LAST UPDATE | 18 Apr 2023
FOX NEWS HAS agreed to pay vote machine maker Dominion nearly $790 million in a settlement which means the high-profile defamation case will avoid trial.
Dominion brought the case over falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election which aired on the conservative TV network.
In a statement afterwards, Fox News said it was “pleased” to have reached the agreement and acknowledged findings that certain claims about the company were “false”.
“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the dispute had been resolved “amicably.”
The settlement was greeted as a representation of “accountability” by Dominion.
“Today’s settlement of $787,500,000 represents vindication and accountability,” the company’s co-lead counsel Justin Nelson said at a press conference outside the court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Earlier, a US judge announced there would be no trial in the $1.6 billion lawsuit and informed jurors they were free to go.
“The parties have resolved their case,” Eric Davis told the state of Delaware’s Superior Court.
Jurors were set to get their first look at a voting machine company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in a trial over the network’s alleged role in spreading the lie of a stolen 2020 presidential election.
The trial had been delayed earlier as the judge offered time to see if lawyers for both parties could work out a settlement.
The Denver-based company had aimed to hold Fox accountable for airing false allegations of election fraud that continue to hit US politics.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis gave no explanation for the brief delay. But he suggested the companies try to mediate their dispute, according to a person close to Fox who was not authorised to speak publicly about the lawsuit’s status and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The case would have put under scrutiny the libel standard that has guided US media outlets for nearly six decades, reveal behind-the-scenes activity at Fox News in the weeks after the 2020 election and shed light on the flow of misinformation that turned into a tidal wave after the election, which then-President Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Fox News stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, as well as company founder Rupert Murdoch, were expected to testify during the six-week trial, but it is unclear whether any witnesses will be called today.
Dominion claimed New York-based Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp, essentially bulldozed the voting company’s business and subjected employees to threats by falsely implicating it in a bogus conspiracy to rig the election against Trump.
In the weeks after election day, prominent Fox News hosts brought on Trump allies who falsely claimed that Dominion’s machines were programmed to snatch votes away from the Republican incumbent and pad the Democratic challenger’s total.
Many of Fox’s hosts and executives were said not to believe the claims but allowed them to be aired nevertheless.
“Fox spread and endorsed one of the most damaging lies in this country’s history,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.
Pointing to communications among Fox figures, from executives to fact-checkers, Dominion had argued that the network knowingly amplified falsehoods for the sake of ratings.
Fox said it simply reported on Trump’s challenges to the election results and let viewers hear from his lawyers and allies.
“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished First Amendment rights,” the network said in a statement last week.
Fox said its hosts sometimes alluded to a need for evidence to back up the allegations and noted that Dominion denied the claims.
Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Mr Trump’s own attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the election outcome. Nor did they turn up any credible evidence that the vote was tainted.
Dozens of courts, some with Trump-appointed judges, also rejected his fraud allegations.
A key question for the jury is whether Fox News acted with “actual malice”, a legal standard that applies when public figures sue news outlets for defamation. The standard, derived from a 1964 Supreme Court case, means knowingly publishing or airing something false or operating with “reckless disregard” for whether it is true.
Dominion has pointed to text and email messages in which Fox insiders discounted and sometimes overtly mocked the vote manipulation claims. One Fox Corp vice president called them “mind-blowingly nuts”.
Carlson, Fox News’ biggest star, even expressed scorn for Trump, whose supporters formed the core of the network’s viewers. Text exchanges revealed as part of the lawsuit show Mr Carlson declaring “I hate him passionately” and saying that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights”.
Murdoch, the Fox News founder and Fox Corp chairman, found the election claims “really crazy”, according to an email he sent while watching a news conference that Trump lawyers gave on 19 November, 2020.
“Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us too,” Murdoch told Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott in another email that day.
Yet talk of the alleged conspiracy continued to air on Fox for weeks after the voting.
In his deposition for the case, Murdoch acknowledged the 2020 presidential election was fair while also acknowledging that some of Fox’s hosts seemed to endorse the bogus election claims.
The network maintains that Dominion cherry-picked from private messages and broadcast transcripts and depositions of various Fox players, while brushing past other comments and context more favourable to Fox.
The network had also maintained that Dominion’s claims of lost business were massively inflated.
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