One America News Network signaled its intent to appeal a judge’s decision to drop its defamation lawsuit against MSNBC and prime-time host Rachel Maddow.
OANN, a small conservative news outlet, filed a notice of appeal in its $10 million defamation lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California in the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday.
“We fully expect to prevail on appeal,” Amnon Siegel, a partner at Miller Barondess LLP, who is representing OANN, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The words —“that OAN is really literally paid Russian propaganda” — do not convey an opinion. This is a blatant defamatory falsehood.”
Robert Herring Sr., founder and CEO of Herring Networks Inc., the company that owns OANN, said it was prepared for an extended court fight if necessary.
“We are fully prepared to take this case to the United States Supreme Court if necessary,” Herring said. “Maddow has claimed that our family has engaged in treasonous acts. Nothing is further from the truth, and her propagated falsehood has hurt our integrity and viewership trust.”
The network filed the lawsuit against Maddow and her network last November over a segment in which the host said the network “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda,” which OANN argued is demonstratively false.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant dropped the suit last month, saying that when evaluating the “totality of the circumstances … a reasonable fact finder could only conclude that the statement was one of opinion not fact.”
Bashant wrote in her ruling that even though the host used the word “literally” to describe OANN’s alleged ties to Russia, she “had inserted her own colorful commentary into and throughout the segment, laughing, expressing her dismay (i.e., saying ‘I mean, what?’) and calling the segment a ‘sparkly story’ and one we must ‘take in stride.’ For her to exaggerate the facts and call OAN Russian propaganda was consistent with her tone up to that point, and the Court finds a reasonable viewer would not take the statement as factual given this context. The context of Maddow’s statement shows reasonable viewers would consider the contested statement to be her opinion.”
In July, Maddow pushed a story published by the Daily Beast that said Kristian Rouz, an OANN political reporter, had simultaneously been writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news outlet. During her commentary, Maddow said the network “literally is paid Russian propaganda.”
At the time the judge dropped the case, Siegel told the Washington Examiner: “The court did not squarely address the fact that Maddow prefaced her false statement with ‘really literally,’ which is used to emphasize the truth of a statement. In fact, the court’s decision recognizes that Maddow’s statement that OANN is paid Russian propaganda is capable of being proven false. And it is, in fact, false. That should have been enough for the court to deny the motion and allow a jury to decide the issue.”
