Why Can't You Sue Them?
The old saying: "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."
Ovis: The Future of News
In the world of information overload, we hear a multitude of lies every day. Whether it’s Donald Trump calling the truth “fake news” or Donald Trump making “fake news” the lack of accountability in the media world is shocking.
The law says you can’t sue people for their opinions or speculation. Everybody has an opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Too many people, however, insist that their opinion is a fact. And when you hear it on the news, people assume it must be factual.
The explosion of fake facts took place years ago on NextDoor, and in right-wing blogs across the country. Trump saturated the mainstream media with lies and they hardly knew how to counteract him. Then, the mainstream media actors began peddling their opinions as “facts.”
Enter OVIS: The Future of News - We're on a mission to end fake news by incentivizing the truth.
In December 2021, Linton Johnson launched the world’s first blockchain powered news network, which allows everyday people to end fake news by incentivizing the truth. Linton Johnson is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of OVIS. He’s an award-winning journalist and communications executive as well as an entrepreneur with a degree in journalism from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the nation’s top journalism school. He is my guest in this week’s episode of Pamela Price Unfiltered.
🎧 Listen to Episode 16 of Pamela Price Unfiltered now on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, or wherever you tune in.
Here’s what we’re covering today:
Why can't you just sue the media or others for slander or defamation?
Why is there a different standard for defamation for public figures?
What is OVIS News and why should we support it?
What are you not hearing from mainstream media about our new DA’s personnel moves?
How do you prove a lie is a lie?
The law requires a peculiar analysis when you are trying to prove that a lie is a lie. Under the law, only statements verifiable as true or false qualify as actionable. The case is called Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.
To assess whether a reasonable person would perceive it as factual, you must
analyzing the statement’s context,
analyze the language
look at where the statement is made (the medium) and
Consider the circumstances
There are even more restrictions on a public figure’s ability to call out a lie.
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the United States Supreme Court stated that public officials are required to show that statements about them were made with “actual malice” and clearly about them. Generally, public figures are “fair game” because the First Amendment protects free speech, especially when the speech is about the government.
Looking back at the political theatre we witnessed in 2023 and 2024, proving whether a reasonable person believed the political attacks greatly depends on how much the person actually knows about the criminal justice system. If you know how it works, most of the foolishness that was spread in our community was easily proven to be false. But, most people don’t know how it works, and therefore, people were vulnerable to every lie anybody wanted to tell.
The tactic was “let’s have a press conference and make a bunch of inflammatory statements about the DA and then people will support the recall.”
Bringing a lawsuit to protect one’s good name and reputation is not so easily done. Defamation cases are tagged as SLAPP cases - short for strategic lawsuits against public participation.
Two professors George W. Pring and Penelope Canan coined the term SLAPP suit in the 1980s after they noticed a surge in lawsuits filed to silence public criticism by citizens. The professors were concerned about lawsuits brought by developers, businesses and politicians.
Anti-SLAPP laws are meant to provide a remedy to SLAPP suits. Anti-SLAPP laws are intended to prevent people from using courts, and potential threats of a lawsuit, to intimidate people who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
It was originally intended to protect everyday people from corporations, businesses or politicians.
Under most anti-SLAPP statutes, the person sued makes a motion to dismiss the case because it involves speech on a matter of public concern.
The person who is bringing the case must immediately show that they will probably win the case.
The anti-SLAPP motion stops the whole case, and
The plaintiff must show that he has most of the evidence to support their claim.
If the person doesn’t have most of the evidence they need right at the beginning, the case is dismissed.
And then, that person who lost the case is required to pay the defendant’s attorney’s fees, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.
So, anti-SLAPP motions protect the First Amendment as they were intended to do. But in the information age, when someone can make a false statement or accusation and it is instantly broadcast, there is little you can do to change people’s opinions.
Indeed in 1710, Jonathan Swift wrote:
If a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect . . .
Enter: OVIS NEWS and Linton Johnson
Linton Johnson, the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of OVIS News has spent more than 30 years as a communications executive, and an award-winning primetime anchor, investigative reporter/producer, and writer for NBC and ABC news stations as well as a radio personality popular stations in Arizona and France.
OVIS’ mission is to incentivize the truth by funding the investigative reporting of hot topics and high profile cases.
🎧 Subscribe to YouTube to watch Episode 16 of Pamela Price Unfiltered with Linton Johnson.
We know that people don’t trust the media. Most folks recognize it’s all in the slant of each news organization. Six (6) major corporations control everything we see and hear in mainstream media.
One reason the news is so inadequate is because they leave out so much. They tell people a piece of the story - the part they want us to hear - and leave out the whole rest of the story. Ratings and clicks are what drive the news. Editors, not the reporters decide what will get the most “clicks” and “clicks” -not truth - is what drives revenue.
OVIS is designed to address that part of the problem as well by forcing journalists who accept the assignment to write the whole story. OVIS main goal is to stop fake news before it ever happens. Linton Johnson explains how OVIS News lets the consumers drive the angles that people want to know about, increasing both the reliability and depth of the reporting. His best advice is to consider different and multiple sources to get the true facts. You cannot rely on just one source to get it right.
The Media’s Double Standard
One of my team at the DA’s office coined a new term for the biased media coverage of our work: telelievision.
The lack of objectivity and bias displayed by local TV anchors and other media actors was blatantly and painfully obvious. Everything we did was “click bait.” One subject that reflects the double standard for my predecessor and now, my successor, is personnel decisions. The media’s opinions about my personnel decisions were the hotbed of cultivation for the recall.
Post recall - is anyone watching the new DA’s personnel decisions?
In case you missed it, in her first 100 days in office, DA Ursula Jones Dickson has fired at least ten (10) attorneys, another eight (8) left and one attorney was placed on Administrative Leave. Six of the nineteen (19) lawyers impacted by her personnel decisions are Black.
DA Jones Dickson has fired eleven (11) staff members and placed one person on Administrative Leave. Eleven of the 12 staff members impacted by her personnel decisions are Black or Latino.
Her decisions represent a “whitening” of an office with a long history of racial discrimination and bias, and created the impression that she has targeted Black employees.
She has transferred dozens of lawyers to entry-level jobs, including seasoned attorneys with specific expertise doing the work they were hired to do, and rehired at least one attorney who resigned under a cloud of prosecutorial misconduct into a leadership position in her administration.
She fired two seasoned prosecutors with decades of experience in the Public Accountability Unit and reassigned the Chief of the Division. She dismantled the exceptional team of lawyers that was driving the groundbreaking work of the Consumer Justice Bureau, including the Livermore vaping manufacturer case, the auto and homeowner insurance fraud cases, and the criminal Grand Jury indictment of Radius Recycling for environmental crimes.
Her assignment of Senior Assistant Deputy DA Catherine Kobal to oversee the death penalty and resentencing cases and withdraw the sentencing recommendations made under my administration is riddled with major conflicts of issues and appears to be a rush to cover up decades of prosecutorial misconduct.
Kobal’s father, retired Judge Jeffrey Horner, presided over at least a half dozen of the death penalty cases where we found evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and Racial Justice Act violations. Judge Horner presided over Ernest Dykes case, the first case where notes proving prosecutorial misconduct were discovered, which triggered federal Judge Vincent Chhabria to order us to review all of the death penalty cases.
Where is the NBC investigation of these devastating actions? I’ll wait.
One of the most disheartening actions taken by the new DA in her first 100 days was the dismantling of the Organized Retail Theft Crimes Unit for Alameda County (ORCA).
In the fall of 2023, we won a $2 million grant from the Governor’s office to prosecute organized retail theft. I matched the grant with $2 million from our Consumer Trust Funds that could be used for that purpose. We formed a prosecution team (ORCA) which trained extensively under the grant for more than 90 days.
In 2024, ORCA worked closely with CHP and other local and federal police agencies throughout Alameda County. ORCA trained Loss Prevention Agents, tracked arrests, cases, warrants, and different criminal enterprises. The ORCA team was in direct contact with other DA offices to coordinate the prosecutions.
In her first 100 days, Jones Dickson disbanded ORCA by transferring the attorneys and firing the lead investigator.
There are no attorneys or investigators left who have been trained under the grant or have the quality and depth of relationships with law enforcement that our team built over the last year of my administration. There are no media stories about this devastating development either.
The call to action is vigilance. People should pay as much attention to the actions of the appointed District Attorney as they did to the actions of the elected District Attorney. The media’s silence on her actions is no excuse for our failure to hold her accountable. Her decision to accept campaign contributions from law enforcement also tells us where her loyalties lie.
At the end of the day, DA Jones Dickson’s actions in her first 100 days to disrupt and dismantle all of the initiatives of my administration have turned back the clock on justice and have not made us any safer.