US broadcaster Fox News will pay electronic voting machine company Dominion $787.5 million after a last-minute settlement on Tuesday spared it an embarrassing lawsuit over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems,” the favorite channel of American conservatives said in a statement, shortly after the presiding judge announced an agreement between the parties to the trial, in a High Court. Delaware state court.
The channel also said that it “takes note of a court ruling that certain claims about Dominion were false,” as the judge said in a March 31 order that it was “very clear that no claims about Dominion in the 2020 election (was) true.”
“Lies have consequences,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said in announcing the amount Fox News agreed to pay: $787.5 million. The company he initially defends claimed $1.6 billion.
They avoid the “defamation lawsuit of the century”
This agreement saves the pearl of Ruper Murdoch’s media empire from suffering “the defamation trial of the century” as the New York Times. And for Rupert Murdoch, 92, the possibility of having to testify on the stand.
Even before the proceedings, the proceedings had led to an embarrassing unpacking for Fox News, with the publication of email or text message exchanges showing that the network’s stars, and even Rupert Murdoch, hardly believed, in November. of 2020, to the stage. of a rigged election, while accusations flourished in the air.
The trial was eagerly awaited in the United States, where it was seen as a test of the limits of free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, as well as the fight against disinformation.
The selection of the jury had finished on Tuesday and the debates were going to start calmly.
The machines present in more than half of the States
“Dominion”, whose machines operated in 28 states during the presidential elections won by Joe Biden, was the favorite hobby of the close guard of Donald Trump, who accused him at length and without evidence of having been used to tamper with the ballots.
Many Donald Trump voters still believe today that the election was stolen from them, and the climax of this defiance came on January 6, 2021, when thousands of his supporters attacked the Capitol, the heart of American democracy, to block the certification of the results of the November 2020 elections.
If the court case was found to be strong, the company had yet to establish a deliberate intent to lie to Fox News, and the jury had to reach a unanimous verdict of conviction.
Indispensable in the conservative camp but regularly accused of echoing conspiracy theories, Fox News was playing big and wanted to make the trial a landmark case for press freedom.
Fox News considered it legitimate to give the floor to the Trump camp
For the chain, it was legitimate to give the Trump camp a floor when it contested the vote and “essential to the search for the truth” to let all parties express themselves. But Dominion relied on internal discussions to argue that Fox News was lying on purpose, so as not to lose its viewers won by Donald Trump.
“Really crazy stuff. And damaging,” he wrote on November 19, 2020 about big boss Rupert Murdoch’s Trumpist allegations to Fox News chief Suzanne Scott.
“We have to fire her,” also said one of the network’s stars, Tucker Carlson, speaking of a tweet from a network journalist sweeping up fraud allegations. “She’s hurting the business considerably. The share price is down. It’s not a joke,” she added.
Fox News accused Dominion of truncated and biased message selection.
Source: BFM TV
