Stunning: Facebook court filing admits their 'fact checks' are just a matter of opinion

American Thinker ^ | 12/10/2021 | Thomas Lifson

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"Stossel fails to plead facts establishing that Meta acted with actual malice—which, as a public figure, he must.”

This is the gospel according to the unanimous 1964 Warren Court decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. Which stands or falls on the veracity of its claim that

". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”

Recall, dear reader, the controversy which produced the Bill of Rights. The Federalists advocating the adoption of the Constitution had quite enough on their plates without assaying to modify anyone’s rights other than was explicitly stipulated in the Constitution. The Antifederalists objected to the absence of a bill of rights in the unamended constitution, but the Federalists’ concern about enumerating rights was that

1. Since rights were a matter of common law, a comprehensive listing of rights did not - could not - exist in any one place. Thus, any attempt to enumerate them all exactly and specifically and without creating more controversy already was being promoted would be a fool’s errand. And,
2. Any enumeration of rights would tend to be used, not as a floor under the rights of the people and the States but as a ceiling over them.

However, the Federalists concluded that their argument for the unamended proposed constitution without a bill of rights was all too likely to fail of adoption in Virginia in particular - which would have been fatal to nationwide adherence to it. They therefore conceded the point by promising prompt adoption of a bill of rights by amendment - and the Bill of Rights as we know it is the result. But the Ninth and Tenth Amendments

Amendment 9

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

and

Amendment 10

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

do not specify any individual rights but they are the answer to the second of the concerns listed above.

In the century and a half prior to 1964, the First Amendment was never understood to compromise the right - as understood at the adoption of the BOR - “public figures” or anyone else to sue for libel. As Antonin Scalia put it privately, the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”

Sullivan is simply legislation by judicial fiat. SCOTUS, given any opportunity, should either override it outright, or somehow eviscerate the "actual malice” hurdle imposed by Sullivan. Certainly the “public figure” standard for requiring proof of actual malice is utterly unconscionable. It - Sullivan generally - assumes that the “public figure” can take care of himself in the PR arena. “The media” as we know and despise it exercises monopolistic control of “the narrative” and is the sole beneficiary, almost the creation, of Sullivan.