There will never be justice for the families who lost loved ones at the Sandy Hook (Ct) massacre.
But Alex Jones will pay for his lies, his claims that the massacre of children and educators was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to build support for gun control.
A jury in Texas awarded one set of parents $45 in punitive damages in addition to $4 million in compensatory damages for the pain and anguished he inflicted on the survivors.
This is the first trial. There are more to come.
Others will have to explain why Jones shamelessly exploited the suffering of Sandy Hook families. If it was greed, then it is just that he lose his ill-gotten gains.
What a vile, evil man.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just read this and was so relieved to see the jury did not buy the many lies of Alex Jones.
According to the Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/alex-jones-ordered-to-pay-punitive-damages-to-sandy-hook-parents-11659736459?st=l03jfizmhm8sew6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink the $45.2 million punitive damages was awarded to indicate that the court “recognizes that the popular conspiracy theorist went far beyond accepted norms in repeatedly calling the tragedy a hoax.”
I can’t help wondering exactly what are “accepted norms” in characterizing a tragedy as a hoax &, oh yeah, defaming the victims’ families to the point where they receive death threats & have to go into hiding?
I just hope he doesn’t manage to worm his way out from under this by having his business declare bankruptcy after siphoning off the funds, like those other fine humanitarians, the Sacklers.
He has already declared bankruptcy but he has multiple entities and reportedly takes in hundreds of millions a year selling vitamin supplements and survival gear.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
He could get free room and board in jail, where he belongs.
‘Snake oil salesmen (or ladies)’ in our society are seldom held to account, and often manages to accumulate fortunes by stealing from people. Is this ‘Freedom of speech’ or ‘Freedom to lie and rob’?
From what I read this morning, Jones started moving his money into a shell company where the only name listed is his (there are no employees in this shell company), before he filed for bankruptcy.
I had a roommate in Brooklyn who asked me to be the “owner” of a shell company, saying “you gotta sign a piece of paper saying you own it…but it doesn’t exist and there’s no liability.” And guess who’d take the fall for fraud if it all went south? Greed, for lack of a better word, is {expletive]. What it does to people (smh)….
Good!
Typo in your headline, Diane.
Thank you, Duane. I think I have done my proof reading but errors get through anyway. Even big ones, like this one.
De nada. We all make em.
Did not Marjorie Taylor Greene once say that Sandy Hook was a fake and that all the people involved were actors?
Even snakes have more morals than Alex Jones. Lets keep on going with the lawsuits! Next up should be the billion $$$ lawsuit filed against FOX News by voting machine company Dominion. Yes, we have “free speech”…..and with that “free speech” comes consequences. Let the games begin!
Judge to Alex: “You believe everything you say is true, but it isn’t,” she pointedly told him. “Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true. It does not protect you. It is not allowed. You’re under oath.”
Quoted from trial: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/why-the-alex-jones-donald-trump-connection-is-so-dangerous/ar-AA10mVPV?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3e49e64e3f27478fa264f148db6341f1
This is a truly amazing moment in American judicial history. Have there ever been times when a major figure in journalism was called out by a judge?
There have certainly been times when a major journalistic player was allowed to peddle notions that were supposition. The racist stirrings of Raleigh News and Observer editor Josephus Daniels comes to mind as does the Yellow Journalism of the same era. There have been many more times when governmental figures have been allowed free reign to say whatever they wanted (think the Gulf of Tonkin and more), but this seems a watershed moment.
Being “under oath” has a special place in our jurisprudence. Perhaps journalists should labor forever under their own oath to do well by the truth as it comes to them. Jean Paul Marat arguably created a tension in Parisian society that led to the Terror during the French Revolution. Did he have a political right and a moral duty to say the false but inflammatory things he did to rile the bread-starved people of Paris? There is a part of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen that explicitly states what every person really knows: Your rights extend until they harm the rights of a neighbor.
Perhaps we will someday restore the balance. How about now.
I have almost never read a news story about an event that I was involved in that was 100 percent accurate. Accuracy in reporting is aspirational. And mistakes happen. That’s why our laws about reporting are as they are. They strike a balance. Ofc, people like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones aren’t journalists. The ordinary laws governing speech apply to them. However, as Jones just learned, all speech is not free, and with good reasons.
I have no idea about what one does in response to entire “news” networks, like Fox, that flout truthfulness as a goal in reporting all the time. I wish I did. Alas, social sanction does not seem to work. The more they lie, the bigger their ratings, the more money the Murdochs make.