The old model of journalism is broken

If you haven’t heard, FOX owner and billionaire Rupert Murdoch has admitted, under oath, that FOX hosts knew that then-President Donald Trump’s claims of a rigged 2020 election were false but promoted the conspiracy theories anyway because that’s what their viewers wanted to hear.?

With this admission, FOX is clearly now vulnerable to losing the defamation suit brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion Voting Machines allege FOX destroyed its reputation by promoting the theory that their machines switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.?

To win the case, Dominion Voting Machines must prove actual malice. This standard was established in 1964 in the case of the New York Times v. Sullivan. Under the “actual malice” rule, a public figure cannot win a libel suit unless they can show that the statement was made with knowledge that it was false, or “reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”??

Critics of the Sullivan rule say it technically protects careless reporting and that the law no longer fits the times. Back in 1964, news organizations were well-funded with fact-checkers and editors on hand to comb over stories for factual errors. The channels of distribution were limited and the barriers to broadcast were high. Today, anyone with an opinion, a mobile phone and a wifi connection can become a one-person broadcast station.?

The democratization of media is, in many ways, a great step forward. The downside is the proliferation of fake news, disinformation, and misinformation campaigns that can spread like wildfire on social media.

That’s where Ovis comes in. As the first company to use blockchain technology to incentive journalists to tell the truth, Ovis takes on the ratings and clicks model that most media companies rely on to monetize their content. The ratings and clicks system rewards content that is titillating, pandering and, in the case of FOX news v Dominion Voting Systems, completely and deliberately false.

Whatever the outcome of the FOX lawsuit, there are no winners in a scenario and a society where news organizations can’t be trusted.?The old model of journalism is broken. Ovis is here to shatter it.??