The right wing propaganda network Newsmax recently ran a segment with a very curious disclaimer chyron displayed onscreen: “NEWSMAX ACCEPTS THE 2020 ELECTION RESULTS AS LEGAL AND FINAL.”
The text appeared as host Corey Lewandowski was interviewing Donald Trump, who was droning on about the importance of electing him in November:
If we don’t win this election, November 5th, if we don’t win this election, we won’t have a country left, Corey. We’re not gonna have a country and you know that better than anybody.
Perhaps surprisingly, Trump managed to conclude the interview without reiterating his false claim that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against him, in any of its myriad flavors.
The chyron provoked widespread ridicule. The network is facing potentially ruinous defamation lawsuits from electronic voting companies Dominion and Smartmatic after recklessly promoting bogus conspiracy theories implicating the companies in imaginary election fraud. Fox News has already settled one such suit for a stunning $787 million. Surely this was Newsmax’s skittish lawyers, hoping to preemptively shield their employer in the event Trump began spewing still more actionable lies. Hilarious, right?
On a moment’s reflection, though, something should seem off here. If the chyron was meant to provide legal cover, it was oddly and ineptly crafted. The disclaimer was, oddly, both too much and not enough.
It was “not enough” in that declaring you accept election results as “final” and even “legal” would not really negate any more concrete or specific false claims that might be made on air about particular litigants. One can say one accepts the results and still make defamatory allegations about Dominion and Smartmatic.
But it was also “too much” in that Newsmax remains absolutely free—legally, if not ethically—to more broadly question the legality or legitimacy of the 2020 election. The disclaimer, in other words, was logically disconnected from any strategy that would actually protect the network from further legal liability.
So what’s going on here? I’m going to propose that the chyron was actually a rather clever form of countersignalling—the equivalent of blinking and speaking in stilted tones during a hostage video to make it clear you don’t really endorse the words you’re being coerced to recite.
The disclaimer serves as an act of performative overcompliance, designed to make the Newsmax viewer think: “See how they’re being censored!” The unnecessary breadth of the statement implies that the company is being compelled, not merely to refrain from slandering particular companies, but to endorse the legitimacy of the previous election wholesale. Which, of course, would be an overbroad restriction of constitutionally protected speech—if it were true that they had been so compelled—in a way that a civil defamation suit over more concrete false claims about specific private companies is not.
In other words, the disclaimer chyron is precisely not a legalistic CYA maneuver—certainly not one any competent lawyer would have designed. Rather, it’s a crafty bit of political messaging in the guise of a CYA maneuver, the message being: “We are the victims of tyrannical lawfare, being prevented from exposing the true perfidy of the last presidential election to our viewers.” And you can be certain the Newsmax audience read that dishonest message precisely as intended.