The Dominion lawsuit maintains, “It is legally irrelevant that many — but not all — of the accused statements relate to false charges made by a guest and not a host. Fox is deemed the ‘publisher’ of every statement those guests aired against Dominion.” That’s just crazy talk.

For one thing, Fox talent challenged bogus claims made by election deniers.

Most important, if this argument prevails, it will have a chilling effect on journalism, particularly coverage of presidential elections. If editors want to ignore a story, here’s a grand excuse wrapped with a bow on it.

And what are the chances that critics of an election — on either side — will be guests on cable news?

[Saunders makes a good point about guests in a debate, but this sounds like an argument to be made in court, rather than an argument against recourse to the courts. Dominion is alleging that both hosts and guests defamed them. If Fox hosts defamed Dominion Voting Systems with “actual malice” — in other words, using knowingly false statements — then Dominion has the right to seek redress for that. And if they didn’t, well, Fox has a lot of very clever lawyers, too. — Ed]