The first, brought against him by Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of a six-year-old named Noah who was killed at Sandy Hook in 2012, is based on statements Jones made during a video that lives on YouTube as “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed.” In that video, Jones-who has a history of denying the Sandy Hook shooting, having previously (and outside the statute of limitations for the defamation suit) argued that the massacre might have been a “false flag” by a government seeking to restrict gun rights-once more challenges the idea of the Pozner family as victims. The two suits against Jones will have their initial hearings this week at the Travis County courthouse.
#Watch defense attorney conspire trial
Last year, during a bitter custody trial with his ex-wife, Jones’s attorneys had to walk a tightrope in the courtroom between acknowledging that part of his persona is, in fact, an act he plays up for the cameras-lest the jury find him an unfit father-and maintaining for the sake of his audience that he actually does believe every word he says. With that increased influence-he’s one of President Trump’s key media defenders, and Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign, appeared on Infowars to gush to the host about his “amazing” reputation-Jones has faced increased scrutiny. As it did, his business model shifted, too-from something funded largely by DVD sales and advertising to an outlet for dietary supplements intended to protect users from the sort of health-related conspiracies that Jones railed against on his show. His influence grew after the election of Obama in 2008, as “patriot” groups and militias took hold around the country, and Jones’s theories and aesthetic found a much larger constituency. For about the first decade and a half of his career, he did so very much as a fringe character in the media landscape, an Austin-based outlaw spouting off conspiracies about black helicopters, vaccines, the CIA, and 9/11.
Jones’s brand is built upon the idea that he’s a lone crusader against the mainstream media, telling his audience bold truths about a world that he claims lies to them constantly.
The possibility that this could derail Jones’s enterprise was real: defamation cases against media companies are hard for plaintiffs to win, but Infowars is no ordinary media company, and the charges reflected practices far outside of traditional journalism. Several lawsuits-including one by the parents of a child killed during the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut, and one by a man inaccurately identified by Infowars as the suspect in the Parkland shooting earlier this year-were filed in Travis County, each alleging defamation by Jones and his company. In April, the ever-ascending media empire that is Alex Jones’s Infowars was served with its most serious threat.
0 kommentar(er)
