I have a question for our Legal Beagles, If a organization like a media conglomerate, pushes a story that they know is false yet seems plausible on the surface for a political agenda ends up getting the person or organization the story is about hurt or killed, can they be sued under civil law?
I wonder about that because the Martin/Zimmerman incident to me seems to now come under the same premise of yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. And as the Supreme Court has already ruled that type of speech is not protected under the first amendment.
I say that after carefully looking the story over and seeing the willful blindness toward all of the facts. And with the knowledge now that the story was pushed out of D.C. after a Civil Rights lawyer/activist got involved in the first place. My take: The goal here is to inflame, (Literally), portions of the United States populace into violent activity.
Why? On the Media’s side, that sort of activity means Money and lots of it from advertisers trying to sell everything from pain Meds to Insurance to feminine hygiene products. And on the Political side? Chaos is a wonderful thing to “get things done” especially since rapid action is demanded and stealth agenda’s can be instituted more easily.
In conclusion we are all being railroaded to a destination that we really will not be happy to arrive at. And to counter that we need, no... MUST show that words and actions when willfully taken to incite such behaviors have major and lasting consequences to the ones who pushed for them.
Yes, absolutely. The generic term for what the media is engaged in is "defamation."
I'm sure some shark is looking carefully at the media reports that came out about two weeks after the incident. Early reports were fairly sterile, but after two weeks they changed into making false accusations.
I don't believe there's a lot of case law on this issue. Newspapers and News organizations in the past did NOT lie intentionally. If it happened that something printed was NOT true, they ran a retraction. And their lawyers taught them to apologize - that stops people from suing. Citizens tend to be understanding of 'mistakes' when those mistake are accidents ...
But you make a good point. My guess - and I know nothing about this subject - is that if a death happens because of intentional media lies - fanned up violence by the MSM - there could be a 'win' by the victims and victims family. I would hope so.