In the end, Fox News did what it had to do to protect its brand, and that was settle its defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems.
The trial brought on by Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 defamation case against Fox News and Fox Corp, if had continued through opening statements, would have presented all kinds of negative headlines and peeled off even more layers revealing the network’s inner workings. Fox News didn’t want to endure that.
So, with the unprecedented media lawsuit settlement of $787.5 million, Fox News acknowledges the court’s ruling that it did not cover Dominion accurately during the aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections.
In a statement, the network said, “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. 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.”
Even if Fox News was not required to publicly acknowledge its malfeasance on air, have its hosts/personalities make retractions, correct their previous falsehoods, or apologize on-air, Dominion is taking the settlement just as that.
Justin Nelson, the lead attorney for Dominion, said, “The truth matters. Lies have consequences.” While Dominion Voting Systems’ CEO John Poulos added, “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company… nothing can ever make up for that.”
Having Fox News senior executives and personalities like Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, and on-air hosts like Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, and Sean Hannity, reveal under oath that they did not believe in the election lies brought on by then-President Donald Trump and having those statements repeated endlessly through broadcast, print, and digital media throughout the day would have brought on reputation damage to the network.
Ironically, they did this during the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. As was revealed during the pretrial process, internal communications showed that Fox News executives and talent knew that they were broadcasting bogus claims but did so to serve the viewer and avoid reputation damage for the network.
Fox News, in both cases, protected its image. In one of those cases, it lost a lot of money doing that.
It’s not over for Fox News as they still have more lawsuits to deal with, the next big one being Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit. Whether this one gets settled is still to be determined, but what might be learned from this case is that if a $1.6 billion defamation case delivers $787.5 million, then $2.7 billion could potentially net Smartmatic even more.
But all this potential expenditure by Fox News does come at a cost. Fox News’ parent company is valued at $17 billion, but it has roughly $4 billion in cash and is loaded with debt.
The $787 million settlement seems minor relative to @FOXCorp‘s $4 billion in cash, but you need to look at debt.
Fox holds $7.2 billion in longterm debt, putting its net debt at $3.1 billion. Thanks to the settlement it’s now $3.9 billion. That’s material…
— Edmund Lee (@edmundlee) April 19, 2023
Fox Corp will look for ways to recoup these losses. For Fox News, which has shown remarkable employee stability throughout its history, looking at its payroll may be one way to go as it may be forced to become a leaner news operation, which should now concern its employees.
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*This is a TVNewser analysis piece