Of particular note, the 85-year-old Reagan appointee's comments were directed at companies not even involved in the case at hand. Apparently, he just felt like spewing some right-wing nonsense in a dissent, one person calling it a "gratuitous tangent."
Source: Bloomberg News
A conservative judge on the influential federal appeals court in Washington used his dissent in a defamation case to lambaste most U.S. media outlets for trumpeting “shocking” anti-Republican views and call for libel laws to be revised to make it easier to sue the press.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” while the news section of the Wall Street Journal “leans in the same direction,” U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman said. He said the major television outlets and Silicon Valley giants were similarly biased.
“One-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” Silberman wrote. He exempted from his criticism of “Democratic ideological control” Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. But he lamented that these outlets are “controlled by a single man and his son,” a reference to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and questioned how long they could hold out.
“After all, there are serious efforts to muzzle Fox News,” the Reagan appointee wrote, without elaborating.
🚨D.C. Circuit Judge Silberman just released a truly wild dissent calling on the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, claiming NYT and WaPo are "virtually Democratic Party broadsheets," and accusing "big tech" of censoring conservatives. https://t.co/NvFli5sEso pic.twitter.com/mTMklTlNfo
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) March 19, 2021
In an already gratuitous tangent calling for overturning a key 1st Amendment precedent that protects the free press, 85-year-old Laurence Silberman seems to have lost the filter that counsels most judges against displaying a nakedly partisan demeanor. https://t.co/36iPZCv9qD pic.twitter.com/ukUxyH3jUz
— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) March 19, 2021
