All The President's Lawyers: No Bill Thrill? - September 19th, 2019.Now Posting At Substack - August 27th, 2020.It is not any sort of First Amendment violation. Criticism - even unfair criticism - is not censorship. You may have political problems, but you do not have First Amendment problems. When you've got a government actor who doesn't like something he's seen and tries to diminish its credibility, then you've got real problems." That's where this bumps up against the First Amendment. But Seaton says the term "fake news" is "an attempt to undermine the speaker. "I'm accustomed to all kinds of criticism for what we do that comes with the job," he said. And Seaton, perhaps enjoying the spotlight, keeps keeps doubling down: Journalists should not encourage misunderstandings of core First Amendment concepts, and absolutely should not be encouraging Americans to think that they can sue over political insults and opinions. Jay Seaton and the Daily Sentinel are being irresponsible and reckless. But that doesn't transform protected rhetoric into a provably false statement of fact. And of course Senator Scott was trying to diminish the paper's credibility. Senator Scott's insult-laden opinion was about politics, at the very core of First Amendment protection. In other words, the context made it even clearer that the term "fake news" was being used to offer an opinion about the paper's speculation and bias, not to accuse it of falsifying a specific fact. Scott's tweet made it clear he was deriding the story for speculating about his reasons for delaying the bill without full information, not claiming that the Daily Sentinel was fabricating a fact. Moreover, whether a statement is factual is always analyzed in the statement's full context. "Fake news" is not a provably false statement of fact - as Jay Seaton admits in the very column in which he threatens to sue over it, it's a general pejorative. Only provably false statements of fact can be defamatory. If filed, legal experts said it would be the first suit of its kind, potentially setting a legal definition for what is considered fake news and what is not.ĭAMMIT NPR THAT'S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. Naturally, the ludicrous spectacle of nominal journalists threatening to sue politicians over criticism drew national attention, much of it simply awful and misleading on the relevant law: To borrow a phrase from another famous Twitter user, I’ll see you in court. Scott has defamed this company and me as its leader. Words have real meaning in this business. I don’t think I can sit back and take this kind of attack from an elected official. Imagine the backlash if this newspaper publicly assailed someone based on no facts and invented things out of thin air for the purposes of impugning their character. Worse, he made his false statement knowingly for the purpose of diminishing the only real asset this newspaper has: its credibility. That said, there is a difference between criticism of a news story, editorial stance or perceived bias and what Sen. It is important for newspapers to have thick skins, to absorb criticism when it comes our way and not respond to every slight, real or perceived. It attacks the very reason for our existence. True, this term has become part of the national vernacular as some kind of general pejorative, but I take this allegation from Sen. than take this for the empty non-specific bluster that it is, Jay Seaton freaked out: You may have a barrel of ink but it just splashed in your face. They haven't contacted me to get any information on why the bill has been delayed but choose to run a fake news story demanding I run the bill. They have no facts, as usual, and tried to call me out on SB 40 know as the CORA bill. The very liberal GJ Sentinel is attempting to apply pressure for me to move a bill. Scott responded with a tweet saying " "We have our own fake news in Grand Junction," linking to a longer statement: The origin of the spat is a Daily Sentinel column urging Scott to move a public records bill forward and suggesting that he was holding it up. He's angry because State Senator Ray Scott derided a story in the Sentinel as "fake news." Jay Seaton, publisher of the Grand Junction, Colorado Daily Sentinel, is angry.
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