On April 18, U.S. broadcaster Fox News
settled out of court - at a cost of $787.5 million - the lawsuit brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems, a company supplying election technology used in the 2020 presidential race. Fox News was in fact accused of defamation, having repeatedly accused the Dominion company of participating in voter fraud against Fox and its viewers' favorite candidate and demanding $1.6 billion.
Since Trump's election in 2016, Fox News has been the main television destination for his supporters; portraying the former president as an infallible character and denigrating his rivals, real or imagined, sometimes ignoring the reality of the facts. Trump's press secretary has been a regular feature on the Fox and Friends talk show and his niece, Lara Trump, a regular contributor.
In the wake of "Sleepy Joe's" victory-the nickname often given by Trump and Fox to Biden-in an effort to undermine the opponent's victory, Rudolph Giuliani and Sydney Powell, Trump's lawyers, began to disseminate the idea of the invalidity of the election results, blaming digital systems "rigged" to promote Joseph Biden's establishment Democrat. Accomplice to this is the loyalty of an audience strongly attached to Trumpism, leading Fox News journalists themselves to fear the risk of positioning themselves against the former president's propaganda.
The First Amendment and limits on free speech
Dominion Voting Systems has unearthed numerous emails and messages from the station's own journalists in an effort to demonstrate the storytellers' own disbelief at the narrative of alleged voter fraud. Reading the communications gives rise to a larger picture in which Fox News attempts to hold its audience in a post-Trump era. In an internal e-mail, after coverage of the election and the station's announcement of Biden's victory, employees write, "Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network." and "They're FURIOUS.". Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of viewers migrate to the more conservative Newsmax.
Fox News has thus propagated the scam theory, leaving fact-checking, described by CEO Suzanne Scott in an e-mail as "bad for business". These claims are part of the many pieces of evidence brought by Dominion in a defamation case based primarily on its interpretation of the U.S. First Amendment. Indeed, the freedom of speech and press proclaimed in the constitutional foundation is not absolute, but it protects statements made in good faith.
Through various internal communications in which the presenters seem to clearly state that what they are publicly defending is false, the IT company wants to prove actual bad faith and not errors or ignorance with respect to the facts. Precisely because of this strong evidence, many legal experts have deemed Dominion's case to be one of the strongest in recent history.
The consequences of plea bargaining
If the evidence was indeed so overwhelming, why the plea bargain? One relevant reason is surely the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, Fox News was prepared to go through appeal after appeal to get to the main court on constitutional matters, the composition of which is mainly tied to the Republican Party. In fact, of the court's nine justices, only three have progressive tendencies, while the remaining six are conservative. This Supreme Court decision was the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion rights at the federal level. The court, in this case, would have the power to overturn New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, to which the above-mentioned official interpretation of the constitutional principle of free speech is linked.
Dominion could thus have been dragged into a long court case whose outcome would have been less desirable than a plea bargain. Fox on the other hand, aware of the reputational costs of the affair and its alleged culpability, preferred to pay one of the highest settlements ever for a defamation case. Dominion thus waived its right to a public apology from the broadcaster, drawing criticism from those who want there to be higher costs associated with misinformation.
But for Fox News, the settlement is not the end of misinformation-related litigation. An even more costly lawsuit-as much as $2.7 billion-has been brought against it by Smartmatic, another information technology company of election devices. The company's lawyer, Erik Connolly, said after the broadcaster's settlement, "Dominion's lawsuit exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox's disinformation campaign; Smartmatic will expose the rest."
Mondo Internazionale APS - Riproduzione Riservata ® 2023
Reference sources used for this article:
Immagine: https://unsplash.com/photos/6VyUf6nKRbQ
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/12/fox-news-donald-trump-relationship
https://www.ilpost.it/2023/04/18/fox-news-causa-diffamazione/
https://www.axios.com/2019/06/01/supreme-court-justices-ideology
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/20/media/fox-news-smartmatic-dominion-settlement/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/18/why-fox-news-had-to-settle-the-dominion-suit-00092708
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Gaia De Salvo
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disinformazione Trump foxnews diffamazione elezioni USA