Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.
Justin Nelson, lead attorney for Dominion, told NBC News he hopes the settlement will restore faith in elections.
“This alone can’t do it, right? But this shows that there is accountability, that we showed that if you are caught lying, you will be held responsible,” he said.
Absent from the settlement details shared with the public was an apology or any admission that the network had indeed defamed Dominion when it allowed baseless conspiracies to proliferate on air about the company's voting machines "rigging" 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. A statement from Fox about the agreement recognized the court's previous ruling that the claims Dominion had challenged in its defamation lawsuit were indeed without merit.
"We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false," the Fox statement said. “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.”
Given that Dominion's lawsuit was for about $1.5 billion, this would appear to be a clear admission by Fox that they had no credible defense for what was being alleged.
The thing I don't understand is why Fox personalities bought into the notion of widespread voter fraud with no evidence other than crazed loser Donald J. Trump, Rudy Giuliani et al concocting fantastical conspiracy theories. It's one thing to allow Trump surrogates to spew their idiocy on air, but totally another to parrot those opinions as your own.
National Review's Jim Geraghty saw this coming.
(Delaware Superior Court judge Eric) Davis reviewed the filings of Dominion and the network and concluded that in 19 cases, Fox News hosts or guests had made comments that were false statements of fact, not assertions of opinion, and that could not be defended as standard, fair-minded inquiry.
Davis wrote, “Even if the neutral report privilege did apply, the evidence does not support that FNN ‘conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting. . . . Fox News Network’s failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates its reporting was not disinterested.” As soon as the judge came to that conclusion, a key portion of the Fox News defense collapsed.
While the poo-flinging monkeys comprised of leftist politicos as well as competing cable stations CNN and MSNBC grew a collective stiffy that could be seen from Jupiter, even they were left wanting. Specifically they wanted the TV ratings boon that no doubt would have occurred with this trial. They were also a bit grumpy that part of the settlement didn't include Fox personalities apologizing on air for spreading lies.
At the end of the day, this lawsuit wasn't about Dominion's duty to "saving democracy" as progs shrieked the goal should have been. No, the only obligation Dominion had was to protect its employees and stockholders who no doubt were adversely impacted by the damage done to the company's reputation.
To recap: Over the past 29 months, you've had some Trump supporters face unconscionably long jail sentences for rioting at the U.S. Capitol and a prominent media company who performatively humped his leg and thus shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars as a result, all in the name of defending Trump's (to be charitable) dubious claims about the 2020 presidential elections. In short, anyone who looks to fervently stand up for the 45th POTUS gets damaged while Trump himself remains Teflon Don. Pretty tidy.
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I'm sorry, but while everybody has now agreed that maybe the Dominion voting machines DID produce an honest result (or at least did not provably produce a dishonest one), there is overwhelming evidence that the election was stolen by the ballots fed INTO those machines! Little of it was done at the precinct level, though we know for fact that there was some, especially in same-day registration, where MN is the ONLY state to allow such without provisional balloting and strong voter ID. And we know POS SOS Simon has deliberately not cleaned the voter rolls, allowing large numbers of supposed centenarians to vote in every election. Add to that absentee and mail in ballots that are not adequately verified, and "counted" in the dead of night, and there is no way that Basement Joe gets LOL81million votes.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you still have internet access while firmly entrenched in that bubble.
ReplyDeleteBubble? I've seen the evidence with my own eyes, and I can point to numerous places in MN law and practice that make widespread cheating possible. And apparently some 60% of the country agrees with me that there WAS cheating in the last election. Here's an example: One precinct counted 900 votes for Biden and 300 votes for Trump. There were 400 paper ballots, 300 for Biden and 100 for Trump. Where do you imagine those other 800 votes came from? You're asking me to believe that something I know for certain isn't true.
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