What People Get Wrong This Week: the Fox News Settlement

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a settlement last week on a landmark 2020 election-related defamation case, and the immediate response from online communities (Twitter and Reddit) has been something of a disappointment. In a comment that received more than 8,000 upvotes on r/news, Reddit user geological noise lamented, “Money is burying the truth again.” “Incredibly disappointing,” agreed 2xtreme21 . “$787.5 million is the price they are more than willing to pay to keep brainwashing people,” Daveyhampton wrote. “This country is fucked up.” written by user _AnecdotalEvidence_ .

The cynicism is understandable – Fox’s role on the shitty 2020 show was so grotesque that they deserve to be taken off the air – but these commentators (and their supporters) are absolutely wrong about the importance of the settlement. It wasn’t a cost-of-business agreement, or Fox shirking responsibility, or an example of “nothing happens again.” This is a big deal. It’s a discovery that inevitably follows from fucking.

A look at Fox’s $787.5 million payout in perspective

Fox’s $787.5 million payout is the largest libel settlement in American history from a media company – four times that of the runner-up – and that’s just the beginning. The company’s hooliganism in 2020 likely sparked a financial and PR nightmare that will continue for years.

Fox Corporation is valued at $16.70 billion , so less than a billion might not seem like much of a success. But that number represents everything Fox owns, from Fox Sports to TMZ to streaming service Tubi. Fox News posted about $2.8 billion in profit in 2022, which means the company paid out 28% of its annual profit in one day. If this were the total cost to a corporation, I believe it would be enough for them to reconsider slandering voting machine companies in the future, but the actual cost is likely to be much higher.

While some might like to see Fox News anchors in orange overalls, or at least beg for forgiveness from the pillory, this is not the case for corporations: money is the only thing that really matters. And that’s big money.

Continued financial troubles at Fox News

The Dominion lawsuit is only the first lawsuit filed by the voting machine company against Fox. A similar lawsuit by Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion, and many legal experts expect Fox to pay that company as well. “It seems unlikely that they would want to take other cases to court,” Shang Wu, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, told Axios . In other words: the wallet has been opened and it will most likely be leaked further.

It is difficult to determine exactly what direct impact the settlement had on Fox’s share price, as it is reasonable to assume that the likelihood of a payout was built into share prices before the settlement was announced. But be that as it may, Fox stock has fallen from about $34 a share in February to about $29 a share today — though at least some of that is likely due to the (seemingly unrelated) firing of Tucker Carlson.

Speaking of stock, Fox is likely to face yet another potentially costly lawsuit… from its own shareholders. Investors are in the process of collecting company documents that “may contain evidence that Fox directors and executives were rogues, allowing the network to air false claims.” This could be used to hold Fox executives personally liable for the costs of libel suits, which is a satisfying turn of events for Fox haters.

Fox also faced the loss of its reputation as a news organization (I swear it still had that reputation). It’s really impossible to tell if and how much the disclosure process hurt Fox in this case, but publicly broadcasting behind-the-scenes messages revealing the duplicity and stupidity of Fox News executives and on-air personalities definitely doesn’t help Fox. It’s easy to think of Fox viewers as crazy MAGA types who won’t really care about Fox’s accountability and accuracy while their sense of outrage is stoked, but some old-school conservative Fox viewers should remain. . Remember this Republican? State rights, smaller government types who basically want to pay lower taxes? I have to assume that no matter how much of this demographic is left, they don’t like being lied to by their main news source and may prefer to read the newspaper instead. (Ok, this might go too far.)

What did Fox News get for their money?

While the online cynicism about the settlement is greatly exaggerated, people are right to point out that Fox denied the American people a high-profile courtroom battle between good and evil and admitted that Fox lied to its viewers. Avoiding the spectacle of Fox News faces and executives being sworn in seems to be what Fox actually “bought” with its $800 million, so it’s easy to see it as “burrowing the truth for money.” But remember, the investigation has already uncovered a lot of the “truth” behind the Fox News reporting, and a large monetary settlement could be seen more as an admission of corporate guilt than an on-air apology. Diehard Fox fans are unlikely to change their minds.

While not as pleasant as courtroom drama, settling is a sure thing. As egregious as Fox’s actions were, it would still be hard for the Dominion to win, and if you think the settlement wasn’t good enough, can you imagine how heartbreaking it would be if Fox won ? Instead, we’re getting the next best thing: a tacit acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the form of a settlement agreement, likely years of financial hardship, and hopefully some change in Fox News’s attitude to the truth.

Fox News and hope for the future

How likely is all this to help the cause of American decency and democracy? I am an optimist, but my optimism is moderated by realism. I don’t think Fox News is planning to rethink its cultural niche. They’re not going to blunt their belligerent rhetoric on air—after all, that’s what their audience is for. But I believe there has already been a lot of serious talk in the Fox News conference rooms about the legality of what is being said on the air. Many corporate emails no doubt contained new marching orders—for example, “do not defame future voting machine companies”—written in capital letters.

I like to think that the next time this happens (in 2024), Fox News producers will think once (twice, probably too much to ask) before crossing the line between “provocative but action-free” and “this so terrible that it cost us nearly a billion dollars.” It’s a small shift in a positive direction, but that’s how the story arc bends.

Ultimately, this settlement is good news. Not perfect news, but good. I personally find it sad that there are so many talkative nabobs of negativism around who can’t seem to enjoy a small (or not so small) victory. No one is obligated to pay attention to news or politics, and one can try to avoid any personal experience of broad cultural-historical events, but if you are going to pay attention, you should at least be able to enjoy gradual events. change for the better. What else is there?

And on a less elevated note, it will be so nice to see Rudy Giuliani buried. Fuck this guy.