Will Alex Jones’s $1 billion penalty curb the conspiracy industry?
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
What’s happening
The far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered by a jury to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight children killed during the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., for promoting the lie that the massacre was a hoax.
The Infowars founder had spent years claiming on his popular radio show that the shooting, which killed 20 first-graders and six educators, was staged by “crisis actors.” During the defamation trial in Waterbury, Conn., parents of the victims detailed how those allegations led to persistent harassment, online abuse and death threats from Jones’s listeners. The jury ruled that Jones must pay a total of $965 million in varying amounts to 15 individuals.
This is the second major penalty Jones has incurred for his lies about Sandy Hook. In August, he was ordered to pay $45 million to two other parents by a jury in Austin, Texas. A third trial, also in Texas, is expected to be held later this year.
Conspiracies about Sandy Hook are just one form of the extraordinary lies that Jones has peddled throughout his career. Over the years, he built a massive following for his radio show — which has allowed him to turn Infowars into a company that at one point was estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Although Jones is the most recognizable — and probably the most bombastic — public conspiracist, he is far from the only person to have used fantastical claims for personal notoriety and financial gain. While most stop short of warning about goblins and gay frogs, online spaces and the broader public discourse are rife with people engaging in absurd accusations of the kind Jones has made.
Why there’s debate
It’s not clear what the enormous financial penalty will mean for Jones personally and for Infowars’ future as a business. It’s even more difficult to predict how the judgment will affect the broader industry of conspiracist voices in media and politics.
Some observers are hopeful that the jaw-dropping amount Jones is being ordered to pay will make other far-right fabulists think twice about the claims they make, especially once people targeted by their accusations see the legal precedent that's been set. They add that the ruling also changes the financial incentives of the conspiracy industry, since businesses looking to profit from stirring up outrage now have to factor in the risk of crippling legal penalties.
Others are less optimistic. They say Jones has helped to build a genre of media so widespread that it can easily live on and thrive without him. Some argue that the facts of the case show how extreme the wild assertions must be before any real punishment is meted out to the people making them. Many on the left also say that conspiratorial thinking is now so deeply ingrained in mainstream conservative media and the Republican Party that fantastical lies will be an everyday part of political discourse, no matter what happens to Jones and his contemporaries.
What’s next
Jones’s lawyer told the media he plans to appeal the jury’s decision, which could delay the final resolution of the case for months or more. If that appeal fails, it would allow the families and their representatives to begin the lengthy, painstaking process of unraveling Jones’s finances to determine how much of his money they can collect.
Perspectives
The risk of a billion-dollar penalty will make some people think twice about spreading lies
“When they have to actually start paying out billion-dollar judgments, when they’re going to be chased for the rest of their lives. … I just wonder are we finally getting to a point where there are consequences to abhorrent actions and abhorrent words?” — Joe Scarborough, MSNBC
Jones is just one person in a massive movement
“In the ongoing struggle to defend truth in our distressed society he’s almost an aside. His departure would make barely a ripple in the roiling sea of misinformation threatening the health and well-being of our democracy.” — Editorial, Houston Chronicle
There’s still plenty of profit to be made in the conspiracy industry
“Jones flourished in the right’s growing alternative reality bubble, where he could drive the political narrative. Instead of being shunned or marginalized, Jones found that lying was a lucrative business model that leads to celebrity and political clout. And it’s naïve to think that will change now.” — Charlie Sykes, Bulwark
The business of conspiracy mongering just got a lot less appealing
“Sometimes in the marketplace, people without a soul will treat wrongdoing as a simple math problem: risk versus reward. Without the hammer of punitive damages, those with deeper pockets … may do the math and choose wrongdoing if the potential profit outweighs the financial liability risk. The threat of punitive damages restrains that impulse.” — Dana Hall McCain, AL.com
People like Jones will thrive as long as there’s an audience for their lies
“He tapped a mine of millions of followers. He profited though willing advertisers. Many will now likely drift off in search of other conspirators. Some will cling to Jones out of some depraved loyalty. Alex Jones proved there is profit in the Big Lie. Eventually, even such untruths have trouble hiding in the light of a courtroom. But it’s become easy to cloak lies in the labyrinth of the internet without consequences.” — Editorial, CT Insider
The decision won’t kill the conspiracy industry, but it still counts as progress
“There are limits to how far a business model based on defamation can go. Alex Jones probably is not a big enough fish that making an example of him will have much salutary effect, but putting a real price on lying for a living is still a baby step in the right direction.” — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review
Jones has showed the extreme lengths people can go before they’re punished
“Even if Mr. Jones’s career is ruined, his legacy of brazen, unrepentant dishonesty will live on — strengthened, in some ways, by the knowledge of exactly how far you can push a lie before consequences kick in.” — Kevin Roose, New York Times
It’s a bad sign that only the courts are able to hold people like Jones accountable
“If the kind of common ground that enables us to engage with reality can be defended only by legal coercion, we are in a dangerous place.” — Tom Chatfield, Guardian
Conspiracies are now a core element of the GOP worldview
“The Republican Party spent decades arguing that government was corrupt, if not illegitimate, and grew increasingly reliant on right-wing media for the party’s messaging. So, it took very little effort to tip over into the world of wild conspiracies — especially once, with the election of Trump, Republicans realized there would be no price to pay for doing so. The last few years have suggested that the bill is coming due. … That hasn’t yet curbed the party’s conspiracy-mongering, though.” — Nicole Hemmer, CNN
Jones and his ilk will only go away when the companies that prop them up are held accountable
“What happened with Sandy Hook poured salt into the most devastating wound a parent could receive. But it is a byproduct of how we allow the internet to operate. The problem stretches further than Jones. Legal accountability must also be imposed on Big Tech.” — Editorial, Dallas Morning News
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Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images, Getty Images
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