374
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
374 points (97.9% liked)
News
23413 readers
3829 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The fine means she's been found guilty, Forbes.
Your use of the word "alleged" is unnecessary, misleading and makes it sound like you're taking the word of notoriously unhinged liar Perjury Greene over that of the FEC.
OP directly quoted article title. The article from Forbes uses allegedly to protect itself from a defamation lawsuit.
Yes yes, I know. What I'm saying is that there's no way they're going to be sued based on going by the determination of the FEC that anyone is guilty, least of all a politician who's known to be a serial liar.
On the other hand, using "alleged" when she HAS been declared guilty by the government agency implies that they may have gotten it wrong and/or that their ruling isn't legally binding. Either would add fuel to her and the rest of the GOP's martyrdom narrative.
If anything, the FTC should begin to fine every instance of a media outlet using "alleged" when someone has legally been found guilty.
I mean yes I hear you. And agree they shouldn't be sued. Doesn't mean she wouldn't try and cost them money to defend it.
It doesn't cost any money to defend against a suit that no judge would accept.
To allow a suit based on the assumption that the FEC was wrong and Forbes must have known so is the kind of insanity that gets a judge removed from the bench in even the most conservative jurisdictions.
So no, there's absolutely no valid excuse for Forbes to use the word in this case.
I mean. It does. Having lawyers on retainer that would defend it costs money. Money that could be better spent on other legal services. I do agree it would be thrown out. But there are plenty of legal things that cost money just to file. Hundreds of dollars to respond to a petition if you file online. It's not "free".
It really doesn't. Lawyers on retainer are on paid no matter whether they have anything to do. That's what being on retainer mean.
It costs nothing to ignore an unlawful legal request, at least not when you already have lawyers on retainer to do exactly that. A publication the size of Forbes ABSOLUTELY do.
There's no legal or economic downside to ommitting "alleged" and it still sends the misleading message that she might be innocent, which could feed into her false martyrdom scam and actually help "earn" her a lot more money than the fine cost.
In conclusion: there's no potential downside to NOT spreading false doubt like that and there's a ton of potential downside to doing it.
Have you ever paid an attorney a retainer? They absolutely use it for every phone call and email pertaining to anything with a case. A retainer is just a down payment. And they draw from it. They don't work for free.
Even if they DIDN'T have a fixed amount set aside for making frivolous lawsuits go away (again, a publication the size of Forbes definitely do), the cost of having the lawyers draw up paperwork saying "fuck off, you don't have a case", only more professionally, is trivial to Forbes.
You can keep yammering on about how not saying "alleged" about a legal certainty would have them sued to bankruptcy all you want but that doesn't change the fact that it just isn't true.
My only point is and always has been, it isn't free to say no
And my point is and has always been that any tiny advantage of misleading their readers like this is multifold overshadowed by the many negative consequences.
That's not how I read what you wrote. You say several times it will "get thrown out of court" like some TV court drama. It still costs money to have that much pull to have the right people know how to throw cases out of court. There are procedures that need to be followed or you look like you don't know anything about law. And the judge with consider it a folly on either side.
Clearly.
That's just a faster way to say "any judge would approve a motion to dismiss immediately" and as I mentioned before, such a motion is completely routine for their in house counsel.
Not anywhere near as much money as you seem to think. Any lawyer worth his salt knows how to draw up a valid motion to dismiss.
Yes, it's called a motion to dismiss. It's one document that everyone with a JD has written many of.
No, the doctor will not consider filing a motion to dismiss a patently ridiculous case "folly on both sides".
You were wrong. It happens to all of us sometimes.
Now please give it a rest and stop making a Supreme Court case out of what would be a summarily dismissed nuisance suit.
And it would still cost Money!
Yes, an absolutely negligible amount that they already pay often to other people who try to hit them with nonsense lawsuits. It's not anywhere near enough to be worth their journalistic integrity.
Now give it a rest and leave me alone.
Free speech lmao