San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ONE AMERICA NEWS PARENT FIRM LOSES APPEAL IN MSNBC LAWSUIT
Company said Rachel Maddow had defamed network
As San Diego-based One America News Network gears up for another legal battle — this time against Dominion Voting Systems — another lawsuit has concluded, and not in the news channel’s favor.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld a lower court’s decision dismissing the lawsuit brought by the parent company of the ultra-conservative media outlet against liberal-leaning MSNBC and its news show host Rachel Maddow.
Herring Networks sued Maddow in 2019 after she made comments on air about a Daily Beast article that reported about a One America reporter who also wrote for Sputnik News, a Russian state-sponsored news agency.
During the July 22 segment, Maddow said “in this case, the most obsequiously pro-trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda.”
One America News, or OAN for short, argued in its defamation lawsuit filed in San Diego federal court that it hadn’t received “a penny from Russia or the Russian government.”
On Tuesday, a threejudge panel at the 9th Circuit agreed with the lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit, saying Maddow’s comments were “well within the bounds of what qualifies as protected speech under the First
Amendment.”
“We conclude that the challenged statement was an obvious exaggeration, cushioned within an undisputed news story,” the ruling read. “The statement could not reasonably be understood to imply an assertion of objective fact, and therefore, does not amount to defamation.”
The ruling means Herring Networks remains on the hook for nearly $250,000 in attorney fees and $10,700 in costs to Maddow and her employers for fighting the claims.
OAN is now being sued by U.S. voting machine firm Dominion on defamation claims over the news agency’s repeated on-air claims that the 2020 election was rigged against then-president Donald Trump.