The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media
Voting machine companies threaten “highly dangerous” cases against Fox,
Newsmax and OAN, says Floyd Abrams.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/media/smartmatic-lawsuit-fox-news-newsmax-oan.html
These are legal threats any company, even a giant like Fox Corporation,
would take seriously. And they could be fatal to the dream of a new
“Trump TV,” a giant new media company in the president’s image, and
perhaps contributing to his bottom line. Newsmax and OAN would each like
to become that, and are both burning money to steal ratings from Fox,
executives from both companies have acknowledged. They will need to
raise significantly more money, or to sell quickly to investors, to
build a Fox-style multibillion-dollar empire. But outstanding litigation
with the potential of an enormous verdict will be enough to scare away
most buyers.
And so Newsmax and OAN appear likely to face the same fate as so many of
President Trump’s sycophants, who have watched him lie with impunity and
imitated him — only to find that he’s the only one who can really get
away with it. Mr. Trump benefits from presidential immunity, but also he
has an experienced fabulist’s sense of where the legal red lines are,
something his allies often lack. Three of his close aides were convicted
of lying, and Michael Cohen served more than a year in prison. (Trump
pardoned Michael Flynn and commuted the sentence of Roger Stone.)