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In the weeks after President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs claimed to have tremendous evidence that voter fraud was to blame. That evidence never emerged but a new culprit in a supposed scheme to rig the election did: Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election technology whose algorithms, Mr. Dobbs said, were designed to be inaccurate.

Maria Bartiromo, another host on the network, falsely stated that Nancy Pelosi has an interest in this company. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News personality, speculated that technical glitches in Dominions software could have affected thousands of absentee mail-in ballots.

Those unfounded accusations are now among the dozens cited in Dominions defamation lawsuit against the Fox Corporation, which alleges that Fox repeatedly aired false, far-fetched and exaggerated allegations about Dominion and its purported role in a plot to steal votes from Mr. Trump.

Those bogus assertions made day after day, including allegations that Dominion was a front for the communist government in Venezuela and that its voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another are at the center of the libel suit, one of the most extraordinary brought against an American media company in more than a generation.

First Amendment scholars say the case is a rarity in libel law. Defamation claims typically involve a single disputed statement. But Dominions complaint is replete with example after example of false statements, many of them made after the facts were widely known. And such suits are often quickly dismissed, because of the First Amendments broad free speech protections and the high-powered lawyers available to a major media company like Fox. If they do go forward, they are usually settled out of court to spare both sides the costly spectacle of a trial.

But Dominions $1.6 billion case against Fox has been steadily progressing in Delaware state court this summer, inching ever closer to trial. There have been no moves from either side toward a settlement, according to interviews with several people involved in the case. The two companies are deep into document discovery, combing through years of each others emails and text messages, and taking depositions.

These people said they expected Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, who own and control the Fox Corporation, to sit for depositions as soon as this month.

The case threatens a huge financial and reputational blow to Fox, by far the most powerful conservative media company in the country. But legal scholars say it also has the potential to deliver a powerful verdict on the kind of pervasive and pernicious falsehoods and the people who spread them that are undermining the countrys faith in democracy.

Were litigating history in a way: What is historical truth? said Lee Levine, a noted First Amendment lawyer who has argued several major media defamation cases. Here youre taking very recent current events and going through a process which, at the end, is potentially going to declare what the correct version of history is.

The Trump Investigations

The Trump Investigations

Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trumpleft office, the former president has been facingseveral different civil and criminal investigationsacross the countryinto his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:

The Trump Investigations

Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committeeinvestigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a powerful accountof Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence couldallow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation,to indict Mr. Trump.

The Trump Investigations

Georgia election interference case. Mr. Trump himself is under scrutiny in Georgia, where the district attorney of Fulton County has been investigating whether he and others criminally interfered with the 2020 election in the state. This case could pose the most immediate legal perilfor the former president and his associates.

The case has caused palpable unease at the Fox News Channel, said several people there, who would speak only anonymously. Anchors and executives have been preparing for depositions and have been forced to hand over months of private emails and text messages to Dominion, which is hoping to prove that network employees knew that wild accusations of ballot rigging in the 2020 election were false. The hosts Steve Doocy, Dana Perino and Shepard Smith are among the current and former Fox personalities who either have been deposed or will be this month.

Dominion is trying to build a case that aims straight at the top of the Fox media empire and the Murdochs. In court filings and depositions, Dominion lawyers have laid out how they plan to show that senior Fox executives hatched a plan after the election to lure back viewers who had switched to rival hard-right networks, which were initially more sympathetic than Fox was to Mr. Trumps voter-fraud claims.

Libel law doesnt protect lies. But it does leave room for the media to cover newsworthy figures who tell them. And Fox is arguing, in part, thats what shields it from liability. Asked about Dominions strategy to place the Murdochs front and center in the case, a Fox Corporation spokesman said it would be a fruitless fishing expedition. A spokeswoman for Fox News said it was ridiculous to claim, as Dominion does in the suit, that the network was chasing viewers from the far-right fringe.

Fox is expected to dispute Dominions estimated self-valuation of $1 billion and argue that $1.6 billion is an excessively high amount for damages, as it has in a similar defamation case filed by another voting machine company, Smartmatic.

A spokesman for Dominion declined to comment. In its initial complaint, the companys lawyers wrote that The truth matters, adding, Lies have consequences.

For Dominion to convince a jury that Fox should be held liable for defamation and pay damages, it has to clear an extremely high legal bar known as the actual malice standard. Dominion must show either that people inside Fox knew what hosts and guests were saying about the election technology company was false, or that they effectively ignored information proving that the statements in question were wrong which is known in legal terms as displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.

A judge recently ruled that Dominion had met that actual malice standard at this stage, allowing it to expand the scope of its case against Fox and the kind of evidence it can seek from the companys senior executives.

In late June, Judge Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court denied a motion from Fox that would have excluded the parent Fox Corporation from the case a much larger target than Fox News itself. That business encompasses the most profitable parts of the Murdoch American media portfolio and is run directly by Rupert Murdoch, 91, who serves as chairman, and his elder son, Lachlan, the chief executive.

Soon after, Fox replaced its outside legal team on the case and hired one of the countrys most prominent trial lawyers a sign that executives believe that the chances the case is headed to trial have increased.

Dominions lawyers have focused some of their questioning in depositions on the decision-making hierarchy at Fox News, according to one person with direct knowledge of the case, showing a particular interest in what happened on election night inside the network in the hours after it projected Mr. Trump would lose Arizona. That call short-circuited the presidents plan to prematurely declare victory, enraging him and his loyalists and precipitating a temporary ratings crash for Fox.

These questions have had a singular focus, this person said: to place Lachlan Murdoch in the room when the decisions about election coverage were being made. This person added that while testimony so far suggests the younger Murdoch did not try to pressure anyone at Fox News to reverse the call as Mr. Trump and his campaign aides demanded the network do he did ask detailed questions about the process that Foxs election analysts had used after the call became so contentious.

Foxs legal team has cited the broad protections the First Amendment allows, arguing that statements about Dominion machines from its anchors like Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Bartiromo, and guests like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, were protected opinion and the kind of speech that any media organization would cover as indisputably newsworthy.

When the president and his lawyers are making allegations, that in and of itself is newsworthy, Dan Webb, the trial lawyer brought in by Fox several weeks ago, said in an interview. To say that shouldnt be reported on, I dont think a jury would buy that. And thats what I think the plaintiffs are saying here.

Mr. Webbs most recent experience in a major media defamation case was representing the other side: a South Dakota meat manufacturer in a lawsuit against ABC for a report about the safety of low-cost processed beef trimmings, often called pink slime. The case was settled in 2017.

But Fox has also been searching for evidence that could, in effect, prove the Dominion conspiracy theories werent really conspiracy theories. Behind the scenes, Foxs lawyers have pursued documents that would support numerous unfounded claims about Dominion, including its supposed connections to Hugo Chvez, the Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013, and software features that were ostensibly designed to make vote manipulation easier.

According to court filings, the words and phrases that Fox has asked Dominion to search for in internal communications going back more than a decade include Chavez and Hugo, along with tampered, backdoor, stolen and Trump.

Fox News and Fox Business gave a platform to some of the loudest purveyors of these theories, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, and Mr. Giuliani, the presidents personal lawyer, in the days and weeks after major news outlets including Fox declared Joseph R. Biden Jr. the president-elect. In one interview, Mr. Giuliani falsely claimed that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company with close ties to Mr. Chavez, and that it was formed to fix elections. (Dominion was founded in Canada in 2002 by a man who wanted to make it easier for blind people to vote.)

Mr. Dobbs, who conducted one of the interviews cited in Dominions complaint, responded encouragingly to Mr. Giuliani, saying he believed he was witnessing the endgame to a four-and-a-half-year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States. Fox canceled Mr. Dobbss Fox Business show last year, though it has never issued a retraction for any of the commentary about Dominion.

Dominion has also filed separate lawsuits against Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Powell and Mr. Lindell.

Dominion says in its complaint that in the weeks after the election, people started leaving violent voice mail messages at its offices, threatening to execute everyone who worked there and blow up the headquarters. At one office, someone hurled a brick through a window. The company had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security and lost hundreds of millions more in business, according to its complaint.

The harm to Dominion from the lies told by Fox is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believed them and continue to believe them, its complaint said.

The company has tried to draw a connection between those falsehoods and the Jan. 6 siege at the Capitol. These lies did not simply harm Dominion, the company said in the complaint. They harmed democracy. They harmed the idea of credible elections.

As part of its case, it cites one of the most indelible images from the Jan. 6 attack: a man in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, clutching zip ties in his left hand. Also in the suit is a second photo of the man, later identified as Eric Munchel of Tennessee, in which he is brandishing a shotgun, with Mr. Trump on a television in the background. The television is tuned to Fox Business.

But the hurdle Dominion must clear is whether it can persuade a jury to believe that people at Fox knew they were spreading lies.

Disseminating The Big Lie isnt enough, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Utahs S.J. Quinney College of Law. It has to be a knowing lie.

See the original post:
Lawsuit Against Fox Is Shaping Up to Be a Major First Amendment Case - The New York Times

TikToks looking to give users more insight into how their personal data is being used for ad targeting in the app, with the addition of a new About this Ad info panel that outlines all of the various targeting elements that TikTok has used to display each ad to each user.

As explained by TikTok:

We're introducing a new 'About this ad' feature, so users will be able to tap on any ad in their feed and view some reasons why we're showing this particular ad to them. This is another step we're taking to bring more transparency into our advertising practices and help users understand how ads work on TikTok.

As you can see in the above example sequence, now, youll be able to see more info about the ads that youre shown in the app, by tapping on the About this Ad button in the ad info screen. There, youll also be able to switch off ad personalization based on third-party data - though whether its on or off, TikTok will still be able to use your in-app activity in its ad targeting process.

The update will move TikTok more into line with other social apps, which offer similar ad transparency features - though its also worth noting that TikTok has been working to continue utilizing personalized ad tracking, in various ways, despite regulations and restrictions around such getting tighter in certain regions.

Last month, TikTok was forced tosuspend a planned change to its privacy policyrelating to the use of user insights for targeted advertising, amid questions over whether the change is actually legal under the latest EU provisions for data protection and control.

The planned update would have seen the app do away with asking users for their consent to run personalized ads, with TikTok seeking to process such data under whats essentially a legal loophole in this respect, via the provision for legitimate interest. By implying that personalized ads fall under legitimate interest grounds, TikTok was seeking to circumvent the EU ePrivacy Directive, but authorities called for a review of the process before it could go into effect.

In other words, while on one hand TikToks looking to be more upfront about how your personal information is being used for ad targeting, on the other, its seeking to avoid restrictions on such, through questionable means.

European authorities will now need to review TikToks case before it can go ahead with the change.

In addition to the new About this Ad element, TikTok has also launched an updated ad data usage overview to help users understand how they can be targeted with ad content, while users can also now choose whether the ads they are shown are based on estimates of their interests and/or gender.

For example, users can choose to turn off the interest category "Beauty" so they will receive fewer ads that target to match this interest. Users can change their gender setting or input any gender of their choosing. These updates can be changed at any time in the app and apply only to users' ad settings, which does not affect other TikTok services.

So, again, this brings TikTok more into line with other apps, which already offer similar ad data control options, which could help to ensure more relevant ads are shown to TikTok users, while also giving users more capacity to manage how theyre targeted with such in the app.

Its a good update, though it will be equally interesting to see how TikTok works to manage its other data mitigation efforts to avoid the full impacts of Apples ATT update and other control measures.

TikTok should give users more control, but the app is also developing a reputation for questionable activity, in counter to accepted moderation and data usage parameters.

You can read more about TikToks new ad targeting transparency tools here.

Originally posted here:
TikTok Launches New Ad Targeting Transparency Tools to Help Users Manage How Their Data is Used in the App - Social Media Today

The latest victims include Latif Simsek, a journalist who was attacked by the nationalist parliamentarian Cemal Enginyurt and his bodyguard during a break in a TV100 studio debate on the evening of 6 August, after a heated exchange between them. In this case, the Istanbul prosecutors office has launched an investigation, but judicial impunity and political polarisation are fuelling concern about a new wave of violence against journalists in the run-up to the June 2023 elections.

On 4 August, interior minister Sleyman Soylu launched a verbal attack on the left-wing daily newspaper BirGn (Day), accusing it of being the PKK press mouthpiece an implicit threat because the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) is banned in Turkey. He also accused it of trying to smear him by publishing a photo linking him to Yedi Iklim (Seven Climates), a publishing house alleged to have leaked public sector employee exam questions.

The newspaper had specified that the photo was taken at an interior ministry ceremony in 2017 with candidates for deputy prefect positions, and that the publishing house had used it for a campaign promoting its branch in the northwestern city of Bursa.

Ultra-nationalist party threatens TV channel

The leadership of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) the ultra-nationalist party that is the main ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) threatened the HaberTrk (Turkish News) TV channel on 3 August over comments made by a studio guest. The guest, former republican parliamentarian Behran Simsek, had said the dismissed head of the Students Examination Centre (YSM) had links to the MHP and that he was unhappy with the growing influence of religious groups.

In their response, MHP president Devlet Baheli and vice-president Semih Yalin accused Turgay Ciner, the CEO of the company that owns HaberTrk, the Ciner Media Group, of imposing an editorial line that was hostile to the Presidential Alliance, and openly threatened him, saying, He will pay for this.

Those who join in the mission of accusing and slandering the Presidential Alliance constitute the cornerstones of indecency and will have to pay, Baheli said. Everything will be done so that those who dare to toy with the tranquillity and hopes of our nation will certainly regret it.

Defending HaberTrk, the TV channels news and current affairs coordinator, Krsad Oguz, said: Semih Yalins comments were broadcast live. Neither myself nor our presenter expressed any criticism of the MHP or the YSMs former president in this connection. This criticism came from one of our guests, which is normal in an open discussion.

On 3 August, a pro-Erdogan activist calling himself Dr Mustafa Ycel used his Twitter account to threaten two well-known anchors working for critical TV channels Zafer Arapkirli (KRT) and Aysenur Arslan (Halk TV) because of their support for Esin Davutoglu Senol, a specialist in infectious diseases who has been targeted by Turkish anti-vaxxers. Ycel called them enemies of Erdogan, Islam and the State. He was previously arrested for threatening Senol but was released under judicial control.

The AKP-MHP Alliances defeat in the March 2019 local elections was followed by several months of violence against republican journalists and journalists close to Iyi, a new party formed by a group that broke away from the MHP in October 2017. Three journalists were attacked in the street by ultranationalists Yavuz Selim Demirag in Ankara, Hakan Denizli in Adana and Idris zyol in Antalya for criticising the AKP-MHP Alliance.

Although not yet officially launched, the 2023 elections are expected to be very tense. The Presidential Alliance will be pitted against the National Alliance a coalition of six very different parties (CHP, Iyi, Gelecek, Deva, Saadet and Demokrat) that are calling for a return to the parliamentary system. Several polling companies say the president is running behind this opposition alliance. This is unprecedented in 20 years of rule by Erdogan.

See more here:
Nationalist threats against Turkish journalists and media critical of government - Reporters sans frontires

One year ago this August, the Taliban raised their white flag over Afghanistan's capital for the second time, pulling down the tricolor flag of the republic that had endured for the two decades between.

Their victory gave the radical religious movement supreme power over a country with a median age of 18 which means most citizens weren't alive for the Taliban's violent years in power from 1996-2001. The young people on the left of this photo above had never seen such a change of power. On the right, 62-year-old carpet seller Ahmed Shah Kashefi says he's lived through many upheavals and it's always hard.

The self-proclaimed Islamic emirate now controls government compounds, universities and other institutions surrounded by blast walls concrete structures once built to keep out the Taliban, along with bombers from other extremist groups.

The Taliban also control rural villages, like this one in Wardak Province. Its few remaining residents say the old government bulldozed mud-walled homes as part of their ongoing battle with the Taliban for control of nearby Highway One.

Their single biggest prize is Kabul, a growing city in a mountain valley, where neighborhoods climb up the slopes on all sides.

At this used furniture store, Wahid Kashafi (left) and Abdul Kahar give a snapshot of life in the capital. Few people have money to buy furniture, but many are selling as they prepare to leave the country, or to buy food.

Kabul's population is 4.5 million, about twice its population when the Taliban last ruled. In their previous reign there were almost no phones and no television, except what residents watched on smuggled DVD's. Now the city is in instant communication with the world.

Kabul's economy is less connected. Taliban leaders face global economic sanctions. The U.S. froze the assets of the central bank, and other Afghan banks were unable to do business with the world.

Credit cards ceased to function; it even became hard for Afghans abroad to send money home.

At the airport, at taxi stands, and at bread shops it's not hard to find children seeking a handout.

Shop owners we met said business was bad, though some were philosophical and said it's always like this when the government changes.

So who is included in the Taliban's Afghanistan? The free media are still allowed to function. Some, such as TOLOnews, have endured the hard times, the loss of staff, and periodic Taliban demands to leave out inconvenient facts.

The role of women and girls is ambiguous at best. Younger girls are in school while those of junior high and high school age are not.

Some women are still working, while others are not. Muzhda Noor says that one year ago she was a university dean overseeing 19 male professors. After the takeover, a new chancellor ordered new restrictions on women, and told Noor she should no longer attend faculty meetings with men. She sought a transfer but eventually was dismissed from the university.

The political opposition has no formal space of its own. Gulalai Mohammadi was a member of the Afghan parliament that the Taliban declared defunct. She says she's now at home, with no way to exercise a cause she supported in the assembly women's rights.

A former president, Hamid Karzai, remains in Kabul and is able to speak freely, as in a recent NPR interview, but has not been allowed to leave Afghanistan.

Many of the men who brought the Taliban to power have returned to their homes. They include these men in the Tangi Valley in rural Wardak Province. The fighters we met said they were pleased to live under their version of Islamic rule, but as we left the valley we also heard that residents wished their girls could return to school.

And it doesn't take long for a visitor to begin seeing the vast number of people in society who are obliged under the new rules to go unseen.

How do the Taliban mean to answer the uncertainties of their rule? Analyst Abdul Jabar Baheer was present this summer when Taliban leaders held a mass meeting, but reached no decisions on major policies or a permanent form of government. Hibatullah Akhundzada, described as the emir of Afghanistan, said he would not obey the West, but said little about what he intended to do.

We sought clarity at a famous compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It's the compound of Mullah Omar, who led the Taliban during their first rule. The U.S. and its Afghan allies later turned it into a base, and it's strewn with military equipment.

The compound is now home to Mullah Omar's son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, who has become defense minister in the Taliban's interim government.

Yaqoob said the Taliban take "seriously" the question of girls in school, and that he hopes for further announcements. He also said it's a "necessity" to adopt a formal constitution.

The Taliban said there will be no room in their system for democracy and they have for the moment eliminated elections, elected offices and a formal opposition.

Yet they've inherited a complex society that now faces an economic crisis. Through the media, the few remaining independent political figures, and the demands of the people, they face democratic calls to govern effectively and inclusively.

Read more:
These photos show who is (and isn't) included in the Taliban's Afghanistan - NPR

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Diets, body images fed by social media, and food desire fed by the constant barrage of advertising - it all creates a vicious cycle for those trying to control their weight to look like what society expects.

Enter "intuitive eating" which is trying to reverse the trend.

It doesn't cost a cent, in fact, you were born with it, you just have to find it again.

"No rules, only intuition and tuning into yourself," said Natalie Colantuono, a registered dietitian at Inspird.

"We're kind of going back to our default setting, we're all born as intuitive eaters," added Haley Goodrich, a registered dietitian as well as the founder of Inspird.

They said we lose that intuition over time, whether it's lost by being told to clean a plate or eating when it's time to eat, even though we aren't really hungry.

"We've been told to suppress it so we learn over time that our bodies can't be trusted," Colantuono said.

Goodrich and Colantuono from the Monroeville-based Inspird are all about helping those with eating disorders, and everyone else for that matter, to start trusting their bodies again.

"You're making peace with food, sort of getting rid of all of the rules that you've learned over time," said Goodrich.

She also said that you're honoring hunger and tuning into what your body is telling you.

"Our bodies are so much smarter than we give them credit for," Colantuono added.

Goodrich said we're wired to eat every three-to-four hours but not on a clock and it takes some training to break out of old habits.

So, essentially, our kids have it right when they push away their food and say they're full.

Overall, it's pretty simple - it's just listening to our bodies and not peer pressure when it comes to eating.

"We all grow up in a society that focuses on weight and food and ultimately equates it to our worth," Colantuono said.

Intuitive eating is turning your back on the societal noises and listening internally.

"Trying to identify and listen to your hunger, your fullness, what satisfaction might be," said Goodrich.

Goodrich founded Inspird to help pull the desperate out of eating disorders and Colantuano is also part of the mission and said we spend a lot of time and mental energy focused on what we do and don't and how we look.

"By allowing ourselves to eat intuitively, we are able to focus on our values and things that are really important to us," Colantuono explained.

Goodrich said the cues to eating are left up to your body and too many diet programs are trying to curb hunger, and appetite, and that hunger is a signal from our body saying we need food.

"What we like to eat are individual food preferences, and our bodies have a lot of internal wisdom and we don't need those external rules," Colantuono added.

"It's sort of the anti-diet," Goodrich said.

If you can break free and embrace intuitive eating, you may or may not lose weight.

It also may happen because Goodrich said you're making peace with food - it no longer controls you. You use it for what it's for: fuel for the needs of your body. You eat what you need and you are less likely to overindulge.

John Shumway joined KDKA in October 1988 as a General Assignment Reporter. During his years at KDKA, he has anchored the morning and weekend news and is currently a featured General Assignment Reporter on the station's 4, 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts.

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'It's sort of the anti-diet:' Taking back control of your health through intuitive eating - CBS Pittsburgh