Roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. and it is, but we have to keep a sense of perspective about the settlement Fox News reached with Dominion Voting Systems.
That payment represents less than six percent or about one-eighteenth of Fox’s annual revenue of $14 billion.
Now Fox will presumably settle its outstanding lawsuit from the other voting system plaintiff, Smartmatic, in a similar fashion. Then the network faces other potential legal and insurance costs in additional lawsuits, the outcomes of which are unknown.
So far, Fox has not really been hurt financially to any great extent, although its libel/defamtion insurance coverage should go up in response. Even so, as I’ve noted previously, this will probably precipitate a rise in the rates for such policies industry-wide, which will hurt everybody else in media, courtesy of Fox.
The sad irony is that there is no other major media company that has come anywhere close to the barrage of lies and propaganda Fox delivered about the 2020 election. My PC friends on the left like to criticize mainstream media like the New York Times for blindspots and supposed biases, perhaps with justification, but I’m sorry, none of that is even in the same universe as Fox’s crimes against truth and democracy.
Fox News is, bluntly, a voice for authoritarianism. Every concerned citizen should stand firmly against its election-denial campaign. The legal settlement is but a tiny victory in that regard.
We can hope more such victories for truth and fairness are to come, as the integrity of our democracy is what is at stake here.
LINKS:
Dominion Was Never Going to Save Our Democracy From Fox News (The Intercept)
Fox News still faces $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic (WP)
Fox is not out of the woods yet. (Reuters)
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