Rachel Maddow Wins In 9th Circuit; OAN Loses Appeal In Defamation Case

San Diego CA

17 August, 2021

1:57 PM

Description

By Ken Stone, Times of San Diego August 17, 2021 Score one for Rachel Maddow — again. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said a San Diego federal judge was right to throw out a $10 million defamation suit against MSNBC's top-rated host. The opinion of a three-judge panel was posted three weeks after hearing arguments in a virtual hearing based in Pasadena. A lawyer for owners of San Diego-based One America News argued July 27 that Maddow should face trial for calling OAN "literally … paid Russian propaganda" in a 3 1/2-minute segment two years earlier. But in a 3-0 opinion written by Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., the court said: "Maddow's statement is well within the bounds of what qualifies as protected speech under the First Amendment. No reasonable viewer could conclude that Maddow implied an assertion of objective fact. The judgment of the district court is therefore affirmed." Famed attorney Ted Boutrous, representing Maddow and fellow defendants including NBC Universal, said at the YouTube-aired hearing that Herring Networks were "isolating on those six words, stripped of context, a myopic approach that the Supreme Court and this court have rejected because it would destroy the breathing space for lively and informative debate about public issues that the First Amendment protects." He added: "We can't have speech police parsing the words they way Herring is doing. It would really chill valuable speech." Amnon Siegel, representing Herring, wanted Maddow's statement to be taken as an assertion of fact, rather than opinion based on a Daily Beast article telling how an OAN contributor also wrote for Sputnik, a Russian government-affiliated media agency. Maddow, he said, told the New York Times Magazine that the purpose of her show is "to provide good, true stories." "We're talking about truth here," Siegel said. "She's not providing the truth about One America News, and she's not couching it in terms of opinion, either." "She's saying: In this case, they really literally are paid Russian propaganda, and she's doing it very deliberately, and it's extremely damaging to the network." Boutrous called Maddow's statement "a quintessential imaginative expression, rhetorical hyperbole, opinion based on truthful disclosed facts that this court" said the the First Amendment protects" and "a perfectly in-bounds opinion and observation." "OAN can say: No, we're not Russian propaganda," he added. "Different viewers can take a different position…. That's the kind of robust, wide-open debate — vehement, caustic, humorous, biting, denigrating sort of debate about important public issues that New York Times vs. Sullivan was [meant] to protect." This story will be updated. Times of San Diego is an independent online news site covering the San Diego metropolitan area. Our journalists report on politics, crime, business, sports, education, arts, the military and everyday life in San Diego. No subscription is required, and you can sign up for a free daily newsletter with a summary of the latest news.