This afternoon, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems as opening arguments were about commence in Dominion's $1.6 billion libel lawsuit against the conservative media giant. While Dominion got less than half of what it was seeking from Fox, the $787.5 million represents roughly a quarter of Fox's annual earnings. This isn't chump change. More like Trump change.
Fox News knowingly made false statements about Dominion Voting Systems' machines flip Trump votes to Biden. As such, I must admit that I would like to have seen Dominion Voting Systems' libel lawsuit against Fox News go to trial and possibly see the likes of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have to testify under oath. Still, defamation is among the hardest things to prove in civil court and the Canadian based Dominion would have to prove that Fox acted with malice and with reckless disregard for the truth and there is no guarantee Dominion would have prevailed.
However, Fox News is not out of the woods yet. There is still pending libel litigation by Smartmatic Voting Systems which has also sued Fox News personalities Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro along with former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. The suit is being brought for $2.7 billion. A spokesman for Smartmatic stated, “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest.” Does this mean Smartmatic is going to go to trial even if Fox offers them $1 billion?
Despite their abhorrent behavior, Fox News is going to continue to peddle lies, if not about the 2020 election, then about January 6th among many other things. Because there will always be people who will believe what they put out there at face value. As with Trump, Fox News proves you can fool some of the people all of the time.
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