Glen Beck is being sued.

I've been unable to track down any of the offending broadcasts to hear what was said - anyone have better luck than me?
 
marplots said:
I've been unable to track down any of the offending broadcasts to hear what was said - anyone have better luck than me?
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Well, I heard it at the time live. If you really want, I will go rummage. But this individual was identified down to home address. If there was ever a case, he wins.
 
abaddon said:
Well, I heard it at the time live. If you really want, I will go rummage. But this individual was identified down to home address. If there was ever a case, he wins.
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I did find this, part of a show after the subject was cleared. Mostly innuendo as far as I can tell. Beck is great at putting dots up and asking his audience to connect them without making outright claims.



The archive of past shows I found had earlier shows and later shows, but May 8th show was missing. (That's a date specifically mentioned in the lawsuit.)
 
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Has Beck reacted to this publicly?

I wonder if he will try to spin it for his audience that he's been railroaded and targeted. After all the FBI did say he was a 'person of interest' and just look at him. (wink. wink. nudge. nudge.) What other conclusion could one come to?
 
No public response from Beck. His owners may have him choke-chained, given his potential for further screwing things up.
 
http://news.yahoo.com/glenn-beck-must-face-saudis-lawsuit-over-boston-170459994.html
The conservative commentator Glenn Beck failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by a Saudi Arabian student who Beck repeatedly accused of involvement in and being the "money man" behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
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This will ensure that Beck gets some publicity; not the kind he wants though.

Saris rejected defense arguments that the lawsuit be dismissed because Alharbi was a "limited purpose" or "involuntary" public figure who failed to show that Beck acted with "actual malice," meaning he lied or recklessly disregarded the truth.

"Choosing to attend a sporting event as one of thousands of spectators is not the kind of conduct that a reasonable person would expect to result in publicity," Saris wrote.
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Kind of close to blaming the victim if you ask me.

Ranb
 
Ranb said:
http://news.yahoo.com/glenn-beck-must-face-saudis-lawsuit-over-boston-170459994.html

This will ensure that Beck gets some publicity; not the kind he wants though.


Kind of close to blaming the victim if you ask me.

Ranb
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He was, I think , trying to tyake advantage of the fact that slander laws are much looser if someone is considered a public figure. Basically, you can get away with saying things about public figures that can't be said about private ones.

Not so much victim blaming as a completely self-centered, cyncial, sociopathic, and transparent attempt to avoid being judged for his donkeyholery.
 
American defamation laws are a joke. A public figure should be held to higher standards because the potential for damage is much higher.
 
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bit_pattern said:
American defamation laws are a joke. A public figure should be held to higher standards because the potential for damage is much higher.
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The question here is not whether Glen Beck is a public figure (obviously he is), but whether the person suing him for defamation/slander/libel (I'm not sure which is the right word here) is a public figure. The judge rejected Beck's argument that the plaintiff was a public figure, so I don't see what the basis is for saying that American defamation laws are a joke.
 
OK, so my interpretation was somewhat muddled.

But...

The notion of whether a person is a public figure or not is the joke. Why should being a public figure leave you open to being defamed at will? An example that springs to mind is the orchestrated and relentless attacks on Dr Michael Mann's reputation, people can say all sorts of seriously defamatory about him and his body of work and he has no recourse. While being far from any kind of law-talking guy, I am unaware of any comparable defence in other English speaking jurisdictions. Such a defence certainly would not stand in Australia or the UK.
 
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bit_pattern said:
OK, so my interpretation was somewhat muddled.

But...

The notion of whether a person is a public figure or not is the joke. Why should being a public figure leave you open to being defamed at will? An example that springs to mind is the orchestrated and relentless attacks on Dr Michael Mann's reputation, people can say all sorts of seriously defamatory about him and his body of work and he has no recourse. While being far from any kind of law-talking guy, I am unaware of any comparable defence in other English speaking jurisdictions. Such a defence certainly would not stand in Australia or the UK.
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Well if you want to know how this standard came to be law, here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

It seems like the case could have been dismissed on other grounds (and probably should have, at a lower level than the Supreme Court), but it was not, and now we have this legal precedent.
 
Puppycow said:
Well if you want to know how this standard came to be law, here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

It seems like the case could have been dismissed on other grounds (and probably should have, at a lower level than the Supreme Court), but it was not, and now we have this legal precedent.
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Thanks. I'll have a look at it. I still think it's a crazy precedent though. The US take on freedom of speech is weighted far too heavily on the negative side, in my humble opinion. But, that's a cultural thing, the US doesn't have the same traditions of social democracy as I am personally used to.

ETA:

Hmm, interesting historical context - thanks again!
 
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bit_pattern said:
The notion of whether a person is a public figure or not is the joke. Why should being a public figure leave you open to being defamed at will?
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This is by no means limited to the US, it works the same way in Europe too. (In principle, not in degree.) The idea is to avoid stifling political debate -- the line between heated, polemical arguments and defamation of a politician as a person can be blurry in politics.

Also, it does not mean that public figures are open to defamation at will, it just raises the bar for a defamation case to succeed.
 
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ju...athon-bombing/ar-BBvt2gg?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=iehp
In an order issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris in Massachusetts ruled that Beck must identify at least two officials from the Department of Homeland Security who, according to Beck, gave TheBlaze the information purportedly linking Alharbi to the bombing.
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I can't understand why anyone would talk to a reporter and expect to remain anonymous.

About a dozen states have shield laws that offer journalists an absolute privilege protecting them from revealing anonymous sources, and more than 20 others offer qualified protections.
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I've never read any of these laws. But do the states which absolutely protect sources allow a reporter to absolutely protect themselves against libel simply by claiming they have an anonymous source they need to protect?
 
Ranb said:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ju...athon-bombing/ar-BBvt2gg?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=iehp

I can't understand why anyone would talk to a reporter and expect to remain anonymous.
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There's no absolute certainty to remain anonymous, but there certainly is a heightened expectation to remain so. This order only came after a court case was filed, two years ago, after depositions in which Beck could have corroborated his story with witnesses who were willing to go on record, and after the judge weighed all interests.

Then there's NYT vs. Sullivan, earlier mentioned in the thread. In case of a public figure the burden of proof is much higher for the plaintiff, and he must essentially show malice from the reporter - which means that a half-baked story arising out of the depositions may convince the judge there was no malice involved. And most journalists go after public figures in their stories, not after no-names.

And lastly, the journalist may decide to play martyr. As the article you linked to mentions, Judith Miller spent 3 months in jail before outing Scooter Libby as the source of the Valerie Plame story.

Oh, and who claimed here that Glenn Beck is a journalist? :p

Ranb said:
I've never read any of these laws. But do the states which absolutely protect sources allow a reporter to absolutely protect themselves against libel simply by claiming they have an anonymous source they need to protect?
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I don't know these shield laws either, and IANAL, but I hope the downside of protecting your sources is that the court treats them as non-existent. That would only be fair.

What puzzles me is why the article mentions that Massachusetts does not have a shield law. The case serves in federal court, not state court, so I don't see what state law has to do with it.
 
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