Fox settles with Dominion, averting anxiously awaited trial in landmark defamation case

Fox “News” is a prod­uct of niche mar­ket­ing, of detri­ment to democ­ra­cy but immense­ly prof­itable. Its par­ent cor­po­ra­tion took in an esti­mat­ed $1.2 bil­lion last year. Now, how­ev­er, it must pay $787.5 mil­lion to Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems in order to set­tle the moth­er of all defama­tion suits.

The set­tle­ment with Domin­ion, which sought $1.6 bil­lion after being defamed by Fox hosts, was the lead report for almost all news out­lets. The excep­tion was, of course, Fox view­ers, who were told almost noth­ing. The right wing net­work stuck with its usu­al sta­ples, demo­niz­ing trans­gen­der ath­letes and depict­ing cities with Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­ors as cen­ters of crime and violence.

The net­work was designed to attract view­ers unsat­is­fied with the report­ing of the mass media, and in the mar­ket for “news” mir­ror­ing their own views.

“We’re not here to pass our­selves off as intel­lec­tu­als: We’re here to give the pub­lic what they want,” own­er Rupert Mur­doch explained at launch.

What the view­ers got was a line­up of right-wing pun­dits, dark con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and ample dis­play of women’s legs. No pantsuits at Fox. The net­work served as cheer­leader for the inva­sion of Iraq, pro­mot­er of Repub­li­can politi­cians, and employ­er of los­ing Repub­li­can can­di­dates, while demo­niz­ing Pres­i­dent Obama.

When Barack and Michelle Oba­ma touched knuck­les upon win­ning the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, a Fox per­son­al­i­ty termed it a “ter­ror­ist fist bump.”

Typ­i­cal of Fox was ador­ing, copi­ous cov­er­age giv­en to two Repub­li­can can­di­dates in Wash­ing­ton, Sen­ate hope­ful Tiffany Smi­ley and ultra MAGA House can­di­date Joe Kent, in last fall’s elec­tion. Inter­view­ing Smi­ley in her race against Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, host Sean Han­ni­ty declared: “We want that seat.”

The line became the cen­ter­piece of a Mur­ray reelec­tion commercial.

Fox spent four years shilling for Don­ald Trump. The for­mer occu­pant of the Oval Office boost­ed rat­ings for Han­ni­ty, a bor­ing par­ty line pundit.

Fox com­men­ta­tors have depict­ed Joe Biden as in the ear­ly stages of demen­tia and zeroed in on his vig­or­ous Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Pete Buttigieg.

Long gone is the network’s ini­tial tagline – “Fair and Bal­anced” – as well as fig­ures like Chris Wal­lace and Carl Cameron inter­est­ed in prac­tic­ing journalism.

What the Fox audi­ence want­ed, in the 2020 elec­tion, was four more years of Trump. The Amer­i­can peo­ple dis­agreed and gave Joe Biden a mar­gin of 2.9 mil­lion votes. Hav­ing spent years brand­ing his crit­ics as “losers”, Trump could not accept defeat. He claimed the elec­tion was stolen, foment­ing spe­cious claims and los­ing court cas­es before Trump-nom­i­nat­ed fed­er­al judges.

View­ers of Fox were infu­ri­at­ed when the net­work was first to fore­cast that Biden would car­ry Ari­zona. Top brass at Fox pri­vate­ly agreed that Joe Biden had secured an Elec­toral Col­lege major­i­ty and would become our forty-sixth pres­i­dent. But with Fox view­ers defect­ing to rivals on the right, such as News­max, the network’s pun­dits gave air time and cre­dence to elec­tion deniers and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, more famous­ly Rudy Giu­liani with hair dye stream­ing down his face.

The view­er base had to be fed what it want­ed to hear, that Trump real­ly won the elec­tion. The accu­sa­tions were absurd, includ­ing a claim that long-deceased Venezue­lan strong­man Hugo Chavez helped cre­ate Domin­ion, and that the com­pa­ny deployed a secret algo­rithm to take Trump’s votes and give them to Biden. Under fire from Fox, the com­pa­ny took a painful busi­ness hit, and its employ­ees endured a mul­ti­tude of threats.

In prepar­ing its case, Domin­ion dis­cov­ered and dis­closed what Fox brass were say­ing to each oth­er back­stage. “Just watched Giu­liani press con­fer­ence: stu­pid and dam­ag­ing,” Rupert Mur­doch said in one email. In anoth­er, “Ter­ri­ble stuff dam­ag­ing every­body I fear – Prob­a­bly hurt­ing us, too.”

In pri­vate, top-rat­ed host Tuck­er Carl­son was pro­fess­ing to hate Trump, and warn­ing of dam­age to the Fox News “brand.” “With Trump behind it, an alter­na­tive like News­max could be dev­as­tat­ing to us,” he said in an email.

On the air, how­ev­er, Carl­son con­tin­ued to hint at con­spir­a­cies. A notable crank, lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, field­ed a ques­tion from Fox host Maria Bar­tiro­mo: “Sid­ney, I want to ask you about these algo­rithms and Domin­ion soft­ware.” On Fox Busi­ness, host Lou Dobbs – a KING5 alum­nus – was spread­ing the rumors.

Domin­ion had a steep hill to climb in its defama­tion suit against Fox. Under terms of the Supreme Court’s sem­i­nal 1964 deci­sion in New York Times v. Sul­li­van, the com­pa­ny had to prove that alle­ga­tions on Fox were of “reck­less dis­re­gard of its fal­si­ty or whether it was true or false”” as well as the prod­uct of “actu­al malice.”

The plain­tiff did a remark­able job, and leaked much of its dam­ag­ing evi­dence before the sched­uled tri­al date this week. How much more is going to get aired, Fox exec­u­tives must have asked them­selves. The judge in Delaware ruled that Fox broad­casts were, in fact, false. Truth could not be used as a defense.

As well, the net­work faced the prospect of hav­ing Rupert Mur­doch, Tuck­er Carl­son and Lau­ra Ingra­ham on the wit­ness stand, explain­ing the con­tra­dic­tion between their pri­vate state­ments and pub­lic slan­ders. All that and under oath to tell the truth. The tri­al would have brought out con­flict between Fox’s prime time pun­dits and what’s left of the divi­sion that is sup­posed to be report­ing news.

The pric­etag for spar­ing the wit­ness stand, and escap­ing account­abil­i­ty, came to $787.50 mil­lion. “The truth mat­ters: Lies have con­se­quences,” Dominion’s lawyer Justin Nel­son said out­side the court­room. “Over two years ago, a tor­rent of lies swept Domin­ion and elec­tion offi­cials across Amer­i­ca into an alter­na­tive uni­verse of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, caus­ing griev­ous harm to Domin­ion and the country.”

Fox is not off the hook. Anoth­er firm smeared after the 2020 elec­tion, Smaart­mat­ic, is suing Fox News for $2.7 bil­lion, with a tri­al date pending.

Fox News is pay­ing for dam­ag­ing democ­ra­cy and poi­son­ing the body pol­i­tics. It’s the cost of pan­der­ing rather than telling the truth.

As Fox chief exec­u­tive Suzanne Scott said in an email, “I can’t keep defend­ing these reporters who don’t under­stand our view­ers and how to han­dle stories “

Rupert Mur­doch can hope for hap­pi­er days. The nine­ty-two year-old patri­arch of FNC is about to be mar­ried for the fifth time.