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unfiltered, unbiased, word for word from the nations capital to wherever you are you get the thing that matters most. this is what democracy looks like . c-span: powered by cable. >> we're back with katharine ross r, a law professor at george washington university. going to be discussing l dominion voting systems defamation lawsuit against fox news. good morning catherine. thank you so much for joining us this morning. so let's start with the status of this case. there was an update over the weekend. we thought the trial was going to starttoday, that's no longer the case, what happened ? >> guest: apparently the talks which had broken off in december while it is common

for cases to sell as we say on the courthouse steps, it really assumes there was no reason for dominion to want to settle this case it has such a strong case. but after last week's events in the courtroom with some of the preliminary services and judgments, i think fox has enormously risks if it moves forward with the trial soapbox may be motivated and this is all speculation, would be motivated to make a serious silence offer and of course anytime you go to a jury no matter how on your case is there's a missed one juror will vote the other way and dominion also runs the risk and the verdict a strong verdict ruand update damages ruling could be reversed so it could be tied up for years . given that and the judges

unhappiness with the fox lawyers, it is possible they won't be able to settle. >> host: i want to give our viewers the numbers to call so that they can ask you any questions they have about the trial or related issues or share their thoughts on the case. republicans, 202 48 8001. democrats 202748 8000 and independence, 202 748 8002. you can start calling in now, we will get to those calls in just a moment . catherine, is this case unusual? we're talking about a private company, arguably the biggest cable news network. is there precedent for what we are seeing unfold?

>> there is no precedent at all in terms of the party but more in the the absolutely extraordinary almost unimaginable fact of what we have seen in discovery. this is by far the strongest case i have ever seen for defamation under the very stringent standards created in new york times edversus sullivan to protect the news media, the loss of the first amendment over traditional information law in which you toonly had to showthere was a falsehood . here the news media protected unless they proceed with what is called actual met malice which is something different than whatyou would see in conversation . >> uscan you talk more about that standard of malice and that's the precedent set in i believe that the new york times justice versus sullivan

case. we have an overview on that. it says the landmark case held in 1964 the plaintiff in a defamation suit is a public figure particularly a public official or candidate for public office he or she must meet the higher standard of proving actual malice in order to make their case. how does that apply to what we're seeing in stocks, fox, dominion voting systems versus fox. >> the definition of public figure has expanded sincethen but under new york law , the public figure standardapplies . and even though this is in a delaware court it defies the laws of defamationin new york . actual malice means the person who spoke or published

the falsehood either new the statement was false or behaved with reckless disregard of the truth meaning they had reason to suspect that it could be false and they did nothing to follow up and find out and in this case we learned in discovery fox had internal fact checkers and they expressly said we don't want to hear the facts from you. it's not good for our business model, paraphrasing of course but that is a strong indicator among all the other emails in testimony and definition that the speakers at fox and network officials who published these falsehoods that the

statements were not true. >> i'm going to read a quote that that he'll wrote which you were quoted in. you said fox is not appear to have any plausible defense in light of what dominion uncover in the real-time knowledge erof falsity. i want to ask before we go and take some of our viewer calls, does the minion have any incentive to settle at this point. i think you made it clear why you think fox may have incentive to settle because ruling indicated their case might not be very strong before a judge or jury .e does dominion have incentive to settle ? >> i think dominion has limited incentive to settle. they have an important point to make in addition to wanting damages.

they will make the point most clearly for the trial and the point they need to y make is they are reliable so they don't lose contractsgoing forward . they will of course be competing testimony about how much they have been aligned in terms of dollar amounts that there is no question they have suffered reputational and business harm. >> host: mario in new yorkon the republican line, what's your question . >> caller: my comment is how come c-span is not carrying thejudiciary committee hearings in new york today ? >> host: that's off-topic but n.just so you know you can go to c-span.org or the c-span now at. we are screening that judiciary hearing live scheduled to start at 9 am.

back on the topic at hand, dominions voting systems on the democratic line, what would you like to ask our guests ? >>. >> caller: the thing is i think we need more regulation in news and information. bottles of medicine that were mislabeled, they drag you into a criminal court and put you in jail but this company, this fox news has been getting away with labeling their products news for over 30 years. it's just lies packaged up, it's an echo chamber for some of the less informed people in the world to parent lies at each other.that's all they do is selllies . murdoch personally confessed to these facts. he said in his deposition, it

isn't about blue or red, about green. information and current events, not even a basic single cell organism can survive without access to facts, to truth, even a virus has to operate on actual factual data but yet this da company fox news has been able to skew lies, toxic propaganda and absolute bs into the public consciousness of this country for 30 years. operated by a foreign indian, scott rupert murdoch who made himself a billionaire on being able to calm and do some of the most uninformed people in the world.

>> host: let's let our guests to respond to some of the points you raise c-5 the question you raise is an important one and that's why hasn't the government regulated the media to get rid of this information and lies that is the cause of michael to live because would decide what is true and what is untrue would be sensor. and many courts have actually compared us to orwell, 1984. in talking about what happens when the government decides what you can can't say! focus of truth so that is just an almost impossible undertaking. it is the whole point of the first amendment that we are supposed to, we the citizens are supposed to hear a

variety of ideas on the interpretation of facts and decide for ourselves what is true and false. thatsaid i want to add one more thing . this job in the dominion response case already went through each of the more than 130 instances of also that the dominion company wrestled from its complaint and concluded each and every one of those statements that appeared on fox was false. and they use capital letters and he was very clear that there's nothing for the jury to decide about whether itwas true or false . and when that is very different from the meaning the executive branch that does laws and relations and enforcement tells people you can't say that.

>> let's take another caller, every move in limited bloomingtonconnecticut on the independent line, go ahead . >> caller: listen, i don't know about the dominion case. but i live in canada. i've been here my first book was in 1962. and i thought to the same holy place every o single time of the election since then. i went to the election pulling place this time, the same one. i walked in the door, i added my license they saidwe don't need . i said you don't need it? we don't need it. i said you want to know where it? where do you live? i said on willard avenue. will, go get your ballot. i was in the house has nine apartments in your they could

not have known pawho was voting on that house. do you think that was a fair election? i'm telling you the election in 2020 was specs. i live in connecticut where blumenthal and murphy and all of them are democrats and very seldom do the republicans get and tell you i have voted there, my first vote was for eisenhower. >> host: catherine, this caller believes the election was fixed. believes what fox news in essence as said. >> guest: first of all in most districts you need to sign a voter book and they look at your signature so they did some sort of check. more importantly we have had report after report from official agencies and you may

not trust official agencies including under the trump administration, federal officials. we had on its and many lawsuits and each instance, that factual outcome was that the election was fair. what were there any instances of voting? almost all of them by republicans but the phrase everybody used was knocked sufficient numbers to affect the outcome. this was not a stolen election. we had more evidence than we have ever had before because of all the challenges that the republicans brought. you should be able to sleep easy. >> host: on a related note a caller on a recent segment that wanted to make sure i asked you why can it not be or why is there not a

personal system for voting making it consistent nationwide. how we the . >> wonderful question because the constitution is gives the power to conduct elections to the state government. that is part of our federal system. it would be possible course for the states to all agreed to do it in one way . but they don't have to. >> host: let's go back to the phone lines. calling on the republican line, don is coming from lancaster county pennsylvania, go ahead. >> i'm a hunter and the last election in 2020 i left the house at about 2am the morning . all 2:the swing states, pennsylvania, georgia salon trump was leading all those states i live in pa pa there

was only 10 percent of the most left a white chocolate! lose pennsylvania is it by not all the votes. well isn't that amazing? all less work for my you want to talk about fox news all being fair and being for republicans, let's get our heads out ofthe sand . yes most of the people in this country think that the 20/20 elections were great and they did that what they have to do to be trump. we don't stop doing trump. he's not even in office right now and we're still in for this man, he was the greatest thing in this country for the last 40 years. he slept there and live in dominion voting machines were great. she's full of it.

>> can you respond to those who have concerns about how those later votes 10 to trent for democratic candidates. >> this is a little beyond my control area of expertise but it is something ifollowed closely . one reason might well be and is true in many states is it depends on the geographical area where they come from and where there, so we watch the returns on election night very often the university reports later than other parts of the state and we lived in both our segregated silos right now in this country is so explicit codes that are coming in late are let's say 90 percent one-party, it will be surprising that most ofthose votes though one way . >> let's take another caller next is candy in texas

calling on the democratic line. >> good morning. i just wanted to say that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences and i'm glad fox news are getting what they deserve after all the misinformation they put out . one other thing . the election process itself is broken because of the hoelectoral college system, how is it there are presidents who have been collected through the electoral college system and not through the popular vote oland trump cannot win the popular vote he. that's all i have to say that's what i said. >> host: catherine.

>> guest: the electoral was designed to give smaller states more power today we a population is based on to the geographical spread. so the electoral college can easily away from who won the popular vote require constitutional amendments to change. it is unlikely that we could achieve such change. in addition we have real it problems this goes a little beyond the theme of this segment we have real problems withvoter suppression in the state . an extraordinary amounts of gerrymandering that make it almost impossible to flip congressional seats and all of those states are banking on democracy. >> host: let's year from allen in ohio calling on the independentline .

>> caller: i'd like to take your attention back to a number of years ago to program started called war of the worlds . this relates to what we're dealing with right now and the fact that after the aftermath they came up with rules and regulations from the fcc that made it illegal for any news media to report something false. that would be wrong to do illegal. that's something the government presented. there's a phrase that was going back then called false radio. from later on comes up with fox news. it's accurate with a lot of publications done across the country by different companies and i take my hat off to c-span because i seen them a lot of times referred to articles written or something pass they might pull up from the internet or past history that we have to take into account these are a

lot of times opinions. we have to be careful of opinions. my concern would be that everybody is held to the same standard fox would've said something differently but they knew or could happen it would be a different scenario . i would like to see these companies if it's fox news that violated that sec ruling they should beheld accountable to that as well . >> that's great. first of all for any listener who doesn't know about the war of the world was a very notorious radio play, a fiction done by orson welles in which it seemed that aliens from outer space were invading the united states. it was so realistic many americans panicked. they hid in the basement.

it was just an extraordinary event. so that's the context here. the rule about false reports, i actually don't know the current status of that rule but for decades before a number of decisions protected the right to share falsehood and the supreme court expressly said lies and untruths are not outside the protection of the first amendment and we are still trying to figure out what that means so if something is fictional, i think it would be very right for the government today in light of firstamendment doctrines to regulate it . and in terms of other falsehoods, there's really no

question from the discovery material talks new it was lying and that each of the assertions that dominion stated were falsehoods and that fox new much of this was false at the time it was broadcast and after that dominion told fox in more than 3500 notifications this is false, you can't back it up, here's what happens and fox just kept broadcasting so that's a different scenario from the fictional war of the world. >>. >> host: you mentioned bringing it back to this pending defamation lawsuit and it does center on the first amendment. here's a statement fox news made up a lawsuit and i'll go to cbs news but the statement says dominions lawsui been more about what will eagenerate headlines and can

withstand factual express by them stating the demand by more than half $1on after their own expert debunkedobab the summary motions have been unsupported view of defamation law journalists basic in their efforts to publicly see her, commenting on allegations by residents of the utestates should be recognized for what it is a violation of the first amendment . fox is making a first amendment case here. how do you think that is being applied or how are they trying to bound by the first amendment here. >> there's a lot to unpack in question. first of all fox's statements grossly misrepresents the first amendment . the judge in the lower court has made it clear to fox they cannot make these kind of

statements in front of a jury . people will tell the jury they have no standing under law must avuse already made pretrial rulings about boxes proper defenses. so the first amendment does not mean you can say anything you want anytime youwant . and defamation law is intended to stop these kinds of lies . even when we're talking about the very hard to satisfy standard. and what's ironic is that fox is saying we should be able to play fast and loose with the truth as the news media organization or the first amendment is in trouble but that's exactly what sullivan says. you can't do. we need robust political discourse but it has to take place within some kind of

confines and the court has made it very difficult to stop the news media when they say things they can't fully backup but if this case does not satisfy quality standard i cannot imagine a case that will and that means it would be a message to irresponsible journalists that they can lie as much as they want and there is no remedy that would certainly still over into the necessary truth cycle. >> let's go back to the phone lines, our next color is patrice on the republican line, south carolina. >> caller: yes, first i would like to say trump is going down in history as the best president in our times. we are in all war right now, good versus evil and i want to go back to the call.

i think he was from ed massachusetts that stated not powers that be , the elite e. they are the ones behind the scenes running theshow . and all news media is propaganda. they are the ones that the biggest weapon used against america because they have a platform. and i would like to also state a lot of americans are waking up so we see right through all this. it provided 80 million votes, where are these ed million people following him like they followed the trump? there's no way i believe and most americans believe that biting got 80 million votes. it's there's no way. >>. >> host: catherine. >> guest: it is a hard

statement to respond to. people often believe what they want to believe regardless of the information . i think a lot of the ed million people who voted for president biting may be sitting in their homes wondering where are these people who voted for trump because i don't know any of them . so we have a very disturbing absence of trust in the mediating institutions that are essential to democracy and that's all whole other question and one that we have q to grapple with .. >> let's go to the democratic de line, christina from illinois. >> got the name of that a right. i have a question, isn't fox not registered with the sec as a news organization but register as an entertainment organization. if you could answer that

question for me also believe just call, sometimes democrats are a little more quiet about what we want to my answer the year, thankyou . >> host: she said she want t the answer off the air h. >> guest: she hung up so she could hear your answer. >> yes, i don't think we can say there's cold of president biting in the same way there is a quote unquote calls of president trump. that does perhaps confuse some people who are watching what's going on. i actually don't know whether fox is technically considered an entertainment corporation or fox news eight news organization but we have to assume they have news credentials because they are allowed at the white house

briefings have restaurant rentals to cover -teverything there is a lot of controversy about whether they should be treated. >> we break away to bring you live coverage of the senate you're on c-span2 lawmakers expected to nomination rock plum to the center members continue working on legislation to extend our programs providing me not life to the floor of the u.s. senate you're on c-span2.