Alex Jones and the Right to Offend – IOTW Report

Alex Jones and the Right to Offend

Monday, 8 August 2022, 10:15 MJA Uncategorized 20

American Thinker:
By Ed Brodow

On Dec. 14, 2012, a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six staffers.  Alex Jones, a controversial far-right talk show host, called the Sandy Hook massacre a U.S. government hoax, staged using crisis actors, to serve as a pretext for gun control.  Parents of one of the slain children filed a defamation suit against Jones, claiming that followers of Jones had harassed them and sent them death threats for years in the false belief that they were lying about their son’s death.

Jones’s defense was his right to free speech and that he was not responsible for the harassment.  He lost.  The jury awarded the parents $45.2 million in punitive damages on top of $4.1 million in compensatory damages — another example of outrageous damage verdicts that plague the legal system.

Freedom of speech is coming under attack from all directions.  The primary assault is based on the existence of a new “right”: the right not to be offended.  It is claimed by many on the left that the right not to be offended is more important than the right to free expression.

Our colleges and universities have fallen victim to this new “right.”  The feelings of students often constitute sufficient justification for campus censorship.  If a conservative speaker offends some of the students, that speaker can be denied a platform.  “The belief that free speech rights don’t include the right to speak offensively is now firmly entrenched on campuses and enforced by repressive speech or harassment codes,” wrote attorney Wendy Kaminer in The Atlantic.

The problem is spreading to the mainstream.  In the 2010 case of Nurre v. Whitehead, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that school authorities can deny students’ rights to free speech just to keep other students from being offended.  The courts are “allowing schools the discretion to let an offended minority control a cowed majority,” constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead wrote in the Huffington Post.  “There is no way to completely avoid giving offense,” he said.  “At some time or other, someone is going to take offense at something someone else says or does.  It’s inevitable.  Such politically correct thinking has resulted in a host of inane actions, from the Easter Bunny being renamed ‘Peter Rabbit’ to Christmas Concerts being dubbed ‘Winter’ Concerts.” more here

20 Comments on Alex Jones and the Right to Offend

  3. Not so fast, Sparky. Texas law is rather clear as far as punitive damage caps as to Alex Jones. But don’t let the truth or reality get in the way of a good story. Right?

    Texas law caps punitive (exemplary) damages at twice the compensatory damage award plus $750K. Moreover, an exemplary damage award requires a unanimous jury and only ten of the twelve jurors agreed on the original $4.1M compensatory award.

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  5. This may eventually all be overturned. Alex Jones did not get a jury trial to determine his guilt – the judge unconstitutionally defaulted him. She claimed he didn’t comply to submitting information so he was found guilty by the court. This was just a penalty show trial. It is going to be interesting to see them justify he didn’t turn over information when they also claimed his lawyer accidentally gave him his entire cell phone data, not just what was requested.

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  7. ^^^ “…claimed he didn’t comply to submitting information so he was found guilty by the court…”

    he was declared guilty by the court, not found guilty by a jury.
    Part of that has to do with his not providing complete recordings of his broadcasts. AJ used social media platforms to distribute his videos. He did not store the himself. When he was ‘deplatformed.’ they also deleted all his content. AJ, having not stored that material himself then lost access too that content. When he was not able to provide those materials, he was then declared guilty. It was never proven that he withheld materials. I’m surprised that is legal in the US of A.
    He has said some/many things that are not correct, or possibly offensive to some. Some of what he has said I strongly disagree with, but I’ll be listening to him today.

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  12. I have a friend who was a lawyer and is pretty far left.
    When I said this was a free speech case she said it isn’t. She claims it ended up a case about perjury and that he could be sued for his speech because it wasn’t really him being sued it was his media conglomerate.
    Ugh. Lawyers. They are expert at twisting words.
    She was appalled by the amount of the awards. Although that won’t stand I’m sure.
    She did say Jones’ lawyer should be sued for malpractice.

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  16. So, according to the new leftist thinking, you are only entitled to free speech if you can prove in court that you were correct? Since Alex could not prove to the court’s satisfaction that his claims were true, he was slapped with a mega-millions “fine”.

    I want my constitution back.

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