Fox News admitted to spreading false statements about Dominion Voting Systems as part of larger conspiracy claims involving the 2020 election.
Fox News admitted to spreading false statements about Dominion Voting Systems as part of larger conspiracy claims involving the 2020 election. Dominion got an apology from Fox in the form of $787.5 million. And along the way, the suit pulled back the curtain on internal divisions among Fox News hosts and executives over election-fraud claims. I’d call Dominion’s civil lawsuit against Fox a success.
Of course, a lot of folks on the left were anticipating that more juicy revelations would come to light during the trial. Hence, yesterday’s news that Fox settled the Dominion suit just as a trial was about to start hasn’t been greeted with universal enthusiasm from Fox News haters.
Some have also expressed disappointment that Fox News wasn’t punished more for spreading misinformation, or somehow prevented from doing it again. But this was a civil suit, not a criminal case. Even if the trial played out and Fox lost, there was never a remedy available to guarantee that Fox hosts wouldn’t play with fire like this again.
Besides, even if such a remedy existed—via criminal or civil law—it would almost certainly represent an unacceptable incursion on press freedom, no matter one’s opinion of Fox News. Any sort of government prior restraint on what it airs would violate the First Amendment. And letting the government directly punish Fox News hosts for their statements—even if those statements end up being defamatory—would start us down way too slippery a slope. (Progressives who don’t agree might just want to imagine a Trump administration with the power to arrest CNN and New York Times journalists they alleged to be spreading fake news.)
If defamation laws are to exist, we are far better off if defamation is a private action, brought in civil court, like we saw here.
Not only did Dominion get a nice payout, but pre-trial attention to the case and revelations in it helped counter reputational damage that might have been done to Dominion—all while sullying Fox’s reputation, at least in the eyes of many beholders. This is the process playing out as it was designed.
“Money is accountability, and we got that today from Fox,” Dominion lawyer Stephen Shackelford said at a courthouse press conference yesterday.
For its part, Fox acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” It said the settlement “reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.
