Fox’s $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over its 2020 election lies is the biggest media defamation settlement in history. But it’s unclear whether it will change the way Fox News, or the media more broadly, operates.
While there won’t be binding court precedent on what guidelines news and opinion outlets have to follow when it comes to the truth, the settlement shows that spreading lies isn’t without consequences for media organizations. As Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said Tuesday, the settlement represents “accountability.”
For an organization as large as Fox, the settlement amount, which was about half what Dominion sought, isn’t an existential threat. And given that the network can rely on the loyalty of its conservative audience and that it didn’t have to admit to its lies on air as part of the settlement, it may well continue to entertain conspiracies about a stolen 2020 election and other right-wing disinformation. That might be up to the Murdoch family, which controls Fox and its parent company, setting it apart from other media organizations.
The same settlement amount could have brought other news organizations to their knees. But most won’t have reason to fear that they could be next. The circumstances of the Fox suit are somewhat exceptional. And many legal experts agree that the network’s actions exceeded the very high legal threshold of “actual malice” — that it made a false statement “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not,” as established by the 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. It would be difficult to meet that threshold if abiding by the most basic journalistic standards, as most outlets tend to do.
We asked media and First Amendment experts what they think the impact of the settlement will be. Most believed that the payment won’t change Fox’s behavior or have any sweeping impact on the news industry more…
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