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“Fox News agreed Tuesday to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million to avert a trial in the voting machine company’s lawsuit that would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election… Dominion had sued Fox for $1.6 billion, arguing that the top-rated news outlet damaged the company’s reputation by peddling phony conspiracy theories that claimed its equipment switched votes from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.” AP News
The right supports the settlement, and argues that other media outlets have also misled their viewers.
“Almost every person who worked for Fox knew the claims of Trump and his advisers were bogus. Yet they continued to put on the air the advisers and lawyers so Team Trump could keep making those false claims… Then again, a verdict against Fox might have done even more damage to the common weal than one in its favor. Any decision against Fox would have had the effect of narrowing First Amendment protections in ways antithetical to freedom…
“If the Supreme Court eventually ruled a news outlet liable for defamation for material (1) presented as opinion rather than as hard facts (2) by guests rather than by the actual personnel of the outlet, (3) when the guests literally represented the president of the United States, (4) arguing that the very workings of constitutional republicanism were at stake, and (5) without any evidence of the news team’s actual animus against the allegedly defamed subject, then press freedoms would be far more parlous than for decades they had been assumed to be…
“After all, the fact that a president’s representatives were contesting the election was indisputably real news. To say that a news outlet has no right to allow them a forum to make their case would be absurd… Today’s lawsuit settlement deters bad journalistic behavior by forcing a massive payout ($787.5 million) for the putrid ethics. But it sets no hard, fast legal precedent that massively erodes the bulwark of the First Amendment. Win-win.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
“I honestly don’t know how much this settlement hurts the network over the long term. Someone would need intimate knowledge of their finances and yearly earnings vs. expenses to even speculate on that. I have little doubt, though, that the leadership at the conservative network is going to crack down, specifically on stolen election claims, going forward. That’s going to make some people upset, but when a company is having to shell out $787 million, feelings go out the window.”
Bonchie, RedState
“Fox certainly should not have misled their audience on Trump’s claims at Dominion, but they are far from the only network with an integrity problem. Take the ‘last honest news man’ Jake Tapper, who fell oddly silent when it was revealed his former boss at CNN was working side by side with former New York governor Andrew Cuomo during his much heralded Covid press conferences…
“At MSNBC, they are still at a loss trying to find Joy Reid’s bigoted time-traveling hackers, and Rachel Maddow still hasn’t come up with the Trump tax returns she promised. Nicolle Wallace hasn’t answered for promoting bogus Russia narratives fed to her from the Hamilton 68… and now there are fresh allegations of plagiarism against Mehdi Hasan… While other networks will no doubt take a victory lap over Fox’s sloppiness, perhaps they can start by cleaning their own houses out.”
Stephen L. Miller, Spectator World
The left is disappointed that the case did not go to trial, which would have further exposed Fox’s wrongdoings.
The left is disappointed that the case did not go to trial, which would have further exposed Fox’s wrongdoings.
“[Fox’s] defense was to wrap itself in the 1st Amendment, arguing that the case threatened ‘protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news.’ But there is no such right… The only reason to tolerate false reporting in the absence of actual malice is to give the press breathing room to go after the facts aggressively without fear of liability for innocent mistakes. Far from serving the goals of the 1st Amendment, Fox’s knowing and reckless publication of lies undermined press freedom and had a terribly corrosive effect on the country.”
Harry Litman, Los Angeles Times
“One reason that Dominion succeeded in getting this far while other defamation plaintiffs have not is that the underlying false claims made against the company were unusually ridiculous — like the assertion that former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had played a key role in creating the company, or that Dominion had a secret algorithm that allowed it to switch votes from Trump to Joe Biden…
“The company’s lawyers also appeared to have succeeded in casting a wide net in the course of discovery, which allowed them to obtain the internal communications that became central to the case. Murdoch, for instance, at one point watched the infamous press conference hosted by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in November 2020 in which they peddled similar falsehoods. The network’s owner wrote, ‘Really crazy stuff. And damaging.’ There were plenty more of these colorful and embarrassing exchanges among the network’s boldface names.”
Ankush Khardori, Politico
“This was set to be an unprecedented trial, forcing Fox executives and insiders to the stand… Dominion, occupying center stage, has exposed many lies undergirding Fox, including ones spread by the network’s most popular hosts. And now, in its settlement, it relinquishes that battle, and lets Fox off the hook. And the corrupt network is already celebrating and ready to move on, confident in its ability to settle any future legal challenges just as well.”
Prem Thakker, New Republic
“In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, Fox was in the vanguard of reporting reality. It was the first network to call Arizona for Joe Biden, and thus to assert that he would defeat Trump. The network’s reporters, who tend to stick closer to the news than its talk-show hosts, debunked lies about fraud…
“The result was an exodus of the viewers who had made Fox into the most powerful news organization in America and by far the leading cable outlet by ratings. For years, some liberals had believed that if Fox simply told the truth, its viewers would change their minds. Instead, they changed the channel… That scares executives far more than any cadre of fancy defamation lawyers ever can—and the lengths that they might go to avoid losing their viewers should scare everyone else.”
David A. Graham, The Atlantic
A libertarian's take
“Murdoch’s company paid $100 million to celebrities and crime victims in his tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain, according to the Washington Post. Another $50 million went one year to women at Fox News who alleged sexual harassment at the conservative network. In another case, $15 million went to a former host who complained about wage discrimination. A ‘seven-figure payment’ went to the parents of Seth Rich, who sued Fox for trafficking a false conspiracy theory about his death. And in 2010, Fox dropped a mammoth $500 million to settle a supermarket-coupon trade secret lawsuit…
“In the Murdoch universe, paying such settlements is just the cost of doing business Murdoch-style. The alternative to settling with Dominion for telling a series of lies about voting fraud would have been a painful and long courtroom drama… Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand… Rupert Murdoch, the indestructible Rupert Murdoch, will carry on as he always has.”
Jack Shafer, Politico
