The Fox-Dominion Settlement - WSJ
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Kyle Peterson and Dan Henninger. Images: Reuters/Shutterstock Composite: Mark Kelly
The wailing you heard across the land Tuesday afternoon was the sound of thousands of journalists lamenting the settlement of the defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. An entire industry of reporters has been denied the schadenfreude of seeing their hated political and media competitor in the dock. An hilariously revealing courtroom account in Politico laments that "hopes were dashed—dreams torpedoed" by the settlement.
The settlement is a victory for Dominion, which said Fox will pay $787.5 million. Fox didn't apologize, though it said "we acknowledge the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false." Those claims involved statements aired on Fox from the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that blamed Dominion's voting machines for Donald Trump's defeat in 2020.
These columns never saw any evidence for such claims, and we said so in a Nov. 18, 2020, editorial, “ Rage Against the Voting Machine .” Dominion cited that editorial more than once in its legal filings. On Dec. 1, 2020, we ran an op-ed from Dominion CEO John Poulos rebutting the claims against his company.
We share common ownership with Fox, and we have a weekend news program on the network. But neither Fox nor News Corp, our parent, is an ideological monolith, and our owners hire journalists to make independent judgments about what to cover or say in print or on television. The press routinely asserts otherwise, despite evidence to the contrary, but that’s the truth of our experience since Rupert Murdoch purchased the Journal in 2007.
As much as the media ached for a Fox defeat in court, they ought to thank the company for settling. A verdict against the network might well have hurt the rest of the press by making it harder to defend against defamation claims.
The network would no doubt have appealed a negative verdict in Delaware court, where the trial judge made rulings and comments that suggested an anti-Fox bias. Had the appeal made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Justices might have reconsidered their 1964 precedent in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan . That ruling requires plaintiffs to prove that false statements against public figures are made with “actual malice.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have said they would like to revisit that standard.
The media cheering for Fox to lose were in effect cheering for a verdict that could have meant more lawsuits, many of them meritless, against journalists. Their hatred of Fox and conservatives is so strong that they ignored their self-interest.
One journalistic lesson of the Dominion case is not to indulge crank claims because your audience wants to hear them. That includes claims about Russian collusion or stolen elections. Mr. Trump could never admit he defeated himself in 2020, so he claimed the election was stolen. He tweeted a false “report” about Dominion, and the grifters who attend him, then and now, spread it.
Journalism is an imperfect craft, and mistakes are inevitable. That’s why the bar for proving libel should be high. But the obligation of a journalist is to discern the truth, or at least as close as one can get to knowing it, and tell it to your audience straight.
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As much as the media ached for a Fox defeat in court, they ought to thank the company for settling. A verdict against the network might well have hurt the rest of the press by making it harder to defend against defamation claims.
I suppose our dishonest msm thinks they are immune.
gee, maybe you should file suit. I recommend the law firm of powell, giuliani, and ellis. they need the work.
They have been hiding behind the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision for years. I'm not sure if that could have been used here. I guess the leftist media is off the hook for now and they can thank Fox news and its large pockets.
dominion slashed FOX's belly open so that everyone that comes afterwards can pull out their guts. the starting price to keep rupert and his lying pundits off the stand has now been established. he probably won't be alive in '25 when smartmatic finishes off his GOP propaganda network anyway.
"A verdict against the network might have hurt all of the press"
Faux 'news' isn't considered a part of the 'press'
No, that is simply not true. They never went to trial.
Fox is alive and well. It is where many people go for the news.
News Max and OAN should be very frightened. They don't have that kind of cash and could be forced into bankruptcy.
they didn't need to after all their pretrial discovery bullshit and the judge's rulings on those. dominion was smart to take the 3/4's of a billion dollars now instead of waiting thru years of appeals. this won't be the last settlement check rupert writes. there's a line forming...
True, and Fox can't stall settlement long...
If Dominion won Fox would just appeal it!
Then what are they going to do with their lives? Honesty is out of the question.
What news?
yeah, many willfully ignorant people that need to hear news that they want to hear.
But they have told you themselves, in plain english that they lie, for ratings.
gen z, women, and independents will finish off the GOP in '24.
I imagine Dominion had decided what they would settle for a while back.
that's the new FOX broadcast slogan. fair and balanced is now in the dumpster...
Notice you are silent on CNN and MSNBC. Why play hopocrite?
gee, how much were their defamation lawsuit settlements?
FOX attorneys weren't negotiating in good faith with the mediator until 24 hours prior to the start of the trial.
Lol. Since I'm not 18 years old, I'm old enough to remember 2009 when Democrats controlled the Presidency and Congress with filibuster proof majorities. The Republican Party was dead than too. And then 5 year later it held more offices country wide than at any point since the 1920s. And now, after winning more votes in a national election less than six months ago and capturing the House, the Republicans are supposedly dead, again. For the probably the tenth time this century.
For those of us smarter than goldfish, it's obvious that all victories are temporary at best and no party or movement will ever enjoy a permanent majority.
Trying to gloss it over. The dollar amount is irrelevant. The fact they paid out just as you are celebrating Fox for paying out and silent about them is what is exposing your hypocrisy. And you seem all good with it.
sorry, cnn and msnbc weren't mentioned in the article and vic already thinks I'm always off topic.
So cry to Vic about it.
I know what they aren't which is journalists and or a news network.
FOX certainly has learned that it is not, and yes Vic, FOX is a very large part of the MSM ... or have they taken wholeheartedly to calling themselves entertainment and not news?
FOX has claimed to be number one in cable news for over a decade, and yet they and their addled sycophants don't consider it part of the MSM. as of tuesday afternoon, I guess that's true now...
All the Texts Fox News Didn’t Want You to Read
This whole WSJ editorial is just face-saving move. Fox news knowingly lied to the public.
Do you recall all the apologies that Bernstein & Woodward issued during their Watergate coverage?
Were there ever any real consequences?
How do you know that?
I am smart enough to look at the available information and from that information see that Fox executives, editors, and on-air personalities knew that they were telling the viewers untruths yet persisted in doing so in the quest for ratings.
he media cheering for Fox to lose were in effect cheering for a verdict that could have meant more lawsuits, many of them meritless, against journalists. Their hatred of Fox and conservatives is so strong that they ignored their self-interest.
The progressive hive mind in a nutshell.
Fox news has nothing to do with journalism. Murdoch himself pulled the curtain back. Remember, "it's not about red or blue, it's about the green".
FOX news is now the national enquirer of televised journalism.
Didn't liberal blogger centers CNN and MSNBC have to pay $275 million in damages in the Nick Sandmann suit against them? And yet the idiots on the left celebrate this as some kind of a victory.
but, but, but, what about...
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of you all (again).
hypocrisy? you're the one attempting to defend FOX as a legitimate news source here, not me...
too bad there isn't very much on this story from FOX itself to use here, huh?
you don't know the meaning?
open your eyes, I just gave you 2 examples...
He sued for 275m, there was no 275m settlement. The amount was never disclosed but it was nowhere near the outrageous amount he was suing for.
Provide a link from ANYONE who thinks it was anywhere near what this loser dipship was seeking.
[Deleted] perhaps you should direct that line of disturbingly stupid logic to the one who said this:
Didn't liberal blogger centers CNN and MSNBC have to pay $275 million in damages in the Nick Sandmann suit against them?
Lets see your link for that. Prove me wrong.
The estimated net worth of Nick Sandmann is in excess of $1 million dollars.
How did Nick Sandmann build his net worth?
Nick Sandmann and his family have filed as many as 13 lawsuits against media outlets for defamation and emotional distress. One of the lawsuits amounted to $250 million dollars. One was thrown out, while the other was settled for a much smaller but undisclosed amount.
One law expert, William Jacobson from Cornell Law School, estimates the deal with CNN was worth at least seven figures.
It’s still not entirely clear why, but two of the companies, the Washington Post and CNN chose to settle the lawsuits. Considering a court had initially dismissed the WaPo suit, and only reinstated it on very narrow grounds (that still seemed unlikely to win), and the fact that the lawsuit against CNN was on shaky ground as well, basically anyone with any experience with defamation law assumed that the settlement was at what’s generally known as “nuisance fee” levels: a pittance — less than it would cost to pay the lawyers to win the suit, just to make the kid and his lawyers go away. Of course, his fans ridiculously assumed that the settlement meant he got the full hundreds of millions he sued over . And some very ignorant media folks implied something similar . But, almost everyone agrees that Sandmann probably got in the low to mid-five figures. Not bad for a student, but not exactly lifechanging either.
[ Deleted ]
Of course, his fans ridiculously assumed that the settlement meant he got the full hundreds of millions he sued over .
[ Deleted ]
You made the same mistake you always make.
There are millions of ways this could have happened. But it is good you admitted you have no idea what the settlement is.
And STILL trying to push fiction as fact. It's sad that I'm not really surprised.
Didn't liberal blogger centers CNN and MSNBC have to pay $275 million in damages in the Nick Sandmann suit against them?
And what are you pushing here? You’re just embarrassing yourself further.