A Rough Week for Fox and its Hosts Part I – Dominion Voting Settlement

The popular right-wing cable talk network Fox News has had a rough couple of weeks. Today, we’ll talk about their settlement of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation suit. And in our next post will discuss why popular Fox host Tucker Carlson was forced to leave.

The Fox News network announced a settlement Tuesday, April 18, with Dominion Voting System’s libel lawsuit that claimed that Dominion was defamed by Fox’s false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. There was never any evidence that this happened. Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to the voting equipment company to bring the lawsuit to a close. According to The Washington Post, this was the “largest publicly disclosed monetary settlement ever in an American defamation action.”

While Dominion got a massive financial settlement, they did not get a substantial apology from Fox. Instead, the network issued a statement that said, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

The settlement was announced two days into what was to be the start of the trial. Numerous people critical of Fox were unhappy that Fox did not give a meaningful apology. But it’s worth remembering that this was Dominion’s lawsuit, and by settling they got a guaranteed large financial settlement without an extended trial.

Washington Post media commentator Erik Wemple notes that Dominion had massive amounts of evidence they said showed that Fox knew the claims made by Trump and his supporters about Dominion were false, and that the claims were being broadcast to help keep Fox’s audience happy.

Journalist Charles Fishman had an excellent Twitter thread last week where he explained why it made good sense for Dominion to settle without a trial. His key points included:

• There would be no audio or video from the trial to highlight the lies Fox hosts propagated.
• There would not be great social media materials to go viral.
• There was a good chance that it would take years for a court case to settle.
• A cash settlement now would give Dominion 80 times its annual profit with a single check.
• The only thing Dominion is not getting is a clear apology from Fox.

Would you settle under these circumstances?

Settling would also seem to be in Fox’s best interests. Wemple, writing the day before the case settled, gave multiple reasons why Fox News would want to avoid going to trial. These include:

• The trial would be a public relations disaster for the network. Every day of coverage of the lead-up to the trial included more dirt on the company coming from e-mails and texts from inside the company.
• The judge was not sympathetic to Fox’s arguments. He was continually criticizing their attorneys’ behavior.
• Fox winning in court could result in the Supreme Court changing the long-standing “actual malice” standard for public officials to prove libel. Several members of the court have indicated that they would be interested in reconsidering that standard, making it much easier for public officials to sue for libel. That kind of decision would clearly not be in Fox’s best interests. (Or, to be honest, that of any news company.)

Up Next:  Why Fox fired popular host Tucker Carlson.