by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Happy Friday. Being informed is harder to do now than it was before the invention of the television.

Before TV, people could tune into the radio to get their news, but that was only at specified times and mostly concerned local stories or huge issues the public already knew about, at least in part.

The most consistent news outlet for centuries, however, was newspapers. Newspapers could be cheaply produced and distributed while providing variety to support a diverse community. While they were somewhat constricted to what they could report based on the labor-intensive way information was gathered back then, it was still a good system for the most part.

Then the internet happened.

The advent of the internet was the greatest global shift in living memory and possibly beyond that, depending on how much you value the combustion engine. Information was now easily created, collated, and disseminated to whoever bothered to look for it. Luckily, that meant people are now getting smarter and faster than ever before. But there are some drawbacks.

People are victims of scams they are unprepared for. Newspapers go defunct (or go digital, shoutout to the Cow) with regularity. Technological growth outpaces generational growth and understanding until several generations are left in the dust simply because no one is teaching them the new language of the world.

While the benefits far outweigh the costs, there is still one area the internet undoubtedly brought about that wasn’t there before: misinformation as an industry.

Sure, there have always been tricksters, liars, and general idiots misleading people to their ruin. But the internet created an efficient and profitable way for conmen to hustle more people across the world.

The polarization of politics can even be attributed to that problem. “News as entertainment” as a concept is certainly at fault, but the willingness to lie to an audience for profit by a news network like Fox News is something on another level. Even though Fox News started only one year after the internet became popular, it didn’t become as radicalized and flooded with fake news and intense bigotry until the internet created the demand for it.

It started with bigoted radio hosts. One doesn’t need to look very far to find nut-bag radio broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. They went digital before many and found a wider audience than ever before. As that influence spread to the culture, it coopted an entire political party and news network in the process.

But some people took regular bigotry and conning to the extreme. People like Alex Jones.

Alex Jones is the host of the radio show Infowars and gained fame for 9/11 conspiracy theories, anti-vax talking points, popularizing the “false flag” narrative in response to any mass shooting, and uttering the famous phrase “they’re putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay.” After over 20 years of spreading misinformation, inciting violence, and defaming anyone he could find, he finally sees some consequences.

Consequences in the form of a $965 million judgment for defamation in Connecticut.

Here’s the list of what happened:

Jones defamed parents of the children massacred in the Sandy Hook school shooting for years by claiming that the shooting didn’t happen, the parents were actors, the shooting was staged to take away guns, and many more falsehoods for over a decade.

His supporters harassed the parents with death threats, denials that their children were real, and a constant stream of emotional distress continues to this day. Finally, the parents sued Alex for defamation. Jones and Infowars refused to comply with discovery requests and depositions and hired several different incompetent lawyers and company representatives that intentionally lied and delayed as long as possible.

After five years of this runaround, a judge issued an incredibly rare declarative judgment that Jones was guilty of defamation. Now, the trial was to determine damages rather than find guilt. At the trial, Jones was not allowed to lie that he wasn’t guilty (because he was) or that he was bankrupt (because he wasn’t), nor was he allowed to use his general defense, turning the trial into a sideshow.

The first trial in Texas found Jones was on the hook for $4.1 million in compensatory damages to two parents he defamed, with another $45 million in punitive penalties for his conduct before and during the trial. That might make the nearly $1 billion judgment in Connecticut seem strange, but a few things were different in the second case.

In Connecticut, the number of defendants increased from two to over a dozen and took place in the state Sandy Hook resides in. Another huge factor in that trial was Jones and his attorney’s conduct.

Rather than the somewhat controlled performance by Jones’ lawyer in Texas, Alex hired one of his co-hosts Norm Pattis, a true believer and complete jackass, to defend him. Norm tweeted during the trial, literally fell asleep, objected to his own client’s testimony, badgered grieving parents, then argued to the jury that the parents were “exaggerating and exploiting” their grief for political and financial gain.

Jones, for his part, “held a press conference” on the courthouse steps rather than appear during the parents’ testimony happening inside. He also recorded his show during the trial, where he claimed over and over that it was a “show trial” and “kangaroo court” while defaming the exact people suing him for defamation. The cherry on top was Jones’ testimony, where the families’ attorney asked Alex if he would stand by all those statements in front of the judge and jury. Alex responded by losing his temper until the jury was excused so he could be reprimanded.

The plaintiffs’ attorney argued that the only way to make Jones stop spreading the harm he specialized in was to shut him down entirely. If he was willing to continue the exact crime he was in court for, what other choice was there? A court in the state worst impacted by Sandy Hook and the conspiracy theories surrounding it understood that argument and agreed wholeheartedly.

Nearly $1 billion is a high price to pay for defamation, the most in history by order of magnitude. But when the crime and damage are this obvious and profound, it’s worth every penny. Alex Jones has two more trials on the horizon, but this debt will become his demise.

So, what’s one way we can start to fix the fractured and broken information system we’ve created? Charging the worst actors in the business so much money they’re forced to become more ethical or fade away seems like the perfect solution.

Today it’s Alex Jones, but in a few years, if this decision makes the waves it needs to, maybe Tucker Carlson will be unemployed and Fox News might actually report the news again.

Meme of the week

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