Court Dismisses Defamation Case Brought by 'Mary Poppins of Misinformation'

Brett T. | 9:30 PM on July 24, 2024

Here's some news we're just hearing about but wanted to share, considering the amount of disinformation out there about Vice President Kamala Harris' authority over the border. Nina Jankowicz, chair of the short-lived Disinformation Governance Board — the self-styled "Mary Poppins of Misinformation" who had called the Hunter Biden laptop story a "fairy tale" — had her defamation suit against Fox News tossed out earlier this week.

The federal court has dismissed the defamation case of Nina Jankowicz. As some of us predicted, the criticism of Jankowicz was deemed opinion. https://t.co/mMsya7BUyG The court found that what the Disinformation Governance Board was doing was appropriately called censorship...
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 22, 2024

...The opinion shatters the spin out out by Jankowicz and the anti-free speech movement:
"Fox contends, and I agree, that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 22, 2024

… are not substantially true. On the contrary, as noted above, censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications. The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens’ speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.” D.I. 31-1 at 10. For the reasons discussed above, that objective is fairly characterized as a form of censorship."

Fox News Media and its parent Fox Corp won a ruling on Monday dismissing a lawsuit by a former Biden administration official who accused the media giant of defaming her as a proponent of censorship.
Chief U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly in Delaware ruled, that Nina Jankowicz, who resigned from her U.S. Department of Homeland Security post in May 2022, could not back up her defamation claims.
Jankowicz sued Fox, opens new tab last year, claiming she was forced to resign from the Disinformation Governance Board as a result of the company's broadcasts. She said Fox had “intentionally trafficked in malicious falsehoods to pad its profits.” Fox denied the claims.
Fox News Media said in a statement on Monday that it was pleased with the decision, calling the case "a politically motivated lawsuit aimed at silencing free speech."