WHITE FLAG: FOX News Surrenders, Settles, Pays Dominion Voting Systems $787,500,000
The 11th-hour deal saved Fox a potentially lengthy legal tangle, though it still faces other lawsuits over its coverage of false claims about the 2020 election. (nytimes.com)‘Dominion wins but the public loses’: Fox settlement avoids paying the highest price (theguardian.com)Smartmatic vows to 'expose the rest' of Fox News' alleged 'misconduct' after Dominion settles massive lawsuit: report (rawstory.com)Digby: The trial Fox News deserves (salon.com)Fox News settlement doesn't stop special master probe that could end in obstruction charges (rawstory.com)CNN’s Pam Brown Asks Dominion Lawyer Point-Blank Why They Didn’t Force Fox News Hosts ‘To Make On-air Apologies’ (mediaite.com)
Judge Eric Davis announced just before 4pm EDT on Tuesday that FOX News and Dominion Voting Systems have reached a settlement in Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the conservative propaganda outlet.
Details of the settlement:
• FOX is paying Dominion $787,500,000.
• An attorney for Dominion made a public statement decrying disinformation and called the settlement a win for “truth and democracy”.
• Dominion chairman John Poulos: “FOX has admitted to telling lies about Dominion… nothing can ever make up for that.”
• FOX News has admitted to telling lies about Dominion, per John Poulos.
NY Times: “The $787.5 million that Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems to settle the lawsuit against the cable network appears to be one of the largest settlements in a defamation case in U.S. history. While the terms of out-of-court settlements are not always revealed, the Fox-Dominion deal immediately enters the upper echelon of publicly disclosed damages and other payouts in defamation cases. … It was a last-minute end to a case that began two years ago and after the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that peeled back the curtain on a media company that has long resisted outside scrutiny. … [A]mong the consequences: the public will not see Rupert Murdoch testify in open court. Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo and other potential witnesses also will not appear.”
NBC: “The announcement follows a bruising week for Fox News. During pretrial conference hearings, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis sanctioned them for withholding evidence, admonished them for not being straightforward with him, and said he was considering appointing a special master to investigate possible legal misconduct by the attorneys. He said he would allow Dominion to conduct an additional deposition with Rupert Murdoch at Fox’s expense. Davis also ruled that Fox lawyers could not use newsworthiness as a legal defense, limiting their possible trial strategies.”
Sad, actually. That would’ve left a mark or two.
Although there has been outspoken disappointment by many media watchers and pundits that the trial did not go forward, Heather Digby Parton made this key observation at Salon: “There really is a win for America in all this. Everything we’ve learned from the depositions and the discovery documents can’t be disappeared. The truth still matters to most of us and the truth is that Fox is not really about ideology or even sheer political power. Fox News’ mission is to entertain its audience by telling them whatever they want to hear for money. They can continue to perform for their audience, and they will, but everyone else knows what they really are: a greedy carnival act, slavering over the attention of a bunch of deluded conspiracy theorists.“