Fox Corp. agreed Tuesday to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit over false claims aired by Fox News about voting machines used in the 2020 election. The deal was announced on what would have been the first day of a high-profile trial in a Delaware court that was widely seen as a test of First Amendment protections for news organizations.
Pretrial revelations about how Fox fed misinformation to its viewers about the 2020 vote to maintain its ratings had already embarrassed the country’s most powerful conservative media outlet. And Dominion’s attorneys have claimed victory for its defense of the truth. But the settlement – among the largest ever paid by a media company – doesn’t appear to compel Fox to admit wrongdoing or issue public apologies.
Why We Wrote This
The court case between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News reached a settlement at the last minute. But the ripple effects on the conservative network’s reputation – and its bottom line – may continue.
Still, money may speak louder than words. “$787 million is a pretty implicit admission of something,” says George Freeman, director of the Media Law Resource Center.
This is also not the end of the matter for Fox, which will have to contend with additional related lawsuits and damage to its reputation over the weeks and months to come.
Fox Corp. agreed Tuesday to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit over false claims aired by Fox News about voting machines used in the 2020 election. The deal was announced on what would have been the first day of a high-profile trial in a Delaware court that was widely seen as a test of First Amendment protections for news organizations.
Pretrial revelations about how Fox fed misinformation to its viewers about the 2020 vote to maintain its ratings had already embarrassed the country’s most powerful conservative media outlet. And Dominion’s attorneys have claimed victory for its defense of the truth. But the settlement – among the largest ever paid by a media company – doesn’t appear to compel Fox to admit wrongdoing or issue public apologies.
Still, it is not the end of the matter for Fox, which will have to contend with additional related lawsuits and damage to its reputation over the weeks and months to come.
Why We Wrote This
The court case between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News reached a settlement at the last minute. But the ripple effects on the conservative network’s reputation – and its bottom line – may continue.
Why did Fox agree to the settlement?
Media defamation lawsuits rarely go to trial. Plaintiffs face a high bar to prove intent or recklessness by a news organization, and judges often dismiss suits for this reason. But many experts believed Dominion had a strong case against Fox, bolstered by pretrial rulings by Superior Court Judge Eric Davis that weakened Fox’s defense that it was simply reporting newsworthy allegations. Those allegations were the unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies, amplified by Fox hosts, that Dominion’s machines had rigged the 2020 election by flipping votes to Joe Biden. Judge Davis wrote that “evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
Dominion had been demanding $1.6 billion in damages, and up until the last minute, Fox seemed to be preparing for a public defense of its reporting. Jury selection was finished on Tuesday morning, after which attorneys were due to make their opening statements. Behind closed doors, the two sides were instead finalizing a settlement.
That Fox chose to pay Dominion such a large sum points to its legal vulnerability, says George Freeman, director of the Media Law Resource Center and a former in-house counsel for The New York Times. “They obviously had calculated what the odds were on what a jury would have done,” he says.
A trial would also have meant more negative coverage of Fox, on top of the depositions and internal communications already released, and would have forced many of its hosts and executives to testify under oath.
Mr. Freeman says that while Fox hasn’t apologized for its actions, money speaks louder than words. “$787 million is a pretty implicit admission of something.”
In a statement, Fox acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” It also said the settlement reflected its “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.”
What further legal action could follow?
Fox still faces a $2.7 billion defamation suit from Smartmatic, another voting-machine company that was the target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories in 2020. That case was filed in New York, and a judge has denied Fox’s motions to dismiss it. Smartmatic quickly seized on the Dominion settlement to vow to continue its legal fight so that Fox could be held “accountable for undermining democracy.”
In addition, Fox shareholders have sued the company for failing in its fiduciary duties in its coverage of 2020 election falsehoods. And a former producer for host Tucker Carlson has sued Fox for allegedly coercing her into giving false testimony to attorneys for Dominion; Fox has said the producer was fired for sharing privileged information.
Dominion has separately sued MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump supporter who spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, including on frequent Fox appearances. In his deposition, Fox Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch said that Mr. Lindell was booked on shows because he was a major advertiser.
Dominion is also suing two other right-wing news outlets, One America News Network and Newsmax, for their election coverage. The Dominion court filings show that Fox executives fretted about losing their audience to those other outlets in the wake of the 2020 election, if they didn’t promote Mr. Trump’s rigged-election narrative.
What does the settlement mean for Fox News and its political coverage?
The lawsuit has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Fox News and its executives, including Mr. Murdoch, its patriarch, who built a media empire in Australia and the United Kingdom before Fox News launched in 1996. He has a history of settling lawsuits out of court, including substantial payments to litigants in the U.K. whose phones were hacked by Murdoch-owned newspapers, a scandal that forced him to close a popular Sunday newspaper in 2011.
Some analysts say such payouts to litigants are the cost of doing business for media tycoons like Mr. Murdoch and are unlikely to change how he runs his news outlets. Fox News is a profitable division of Fox Corp., delivering high ratings that support ad revenues and cable fees.
While Fox is certain to tread carefully in any future election-related coverage that involves Dominion and other companies, hosts like Mr. Carlson continue to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as does Mr. Trump as he seeks the GOP nomination in 2024.
“It’s still possible to spread conspiracies about an election,” says Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University who studies conservative media.
What may prove more lasting is the damage that the Dominion suit has done to Fox’s reputation as a news organization, she adds. Its election-night calls and straight news reporting had been respected in Washington because there was supposed to be an internal firewall from Fox’s opinion shows and their political agendas. But the revelation that Fox executives sidelined news reporters who challenged Mr. Trump’s lies has exposed the firewall as a fiction.
In one such instance, cited by Judge Davis in a pretrial ruling, after a Fox reporter fact-checked a Trump tweet about Dominion, Mr. Carlson messaged fellow host Sean Hannity, saying, “Please get her fired. … It’s measurably hurting the company.”
“Fox has played a very important role in conservative media because it’s so visible and it was treated as a legitimate news organization,” says Ms. Hemmer. Now, Fox “has no one left to impress. The only pressures are coming from the right.”