Fox News suffered public humiliation and ended up writing a historically enormous check.
Breaking news from the transom: Fox News has suddenly decided to settle with Dominion, the company whose voting machines were at the center of mad post-November 2020 conspiracy theories aired and — rather unfortunately for purposes of both legal liability and intellectual credibility — encouraged by Fox hosts when they weren’t outright endorsing them. (Lou Dobbs? Won’t see him no more.) The case has been something of a black hole in conservative media discussion — “Look away, for pity’s sake!” — a disgraceful situation everyone is quietly mortified by. It was made even worse by the humiliating revelations churned up during the discovery process, where multiple FNC hosts were revealed to be cynical hypocrites knowingly soft-selling preposterous and ultimately civically destructive lies to their audience for no better reason than that they were afraid of losing said audience to rivals. It is over now.
When CNN settled with Nicholas Sandmann in his defamation case — remember the bemused kid trying to keep his composure during the March for Life in Washington, D.C., while a professional activist chanted in his face? — the final payout was kept secret but rumored to be in the $1-2 million range. That is a solid payout in a defamation claim, more than mere “nuisance settlement” money. (The kid also frankly deserved it.)
Now to contrast, Dominion’s settlement agreement — which, it must be ruefully noted, featured Sandmann’s former attorney in a key role — has netted them $787 million from Fox News. It is more than Fox’s entire net income for the year 2022, which lagged behind at $760 million. It is a blow which Fox can survive financially, but which is devastating nonetheless and reflects the commensurately devastating facts of a case which, if you have not educated yourself about yet, you ought to.
There will be more commentary on the Fox/Dominion case to come. For now, I will repeat the question that I and others with legal backgrounds asked once discovery had run its course and Fox News’ internal communications during the election crisis became public: How could any lawyer look at this case and not settle? How could any client willingly consent to such public humiliation rather than write an enormous check?
Fox News helpfully answered the question for us tonight: They suffered the public humiliation and ended up writing a historically enormous check anyway. It cannot help but feel like a poorly thought-out legal strategy.