Could radio be next?: The NY Times reports this a.m. that the owner of voting machine company Smartmatic "sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name—and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case." His lawyer claims, “We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this.” You can't lose your license because of speech (Stop the Steal, COVID Hoax, Pizzagate), but you may have to sell your license to pay damages.
When I posted mid-March regarding the chance of losing your license over broadcasting fake news, there were over one hundred dead in the US from COVID-19. The pandemic generating an individual or class action suit against a talk radio station owner on behalf of one person or the +300,000 dead is not so far-fetched now.
