This weekend, CNN journalist and reporter Jim Acosta sat behind an anchor's desk at the oldest cable news network and called Fox News's Tucker Carlson a Klansman and a "white power correspondent."
Tucker should sue the hell out of him.
Here's the odious segment:
“It’s not just Laura Ingraham. How about Tucker Carlson who in the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict showed us all what’s under the hood” pic.twitter.com/2KguWV8ViU
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 24, 2021
"How about Tucker Carlson, who in the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict showed us all what's under the hood," Acosta said. "Under the hood..." Get it? A Klan hood. He's calling Tucker Carlson a Klansman. How can Tucker be a Klansman? He's a Republican. Everyone knows the KKK is a long-time Democratic institution.
"Tucker Carlson's anger was not about the actions of a police officer who murdered a man, but about the guilty verdict," Acosta continues. "Or, as Carlson, Fox's chief white power correspondent, described the decision, 'Please don't hurt us.' Now you can call this an act or a schtick, but these big, race-baiting lies have been spreading like a cancer on the far-right."
Tucker should sue.
It pains me to say it, but it's time for us to use the courts and the legal system to wage "lawfare" on the lying, defamatory slanders the Left in the media has been throwing our way for years.
It truly does pain me to say it because it goes against so much I have believed for so long. I was raised at the husky knee of the late, great Andrew Breitbart, who could dish out the hyperbolic insults as well as he had to take them. Back in the heyday of blogging and the dawn of Internet journalism, all was fair in the opinion-based conclusions we could draw based on the facts that we had at our disposal.
It's not our style to run to a jury and start screaming for damages. We take the shots, and then we give shots back. That's how we've operated for years.
So, what's changed?
Acosta isn't some blogger. CNN isn't some random website like Gawker (RIP) or Mediaite. CNN is owned by AT&T and has a worldwide audience. And Acosta's presentation is not that of a pundit providing an opinion on a panel discussion or that of a prime-time opinion host. He's one of their reporters who was anchoring a news program in the middle of the day.
He may claim he was expressing his opinion, but he was delivering a news segment as a news reporter. He was reporting, as fact, that Tucker Carlson was a KKK white supremacist. A slander and defamatory comment that was delivered in malice without any facts to support the assertion.
If it isn't slammed back with a sledgehammer, it will be allowed to fester. Acosta, and his corporate enablers, should pay a price.
Yes, this is a new approach for those of us on the Right who have endured the despicable taunts of "racist" for years. But just because we sucked it up and put up with lies until now doesn't mean we have to do it anymore.
James O'Keefe at Project Veritas is leading the way.
He has already sued The New York Times for defamation, and he has cleared the first, very difficult hurdle in that proceeding. During the course of that litigation, which claims The Times defamed Veritas by describing their work product as "deceptive" and "misinformation," the presiding judge pointed out that The Times defended their reporting by saying that there was nothing wrong with reporters expressing their opinion within their news articles.
"In part, Defendants argue that their statements describing Veritas’ Video as ‘deceptive,’ ‘false,’ and ‘without evidence’ were mere opinion incapable of being judged true or false," Judge Charles Wood observed.
Byron York points out that Judge Wood rejected The Times' suggestion that their reporting on Veritas was kosher because there was nothing wrong with reporters injecting opinion into their articles in no uncertain terms.
The paper's ethics policies "prohibit news reporters from injecting their subjective opinions into news stories published by the New York Times," Wood noted. "Upon review of the total context and tone of the stories, which clearly disparage Project Veritas and the video," he continued, "the court concludes that a reasonable reader could very well believe that the challenged statements were conveying facts about Project Veritas. The articles certainly could be viewed as being purposely designed to appear that [the New York Times is] imparting facts and evidence that Project Veritas' videos were deceptive."
This is, frankly, huge. Here's The New York Times in a legal document saying, "Hey... You can't sue us for expressing an opinion. It's totally normal and acceptable for our reporters to inject their personal opinions into their news articles."
Meanwhile, O'Keefe isn't finished going on offense against the lies of these media giants.
This week he filed a suit against CNN. The focus of the suit is journalist Ana Cabrera and claims that Twitter had banned Veritas for "misinformation" even though CNN's own reporting (including Cabrera's) had already reported the true reasons for the Twitter ban, that Twitter alleged that Veritas had shared personal information, violating its policies.
James O’Keefe sues CNN for defamation. God I hope he wins!! pic.twitter.com/yzoGiaLjff
— suzy (@Suzy1776) April 27, 2021
Veritas’ lawsuit against CNN states: "Cabrera was fully aware of Twitter’s basis for the Project Veritas ban, as on February 11, 2021, she tweeted that 'Twitter permanently bans Project Veritas,' and that 'the decision followed what a Twitter spokesperson described to CNN as repeated violations of Twitter’s policies prohibiting the sharing – or threats of sharing – of other people’s private information without consent.'"
Listen, I get it; it's not like us to lawyer up and go after people with subpoenas. Not our style. We take the high ground, right? Sticks and stones, and all that.
But when The New York Times and CNN and the vast bulk of corporate-owned propaganda media can defame and lie about the president of the United States for more than four years and suffer no repercussions for the big lie of "Russian Collusion," then they can defame any of us. That's dangerous for our country and damages the First Amendment.
If we truly care about a free press in America, we should demand that they exercise their freedoms with responsibility. If it takes lawsuits like this to force reforms within these institutions, then so be it.
Tucker Carlson is not a Klansman. He is not a white supremacist. He is not aligned with whatever "white power" means. What Acosta said about him is a lie, and there are no facts to support his vile assertions.
Tucker should sue Acosta's butt off.