Journalist Stossel loses defamation suit against Meta over climate change posts
2022 LITGDBRF 0081
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By Meera Gajjar
WESTLAW TODAY Litigation Briefing
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October 14, 2022
(October 14, 2022) - Former ABC News correspondent John Stossel has lost a federal court defamation lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc. and independent fact-checkers for labeling certain Facebook posts about climate change as "missing context" or "partly false information."
U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi of the Northern District of California dismissed Stossel's suit Oct. 11, saying that the defendants had made subjective interpretations of the posts and not actionably false statements of objective fact.
Fact-checkers on Facebook
The former 20/20 co-anchor now creates weekly videos to post on social media platforms, primarily Facebook, on which he has more than 1 million followers, according to the complaint.
In September 2020 Stossel posted a video on his Facebook page about California forest fires in which he said that "bad policies were the biggest cause of this year's fires, not the slightly warmer climate."
Science Feedback, a French nonprofit network of scientists that debunks scientific misinformation, reviewed the forest fire video and used Meta's fact-checking tools to add a "missing context" label to it.
Affiliated links take viewers to a rebuttal article on the Climate Feedback website, which is run by Science Feedback.
A video on climate change alarmism that Stossel posted on Facebook on Earth Day 2021 also garnered review by Science Feedback, which labeled the content "partly false information."
Stossel sued Facebook, Science Feedback and Climate Feedback for defamation in September 2021, invoking federal court diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332(a).
He alleged the labels irreparably damaged his reputation and reduced distribution and viewership of his content, resulting in a nearly 50% loss of monthly advertising revenue.
Meta, which had replaced Facebook as a defendant, and Science Feedback separately moved for dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted."
They also sought to strike the complaint under California's statute forbidding strategic litigation against public participation, Cal. Code of Civ. Pro. § 425.16.
First Amendment protections
A plaintiff asserting a defamation claim under California law must allege that the challenged publication is defamatory, false and unprivileged and "has a natural tendency to injure or causes special damage," Judge DeMarchi said, citing Taus v. Loftus, 151 P.3d 1185 (Cal. 2007).
Stossel's defamation claim fails because the labels reflect subjective assessments of the videos, according to the judge.
"Simply because the process by which content is assessed and a label applied is called a 'fact-check' does not mean that the assessment itself is an actionable statement of objective fact," Judge DeMarchi said.
Striking the complaint under the anti-SLAPP statute was also warranted because the defamation claim arose from activities protected by the First Amendment and related to matters of public interest, and Stossel was unlikely to succeed on the merits, according to the judge.
She denied leave to amend, saying no additional allegations could make the underlying statements actionable.