Government

It Was A Game Of Chicken, And Fox Blinked

KA-ching.

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21st Century Fox Sold To Walt Disney Co. For Over 70 Billion Dollars

(Photo by Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

There are a lot of pissed off reporters in Wilmington, Delaware tonight as Dominion Voting Systems settled its defamation suit against Fox News for lies about fraud in the 2020 election for $787,500,000 — half of the demanded $1.6 billion.

“The parties have settled their case,” Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis told the jurors as he thanked them for their service.

“It’s short compared to what you thought,” he told the panel, who had been waiting all day for scheduled opening arguments which never came, adding that “your presence was extremely important … this case was resolved because of you.”

“Lies have consequences,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said on the courthouse steps, saying that the settlement represented “vindication and accountability.”

“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,” Fox said in a statement released after the deal was announced. “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.”

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Judge Davis did not thank the dozens of members of the media squeezed into the courtroom and the overflow access, but it seems pretty likely that the resolution had as much to do with their presence as anyone else’s. The trial promised to be bruising for Fox, which has already faced blowback from revelations of internal communications trashing Trump and his lies about the election, while conceding that the network’s viewers were incapable of handling accurately reported news.

Meanwhile, the $2.7 billion case filed by Dominion’s competitor Smartmatic, which was also slimed by the Network continues apace.

“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest. Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy,” the company’s lawyer Erik Connolly said this afternoon.

And with a shareholder suit against Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch already in the works over the company’s election lies, the pain for Fox is probably not over. But at least we’ll save on the tolls driving in and out of Delaware.

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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