By
Erik Ortiz
Right-wing media that became purveyors of
misinformation and amplified false claims as Donald Trump undermined the results of the 2020 election are finding themselves on the losing end of legal challenges — or facing new ones.
In just a few months, a handful of high-profile fringe media operations have been hit with courtroom losses.
The Gateway Pundit, an influential far-right news site,
filed for bankruptcy in April in the wake of defamation lawsuits that said the company
suggested election workers committed fraud during the previous presidential election. That same month, voting machine company
Smartmatic reached a confidential settlement in its defamation suit against One America News Network, which allowed false election fraud claims on air, while its
pending defamation litigation based on similar vote-rigging allegations continues against Newsmax as well as
Fox News, which is being sued for $2.7 billion. Both Newsmax and Fox News deny Smartmatic’s allegations.
Fox News last year paid another company, Dominion Voting Systems, $787.5 million to
settle a defamation lawsuit. The network did not admit to any specific claims.
In May, “2000 Mules,” a book and film by right-wing political commentator Dinesh D’Souza, was
pulled by the publisher, Salem Media Group, and the company issued a public apology to a Georgia man who is
suing the author and publisher on defamation claims after he was accused of ballot stuffing. That case is still ongoing.
Other conservative media outlets that had
promoted right-wing misinformation in the 2020 election are facing financial troubles unrelated to those events. This week, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host
Alex Jones agreed to sell off his assets to satisfy
$1.5 billion in defamation judgments related to the
2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Jones earlier warned his company could shut down.
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