June 16, 2025 – Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy, lost a $2.3 million libel lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer.
You can learn more about this case on the right-wing news site Brietbart, which used a UPI story that said that “Lindell claimed — without any evidence — that Coomer had flipped votes to prevent President Trump from winning re-election.” Lindell’s argument that “it’s not defamatory if I believed it” held no sway with a unanimous vote of jurors.
But you wouldn’t know that if you rely on other right-wing news organizations. A June 18 search shows no recent mention — much less a mention of the libel verdict — of Lindell on the websites of Fox News and One America News.
What do those two sites have in common? Consider:
►Fox News paid $787 million in 2023 to settle a similar case filed by Dominion Voting Systems. (A similar lawsuit by Smartmatic is underway.)
►One America News settled for an undisclosed amount with Smartmatic in 2024.
There’s a general consistency in that don’t cover cases involving themselves. No one is bound by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, but it’s right in stating that journalists should be “accountable and transparent” in coverage. Specifically, the code says journalists should:
- Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.
- Abide by the same high standards they expect of others.
In short, there’s a remarkable inconsistency in how such news organizations cover the defamation lawsuits they (and others) face involving what they said about the 2020 election. It’s particularly problematic for Fox, who has put Lidell’s name in hundreds of headlines and mentioned his name thousands of times on air before making him a non-person once the flurry of lawsuits began.
The lesson for all of us: Don’t rely on a single news source — or even a single type of news source — for all of your information.