Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

Citation from the PDF: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/o...

That book does not cite any evidence for that assertion.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

> IN THE PRECEDING three chapters we examined the propaganda feedback loop, how it forms, and how it facilitates disinformation and the manipulation of beliefs of a population. But our observations about the highly asymmetric nature of the American media environment, and the survey-based evidence we described in Chapter 2, which suggests that no more than 30 percent of the American population inhabits the insular, propaganda-rich right-wing media ecosystem, indicate that whatever one thinks of the result of the 2016 election, it could not have been purely the result of right-wing propaganda. Here, we identify two central attributes of mainstream media and professional journalism—balance and the scoop culture—that shaped election coverage, and in some cases made them particularly susceptible to being manipulated into spreading right-wing propaganda.

> As a violent mob was breaching the doors of the Capitol, Newsmax’s coverage called the scene a “sort of a romantic idea.”

That's not misinformation. That's just a dumb opinion.

> Fox News, meanwhile, has spent years spewing misinformation about American politics.

Citation from the PDF: https://www.vox.com/recode/22219026/fox-news-riot-capitol-ma...

That article is all about how Fox News has been talked for months after the election about how it "could have been stolen" (emphasis from Vox). It also speculates about Fox News's strategy going forward. That is not even close to "years spewing misinformation about American politics".

> A media watchdog found over 250 cases of COVID-19 misinformation on Fox News in just one five-day period

Citation from the PDF: https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-p...

These sorts of counting articles always rub me the wrong way. They count multiple instances of the same misinformation and tend to play fast and loose with the definition of "misinformation" to get the count as high as possible. Of the few cases cited in the article, most of them are dumb opinions and baseless conjectures.

> and economists demonstrated that Fox News had a demonstrable impact on non-compliance with public health guidelines

Citation from the PDF: https://doi.org/10.3386/w27237

From the cited study:

> Meanwhile, Fox News maintained its stance against the lockdown and SD and, in April, a “slew of Fox News opinion hosts and anchors [were] pushing back on public health experts and urging President Donald Trump to abandon its social distancing policies and reopen the economy” (Relman, 2020). Therefore, our Fox News effects arise and persist throughout a period when Fox News repeatedly broadcast anti-SD content that was contrary to the recommendations of the White House.

The study itself attributes Fox News's influence on non-compliance to their disagreements regarding lockdown and social distancing policies. The study accuses Fox News of broadcasting misinformation by virtue of sharing disagreements with the recommendations of health experts.

It's worth noting that there is fairly extensive video of an unhelmeted officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher thrown during a brawl. I don't know if that officer has been identified as Sicknick or not, but that particular event (an officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher) did happen. Separately, we know Sicknick did physically engage with the rioters, as the official US Capitol Police statement cited in the article you linked said "Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty."

So, _a_ fire extinguisher attack did happen (among many other attacks on officers during the riot). An officer did die as a result of injuries sustained during the riot. An anonymous source linked those two events, a link which now appears to have been incorrect. News sites which covered the events in question have effectively released retractions and calls to wait for more evidence.

What more would you want them to do? They can only report on the facts as known at the time, and release updates if those later change. Both of those things were done.

This is an entirely different situation from Fox and OANN alleging massive conspiracies and voter fraud and continuing to hold that position for political reasons despite a lack of evidence.

In terms of liability, as a property owner I have a much lower standards for care, custody, and control of an empty piece of property I have with a no trespassing sign than a corporation has for a sports stadium they run. I'm not certain that the standards for free speech by an individual in a single instance would be the same as the standards for a large media corporation across multiple instances.

How narrowly the court interprets "incitement" and "imminent lawless action" may be a function of the entity making them. An individual who is making political speech could say something that is considered protected, while a large corporation saying the same thing repeatedly, in a different context, may not be protected in the same way.