According to several reports this week, Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a settlement Tuesday in a $1.6 billion defamation case against the news network. "The deal came on the first day of trial in the civil case in a Wilmington, Del., court," Just the News reported.
"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," Fox said in a statement. "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," the network's statement noted further.
The top-rated news outlet agreed to pay $787.5 million in damages as part of the agreement, NBC News reported.
Dominion has accused Fox of defaming the company by knowingly allowing guests on their shows to make false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that Dominion's voting machines were involved. Fox has argued that they are protected by the First Amendment and that the allegations made against the company were newsworthy.
In late March, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that the case could proceed to trial after determining that Dominion had established the first element of its claim, which was that the information that Fox reported about the company was false.
"The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that it is CRYSTAL clear than none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true," wrote Judge Davis at the time.
The nature and substance of the trial subsequently became a subject of dispute, with Davis ruling that Dominion could not discuss the network's reporting on the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. He argued that any reference to the riot could potentially distort the jury's perception of the case being presented.
Even left-wing hacks on TV were not happy with the fact that Fox was ordered to pay such a massive settlement -- even as they choose to forget that conservatives like former Project Veritas CEO James O'Keefe gets slandered and defamed all the time by major news outlets but never seems to get any relief or satisfaction through the courts.
"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg, not known for her academic prowess, was angry that Fox did not have to actually admit any wrongdoing -- which is common in such suits.
“Fox News CEO admitted in a deposition the network knew they were pushing lies,” Goldberg said. “Should they have had to go onto their own network and say, look, yes, we lied to y’all. And we knew it, and we had to pay this money because we lied to y’all. They don’t have to do that. They don’t have to admit any wrongdoing.”
“That’s my biggest problem with it because we already know the Fox News viewer exclusively gets his or her news from Fox News on air,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. “They don’t read other newspapers, they don’t get news from any other outlet, and the fact the New York Times is covering it and CNN is covering it, that’s fine. But they need to be able to get on air and tell their viewers, ‘you can’t trust us. We lied to you. We affected our very democracy. Some of our anchors can’t be trusted,’ and they needed to say that.”
“To me, anything under $1 billion I don’t think sends the right message because Rupert Murdoch, every year, I think he has $2.9 billion in pro forma earnings that Fox News makes, and he still has $4 billion in cash as of February. In my view, it didn’t sting enough for what they actually did,” she said.
Mind you, not a single one of them was privy to the negotiations, but that doesn't matter because a conservative media outlet got punished while they continue to work for one of several outlets that defamed and lied about Donald Trump for years during his term.
Sources include:
Please contact us for more information.
