alex Jones and all others who believe they can profit from fear and misinformation,” Wesley Ball said in his closing argument Friday. “The gold rush of fear and misinformation must end, and it must end today.”
Jones, who has since acknowledged the shooting was real, claimed his statements about Sandy Hook were protected by the First Amendment. He even showed up to court with “Save the 1st” scrawled on a piece of tape over his mouth.
But despite the public theater, Jones was never able to make that argument in court. After Jones failed to comply with orders to turn over critical evidence, a judge entered a default judgment for the plaintiffs and jumped straight to the punishment phase.
Jones’ attorney Andino Reynal told the jury during closing arguments that a significant judgment would have a chilling effect on people seeking to hold governments to account.
“You have already sent a message. A message for the first time to a talk show host, to all talk show hosts, that their level of care needs to change,” Reynal told jurors.
Free speech experts say any chilling effect should be limited to people who freely spread false information, not journalists or other citizens who make good faith efforts to find out the truth about a case.
“You have to look at this particular case and ask yourself, what exactly are you relaxing?” said Solomon.
“The kind of speech that defames parents who have lost their children in a massacre is perhaps the kind of speech you want to deter. You want to chill this talk,” Solomon said. “That’s the message that potentially the jury wanted to send here, that this is unacceptable in a civilized society.”
As for Jones, Reynal said he won’t be leaving anytime soon. It will remain on air as they appeal the verdict, one of the most significant and high-profile decisions in a defamation case in recent years.
Among them: a gadfly ordered in February to pay a South Carolina mayor $50 million after accusing her in emails of committing a crime and being unfit to hold office; a former tenant sentenced in 2016 to pay $38.3 million for posting a website accusing a real estate investor of running a Ponzi scheme; and a New Hampshire mortgage provider ordered in 2017 to pay three businessmen $274 million after posting billboards accusing them of drug trafficking and extortion.
“These kind of damages and verdicts have a chilling effect,” Volokh said. “They are intended to act as a deterrent to lies that damage people’s reputations.”