Fox News is making a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from the family of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich that claims the cable news network caused emotional distress in their coverage of his death.
After retracting their reporting on Rich’s murder, which suggested he died due to some involvement in leaking DNC emails to WikiLeaks, Fox News has been hit with two lawsuits.
The first lawsuit comes from a detective who investigated his killing and the second comes from his family, who says the network “exploited” their son’s death, thus causing emotional distress. Now Fox News is asking the court to dismiss the second case.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, which obtained the motion to dismiss, the network is arguing the plaintiff has failed to present a case of intentional emotional distress and instead said their story could be perceived as painting their son as a “hero.”
“Although Plaintiffs assert that the Fox News article caused them pain, other readers might well consider their son to be a hero,” the motion filed Monday read. “Far from condemning Seth Rich for the purported leak, the Fox News article portrayed him as a whistleblower who released the DNC emails to expose that ‘top party officials conspired to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont from becoming the party’s presidential nominee.’”
They also argue their article portrayed Rich as “fiercely patriotic” by featuring an image of him dressed in American flag gear, which leaves it up to the readers to come to their own conclusion of him.
Twitter users were quick to scrutinize Fox News over their latest argument.
This is….not persuasive spin.https://t.co/14dUryofbk
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) May 8, 2018
Tweet
“no no no you have it all wrong, sure we smeared him but we smeared him as a *hero*” https://t.co/LyZaA9WiC8
— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) May 8, 2018
Let’s not forget that two Fox News contributors collaborated to create a fake news story about Seth Rich while lying to his parents about what they were doing.https://t.co/PvtF6qg5i0
— Jane Coaston (@cjane87) May 8, 2018
The lawsuit is an uphill battle for Rich’s family as previous defamation cases have failed in the past. However, the judge has not made a final
ruling on their case.
