Fox News’ staggering $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems left out one major concession: The network doesn’t actually have to apologize for repeatedly airing the lies that played a key role in convincing a large swath of Americans the 2020 election was rigged, which did irreparable damage to voters’ trust in the democratic system.
Fox’s case was always with Dominion—not with truth, justice, and the American way. And while Dominion’s pushback against Fox’s lies were a core part of its case, its goal was always to make good for itself, not to humble the network by forcing Fox’s talking heads to prostrate themselves on-air and admit they intentionally lied. The case’s pre-trial findings were deeply embarrassing for Fox—but those who naively hoped that this case would lead to a true reckoning where Fox would be forced to admit its lies to its own viewers and actually change its behavior going forward were always going to be disappointed.
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And Dominion did pretty well for itself: $787.5 million is reportedly one of the largest defamation settlements in U.S. history, and it’s about eight times Dominion’s total annual revenue in 2021.
But this settlement could have gone further. Fox could have been forced to actually apologize. The settlement could have required Fox’s hosts to read on-air corrections and admit to their falsehoods, a public shaming that could have actually been viewed by some of Fox’s own audience. This won’t happen: The settlement did not include any requirement that Fox News acknowledge on air that it knowingly aired lies.
This follows a pattern for Fox: They’d rather pay to make their lies go away than be forced to admit them.
That’s what happened when Fox settled its case with the family of Seth Rich for falsely reporting (then retracting) a story that claimed the former Democratic National Committee staffer had leaked thousands of internal documents to Wikileaks before his murder—a baseless story that fed into the false conspiracy theory that Rich, not Russian hackers, had been the source of stolen information from the DNC. The terms of that settlement were kept private, but unlike others who pushed that conspiracy theory, who were forced to publicly retract and apologize for their false statements in order to settle before trial, Fox simply said they hoped the settlement would help Rich’s family “find a small degree of peace and solace moving forward.”
Dominion CEO John Poulos said on Tuesday that Fox “admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and our customers.”
But while Fox’s statement announcing the settlement admitted the network acknowledged “certain claims” their hosts made about Dominion were false, it pointedly did not apologize for or acknowledge its role in spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that undermined American democracy—while shamelessly touting its “continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” the statement read in full.
This is like someone buying their partner flowers and candies to make peace rather than actually apologizing for their actions.
The embarrassing pretrial discovery period revealed what some of those actions were.
Private emails and texts revealed that founder Rupert Murdoch and other senior Fox officials knew that the election conspiracy theory pushed by then-President Donald Trump’s lawyers was false: In an email sent shortly after Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani debuted the Dominion conspiracy theory, Murdoch called Trump Giuliani “increasingly mad.” But they were more worried about losing their right-wing viewers than in actually telling the truth. The network, bleeding viewers after actually telling the truth that Trump was in bad shape as votes rolled in on election night, quickly reversed course and spent months fanning the flames of conspiracy theories that led to many Republicans believing the 2020 election was stolen from Trump—and the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Riot.
It’s notable that after all the damage that Fox did to democracy, the biggest head to roll at the network was political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was part of the team that made Fox the first of the networks to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.
That call enraged Fox’s viewers, who started abandoning the network in droves for Newsmax and One America News—and scared the Fox honchos and many of their hosts enough to pull an about-face and allow Trump and his minions to air his election falsehoods on their network with little pushback.
As Raj Shah, a senior vice president at Fox (and former Trump White House spokesman), emailed News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch in mid-November, the network was alarmed by a “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.”
This settlement isn’t the end of Fox answering for its election lies. Smartmatic, another voting machine company that was the victim of conspiracy theories aired on Fox, is also suing for defamation, and its attorney promised after the Dominion settlement that Fox would be forced to face even more accountability in that trial.
But while Dominion is happy, those hoping that this trial would force Fox to change its ways will be sorely disappointed.
“Money is accountability and we got that today from Fox,” Dominion attorney Stephen Shackleford told reporters after the settlement was announced.
Dominion got its pound of flesh. But Fox wriggled out of the trap with its pelt intact.
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