Fox News will pay $787.5 million for transmitting lies that a small voting technology firm helped steal the 2020 election. But it’s impossible to put a price on damaged trust in US democracy.
The last-minute deal Tuesday between the conservative channel and Dominion Voting Systems, halting a blockbuster jury trial, delivered a staggering financial settlement after a process that had already exposed Fox’s willingness to parrot election conspiracy theories that its executives and anchors knew weren’t true.
The agreement delivered restitution to Dominion for the hits to its reputation, and repudiated false claims that its machines were used to simply flip vote totals from ex-President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden. It represented a huge victory for the firm’s lawyers and, in the context of a civil legal suit, the massive payoff validated the decision to bring the case.
“This is really the first time that anyone has paid a price for telling the lies about the 2020 election and we are very proud about that,” Dominion’s lead lawyer, Justin Nelson, told CNN’s Alex Marquardt, arguing that the settlement secured accountability for the firm and solidified a shared vision of national facts vital to the survival of democracy.
There have indeed been few consequences for the Trump lawyers and supporters who spouted falsehoods and nonsense about a fair election in 2020 that the ex-president lost, although some key figures and other right-wing networks face their own pending defamation suits from Dominion. Smartmatic, another voting technology company, is also suing Fox News for defamation in a case that’s pending. And Trump himself is facing several criminal probes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the run-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Dominion’s lawyers argued that they performed a valuable civic service by…
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