As most everyone knows by now, Dominion Voting Systems settled its libel suit against Fox News last week. Check that. Make that most everyone that that gets their news content from virtually anybody other than Fox. Because I’m guessing that none of the fair-minded journalists over there have mentioned a peep of this to their viewers. Fox tends to eke out facts-or “true facts” as folks around here say- on damn near a “need to know” basis. And its audience doesn’t need to know much.
Anyway, many people both inside and outside of the straight up media expressed some measure of disappointment at this outcome. The Judge had ruled earlier that the stuff Fox put out about Dominion’s machines allowing the 2020 Presidential election to get stolen was not just false but “clearly false.” All Dominion had to do was prove that the false claims made by Fox were made with “actual malice” or “in reckless disregard for the truth.”
Generally, as I understand it, this last prong of the test is hard to prove. However, Dominion’s lawyers had access to a trove of emails from not only Fox talking heads like the odious Tucker Carlson, certain producers and Rupert Murdoch himself in which doubts were expressed about the truth of the crap that they were putting out for their rabid customers.
Which brings me to this quick aside. It has never been particularly clear to me just who the hell was supposed to have been behind the grand heist of 2020. Biden? Hillary? The Chinese? The Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church? Hunter Biden? The Scientologists?
Did Dominion’s machines acquire sentience and flip their own switches against Donald Trump?
Every theft requires a thief. Maybe it’s just big dumb me (as Uncle Howard used to put it) but I never could quite suss out who the mastermind behind all this supposedly was.
But I ramble.
As I alluded to earlier, many folks were disappointed that the case didn’t go to trial. I admit the prospect of Sean Hannity and Carlson being forced to testify under oath was pleasing to even me.
But you know what? Dominion and its crackerjack legal team (and it must be said that both sides were ably represented) are not obligated to litigate for our amusement. They sued for 1.6 billion. They settled for $787.5 million. Which ain’t bad when you consider that Dominion was worth-at the time it filed the lawsuit-@ 50 million.
Besides, Fox isn’t out of the woods yet. Another manufacturer of voting machines-Smartmatic-is suing it for 2.7 billion. Smartmatic says it’s not settling.
And Dominion has other cases pending against such luminaries as Mike Lindell (the money burning “My Pillow” guy) and Rudy Giuliani. The prospects for amusement remain high. And now Dominion has got a pretty fat litigation fund to play with going forward.
But no. The lawyers for Dominion did one hell of a job. It was a good settlement.
It just wasn’t very much fun to watch. And it remains to be seen whether having to cough up over the lies of 2020 will operate as a deterrent to Fox going forward.
Probably not. It will just pick different shots from now until 2024. Like trans kids and bathrooms. Trump’s various legal problems. Hunter Biden’s laptop. Kids having access to porn at the local library. Subjects its gullible audience will continue to eat with a spoon but are pretty risk free from a litigation perspective.
After all, the show must go on.
