Trentonater said:
I think it's worth reading this for everyone https://tedium.co/2023/12/12/the-completionist-open-hand-foundation-nonprofit-context/ regardless of how true the claims end up being jobst majorly overstepped his bounds as a journalist and acted quite unlike a journalist at that. Many legal experts have said he shouldn't have made the claims he did in his second video and should have consulted legal experts. But i have noticed that jobst will eventually start milling the same topic for views but in this case he should have left it as it was. |
Well, I'm not a legal expert, but I did pass the bar and have done a bit of study in regards to defamation suit.
Whether he should have have made the claims morally is one question. Legally though, I can't see any potential liability on Jobst's end.
When you are dealing with a public figure, to be liable for defamation, you must act with what is called "actual malice". That means that either a) you know what you are saying is false or b) you act with reckless indifference to whether or not what you are saying is false.
I don't think anyone is claiming he knowingly made false accusations. So, it would have to be the second.
One thing to keep in mind is that truth is an absolute defense to defamation. So, if what he said was true (even if he didn't know it 100% at the time) he can't be sued for defamation. And that doesn't mean every single detail has to be exactly accurate, it just has to be "substantially true". It looks like that is the case in this situation.
Even if it is not considered truth, he's still ok. The standard is that you have to be reckless, i.e. you clearly don't bother to find out if it's true or not. For instance, the recent case with Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook parents. Alex Jones may or may not have actually believed what he was saying, but it was found that he did not do the bare minimum to fact check anything he was reporting. Here, it seems that Jobst probably did at least an ok job, and that's more than enough. Even if he did a shitty job, that would probably be ok, as long as he tried. The article says he needed a mole, but that's simply not a standard journalists have ever been held to, at least not legally.
Also note that only factual statements can be considered defamation. So, if he said that the foundation didn't seem to be in a rush to donate anything to charity, that seems to me to be a statement of his opinion. Generally, such statements are protected by the first amendment and can not be the basis of a lawsuit. The article seems to think the problem is that Jobst posted his own conclusions, but legally, that is that is going to be incredibly hard to sue over.
Based on my limited knowldedge of defamation law, and even more limited knowledge of this situation, I wouldn't think a lawsuit would be a very good idea. If he's a bad journalist or youtuber or w/e, that's a different story.
