The American channel Fox News has reached a last-minute agreement with the electronic voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which is seeking heavy damages for defamation on the sidelines of the 2020 presidential election, the judge announced on Tuesday. in charge of the case.
“The parties have resolved their dispute,” Judge Eric Davis told the jurors at the very start of the trial in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware (east).
He gave no details, including financial, while the company was still asking Tuesday morning for $ 1.6 billion in damages from the favorite chain of American conservatives.
Dominion Voting Systems, whose machines operated in 28 states during the presidential election won by Joe Biden in November 2020, accused in its complaint Fox News of having presented it as an instrument at the service of the Democrats to rig the ballot, which asserted without evidence of members of Donald Trump’s bodyguard on the set of America’s most-watched cable channel.
Whatever the financial terms, an agreement thus avoids the pearl of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire from undergoing “the libel trial of the century” as described by the New York Times. And to Rupert Murdoch, 92, the prospect of possibly having to testify on the stand.
Even before the proceedings, the procedure had given rise to an embarrassing unpacking for Fox News, with the publication of exchanges of emails or text messages showing that stars of the chain, and even Rupert Murdoch, hardly believed, in November 2020, to the scenario of a rigged election, while the accusations flourished on the air.
The trial was eagerly awaited in the United States, where it was seen as a test for the limits of freedom of expression, guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution, as well as for the fight against disinformation.
18/04/2023 22:28:57 Wilmington (United States) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
