“Without identifying a single false fact contained in the video reports — and in one instance, apparently without even bothering to review the video at all — Defendants publicly announced that Stossel’s reporting had failed a ‘fact-check.'”

Former ABC And Fox Business Host John Stossel Hits Facebook With $2 Million Defamation Lawsuit Over Fact-Check Labels Applied To His Videos
Josh Berger  September 28, 2021

Former ABC News and Fox Business hostJohn Stossel has hit Facebook with a $2 million lawsuit alleging that the social media company defamed him by appending fact-checking labels to videos he made and posted on the platform.

According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday the 22nd of September, the storied journalist  is suing Facebook and fact-checking organisations Science Feedback and Climate Feedback, who fact-check labelled two of Stossel’s videos that discussed climate change shared by the television personality to his over 1 million followers.

“Stossel posted on Facebook two short video reports in which he interviewed experts in the climate change arena about facts and data that Defendants concede are true,” reads the document, noting that the videos in question were titled “Government Fueled Fires” and “Are We Doomed?

“Government Fueled Fires”, which came in at under five minutes in length, saw the former TV host discussing “the massive forest fires that were ravaging California in 2020, and reported on several reasons cited by politicians, scientists, and environmentalists as the cause of the fires.”

What’s interesting is that, as detailed in the lawsuit, Stossel does acknowledge in the video that climate change is one of the contributing factors to forest fires, but counter-proposed that it was not the main reason behind last year’s California fires.

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