Fox News has agreed to pay $787.5 million to the electronic voting machine company that accused the U.S. television station of libel in the 2020 presidential election, a lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems said Tuesday.
The judge responsible for the case, Eric Davis, informed the jurors at the beginning of the trial in the Superior Court of the state of Delaware, in the eastern US, that the parties have “resolved their dispute”, without disclosing details. provide. including financial, of this agreement.
Just this morning, the company Dominion Voting Systems had demanded $ 1,600 million (about 1,460 million euros) in damages from the preferred station of the North American conservatives.
The company’s attorney, Justin Nelson, said at a press conference outside the courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, that the television network agreed to pay $787.5 million.
“Lies have consequences,” Dominion’s lawyer stressed.
Fox New, on the other hand, said it was “happy” to have reached an agreement with the company, adding that it “acknowledges a court decision that considers certain allegations about Dominion to be false.”
The settlement, which has yet to be ratified by the presiding judge, avoids a lengthy trial in a case that exposed how the top US broadcaster targeted viewers by spreading false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion Voting Systems, whose machines operated in 28 states during the November 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden, accused Fox News of presenting it as a tool in the service of Democrats through electronic voting fraud, without presenting any evidence.
This deal saves the jewel of Ruper Murdoch’s media empire from the “libel trial of the century,” as the New York Times called it.
For the 92-year-old media magnate himself, it avoids the prospect of possibly having to testify.
Even before the trial, Fox News had felt the embarrassment of this case following the publication of exchanges of “emails” or text messages showing that station figures, and even Rupert Murdoch, hardly believed in the scenario of a fraudulent election in November 2020 , at the same time that the allegations went live.
This verdict was eagerly awaited in the United States, where it was seen as a test of the limits of freedom of expression, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and a fight against disinformation.
Source: DN
