The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems has reportedly reached a $787 million settlement with Fox in its defamation suit against the network over misleading coverage of the 2020 election, just before the case was slated to go to trial.
Dominion Voting Systems has claimed that Fox News knowingly boosted lies about the voting machine company rigging the election against former President Donald Trump that caused irreparable harm to its business. In a news conference Tuesday, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said that the settlement represented “accountability.”
“This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” Fox said in a statement Tuesday.
Though the case has ended on day one of the planned five-week trial, voluminous court filings have already revealed text messages and emails among Fox producers, on-air personalities, and executives — including chair Rupert Murdoch — providing a rare window into how the network elevated false conspiracy theories, even as top Fox officials privately dismissed them. Those communications also show how Murdoch played a key role in shaping coverage and endorsed the network’s strategy of catering to its viewers who still believed in Trump.
Fox had tried to tie its fate in the case to the future of media, arguing that a judgment forcing the company to pay up for reporting on allegations made by the then-president would have eroded press freedoms under the First Amendment more broadly. But legal experts have said that if Fox couldn’t be held accountable for its wrongful journalistic practices in this case, no news organization can be.
“The conduct here is way over the line,” said Angelo Carusone, president of the watchdog organization Media Matters for America, ahead of the…
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