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dominion
Hush Money: Fox's Dominion
The right-wing media giant pays once again to prevent a trial, with more to come .
Apr 23, 2023
Admittedly, Fox’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems has benefits as well as drawbacks in establishing accountability for ill-motivated journalism. Yes, it’s the largest-ever payout to settle a media defamation lawsuit, and yes, it will help the subsequent libel claims against Fox for amplifying and validating the Big Lie. Most importantly, the discovery phase of the lawsuit was not muzzled (put under seal), so it is a matter of public record that Fox knew it was lying to its viewers regarding rigged voting machines flipping votes to Biden, and more. Still, the payout will not deter Fox from continuing its venomous, reckless and profitable practices, leaving us misinformed and divided.
Defamation is an intentional tort and punitive damages are available. Here actual malice (knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of truth) is easily shown: beyond the damning emails, there is audio of a Trump official talking with a Fox Producer acknowledging that there was no evidence of fraud (see Amy Goodman interview with Angelo Carusone, democracy now.org, April 21, 2023); thus obliterating Fox’s defense of neutral reporting, showing that Fox was actually in cahoots with team Rump in spreading known lies. Punitive damages are aimed at deterring egregious conduct. In the final quarter of 2022 Fox reported earnings of $4.61 billion. It sure seems like Fox got off cheap.
Rupert Murdoch is a ruthless media mogul who has always used his money and blackmail tactics to lord over people
$787.5 million is the biggest ever payout in a media libel case but it will not deter Fox—which, in an effort to calm the markets, announced right after the settlement that it will get a more than $200 million tax break from the payout (business expense) and that it is asking for a $1 increase per cable subscriber, which will yield them some $980 million more in profit.
Rupert Murdoch is a ruthless media mogul who has always used his money and blackmail tactics to lord over people (see PBS Frontline 2012 documentary "Murdoch’s Scandal"). He has paid before, agreeing to pay: more than $900 million to settle fraud and antitrust lawsuits; hundreds of millions to settle the British massive phone and email hacking scandal; and, more than $200 million to prevent allegations of widespread sexual harassment at Fox from being heard in court. He paid $1.7 billion to settle his 1999 divorce from his second wife.
Libel lawsuits related to the Big Lie are just getting started. Dominion is bringing defamation claims against other news networks and against Big Lie enablers including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and My Pillow CEO Michael Lindell. Once again, wherever the disgraced former President goes, misery, disgrace, and litigation follow.
Fox faces a $ 2.7 billion defamation claim from Smartmatic, another election tech company; it is also facing shareholder derivative lawsuits for violating its fiduciary duty. The pretrial rulings, discovery and payout in Dominion v. Fox will hurt its defense in the Smartmatic case but Fox viewers won’t hear a thing in this respect, remaining in their Foxhole/bubble.
Once again, wherever the disgraced former President goes, misery, disgrace, and litigation follow.
Critics have asked: why didn’t Dominion demand an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and an apology from Fox? Because they were paid not to. This exposes why private lawsuits can’t bring down Fox. In private lawsuits money speaks louder than acknowledgements or apologies. But society needs more. The lies about Dominion were the foundation for the Big Lie, which was the basis for the January 6 riot. Of course, the FCC should be protecting the public from media abuses, but that isn’t in the cards. The fox is guarding the henhouse, once again.
Fox and Trump enabled each other in an echo chamber of lies and divisive greed. Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said sunlight is the best disinfectant, only transparency can root out corruption and enable accountability. This seems sadly antiquated in an era when NDA’s (non-disclosure agreements) are used to enforce ‘voluntary’ silence. Under contract. Take the money and keep quiet. No trial, no record, no precedent.
Murdoch’s Fox has paid before and will keep paying to keep damning evidence under wraps and to keep its profits soaring. Expect the record payout in the Dominion case to be broken in the Smartmatic case. But of course those living in such a divided society pay the heaviest price for Fox’s business practices.
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Why the Dominion-Fox News Settlement Is Rubbish
Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn’t protected American democracy.
Apr 19, 2023
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have agreed to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million. (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion over allegations that Fox defamed the voting company by knowingly or recklessly airing false claims tying voting machines to a conspiracy to undermine the 2020 presidential election.)
A lawyer for Dominion celebrated the agreement, saying, “Money is accountability.”
Rubbish. The Fox Corporation has an estimated value around $17 billion. The settlement amounts to a cost of doing business for Fox.
The settlement also means that Fox’s major figures — including Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, and Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo — won’t have to testify.
What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump’s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?
Which in turn means they won’t have to explain all the pretrial evidence (emails, depositions, and so on) showing that they knew Trump lied about the 2020 election being “stolen” but they went ahead and joined Trump’s lie nonetheless — in order not to lose viewers to Newsmax, One America News, or any other group to their right with even fewer scruples — so they’d preserve their revenue stream.
Fox said in a statement that “we acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” It added: “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.”
Move forward?
What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump’s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?
Nada.
Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn’t protected American democracy.
Nothing about the lawsuit or its settlement has been aired on Fox News. Fox viewers continue to be in the dark about all of it — Trump’s big lie, Fox’s amplification of the big lie, the lawsuit, and the emails and pretrial testimony showing that Fox News and its hosts knew it was all a big lie.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to push his big lie. Presumably, Fox News will continue to push it as well because, hey, it sells to the Trump base that Fox News helped create.
And that’s really what this is all about: Money. Money to Trump. Money to Dominion. Money to Murdoch. Money to people such as Carlson and Hannity and Ingraham and Bartiromo — all of whom long ago cashed in their integrity for big bucks.
Even though their traitorous behavior has brought America to the cusp of civil war — including an attack on the U.S. Capitol — they’ll continue to do whatever is necessary (short of defaming a deep-pocketed voting machine company) to keep the money flowing in their direction.
Yesterday, the Grifter-in-Chief announced the release of a second round of superhero-style digital trading cards with cartoonish images of him at $99 apiece.
Fox’s and Trump’s grift goes on.
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The Tucker Carlson-Led Effort to Whitewash the History of January 6 Will Fail
This effort must be seen for what it is: a disgrace.
Mar 11, 2023
Dominion Voting Systems has provided a public service for the American people.
As a result of its pending defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion has laid bare the extraordinary con game that Fox carried out in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and that continues today.
Fox elevated and affirmed for their millions of viewers former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him by giving airtime to Trump’s team. But even as they put them on the air, Fox hosts and executives admitted privately that they knew they were airing lies and “insane” conspiracy theories.
The big three Fox propagandists, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham privately complained about their lying guests. But they never bothered to tell this to their viewers. Their texts, obtained by Dominion as part of the lawsuit, also reveal that some worried they would lose viewers if they actually told the truth.
Today, Trump continues to peddle his Big Lie — and so does Fox News.
Carlson, gifted with exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of internal Capitol footage from the January 6 riot by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is attempting to persuade people they should not believe what they saw with their own eyes. He has been airing cherry-picked portions of the January 6 videos to absurdly argue that the insurrectionist mob attack that led to the death and injury of Capitol police officers was little more than a “peaceful” protest of “sightseers.”
According to The New York Times, more than 150 officers from the Capitol Police, the Washington, DC Police Department, and other agencies suffered injuries as a result of the violence. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people, including three police officers, lost their lives in connection with the attack.
A number of Senate Republicans have called Carlson out this week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the way Carlson portrayed the insurrection, Minority Whip John Thune described January 6 as “an attack on the Capitol,” and Sen. Thom Tillis called Carlson’s claims “bulls — -.”
Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.
Many House Republicans, however, are supporting Carlson’s revisionist history. They include the Republican leaders: House Speaker McCarthy, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.
In his Dominion deposition, Fox head Rupert Murdoch said he believed the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen. Yet, Murdoch never pulled Fox back from promoting the Trump Big Lie. And, he currently silently sits by as Carlson tries to sell the lie that January 6 was a peaceful protest.
Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.
Shortly after January 6, McCarthy called the attackers “un-American,” and said that anyone who participated in the mob attack should go to jail. “You don’t understand what was transpiring at that moment and that time,” McCarthy told reporters shortly after the Capitol attack. “People brought ropes. When I got back into my building, I found the straps that they had. I don’t know if they’d come [to] try to kidnap somebody or whatever. But they were well planned for it.”
McCarthy knew perfectly well that Carlson would use his show to present an untrue version of what happened on January 6.
Carlson had earlier called January 6 a “footnote” in history and “forgettably minor.” Yet, that didn’t stop McCarthy from knowingly giving Carlson the opportunity to further a false narrative that is the complete opposite of what McCarthy described in 2021.
Meanwhile, the effort to rewrite history goes on.
McCarthy ally Rep. Barry Loudermilk is preparing to investigate the Jan. 6 investigators as part of a new House subcommittee, and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are planning to visit some of the January 6 rioters in jail.
House Republicans will fail.
Fox News and Carlson’s efforts to whitewash the January 6 insurrection will also fail and will go down in history as a national disgrace.
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