[Peace-discuss] Maddow Meltdown: In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts

[David Johnson]

Maddow Meltdown: In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not
Facts 

 <https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden> Profile picture for user
Tyler Durden

by  <https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden> Tyler Durden 

Sun, 12/29/2019 - 11:25 

Back in September, we
<https://www.zerohedge.com/political/one-america-news-claims-defamation-10-m
illion-lawsuit-against-rachel-maddow> reported that TV network OAN had filed
a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN "really,
literally is paid Russian propaganda."

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement
in court. And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal
adviser.

According to
<https://culttture.com/2019/rachel-maddow-argument-against-oan-lawsuit-is-he
r-words-should-not-be-believed/> Culttture, her lawyers argued in a recent
motion that ".the liberal host was clearly offering up her 'own unique
expression' of her views to capture what she saw as the 'ridiculous' nature
of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential
statement 'of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or
false."

Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. Maddow had previously
claimed, on air, about one of OAN's reporters: 

"In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in
America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda," and added, "Their
on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government
to produce propaganda for that government."

The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries,
however, stands at odds with Maddow's defense. Gries said: "It is very
unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the
sentence in question to be a statement of opinion."

 

Gries continued:  "I am the second most widely-cited cognitive linguist and
sixth most widely-cited living corpus linguist. The field of cognitive
linguistics draws from both linguistics and psychology and studies how
language interacts with cognition."

OAN had filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according
to  <https://apnews.com/9f1a138ee41e4460815a558eb04bb7f4> AP. OAN is a
small, family owned conservative network that is based in San Diego and has
received favorable Tweets from the President. It is seen as a competitor to
Fox News. 

OAN's lawsuit claims that Maddow's comments were retaliation after OAN
President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that
Comcast refuses to carry its channel because "counters the liberal politics
of Comcast's own news channel, MSNBC."

It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow
opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN
employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian
government.

Maddow said: "In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news
outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air
U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce
propaganda for that government."

Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate
a Russian hoax that didn't exist, didn't quite get her facts straight. Big
surprise.

 

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