Irish Examiner view: Online vitriol

Sandy Hook defamation case

 A six-person jury reached a verdict, saying that Alex Jones should pay $965 million to 15 plaintiffs who suffered from his lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre.

One of the grim side effects of gun culture in America is that some of the mass shootings in that country, though horrifying at the time, can fade from the memory because they occur with such regularity.

The killings in Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 are still remembered, however. The death toll — 27, 20 of those children — isn’t the only reason many readers will recall the event. It lingered in the public imagination for years because right-wing podcaster and radio host Alex Jones spent years promoting a baseless theory that the massacre never occurred and the grieving parents were really actors.