“The libel trial of the century,” as the New York Times called it, will not happen. And for this, the American chain Fox News will pay 787.5 million dollars (718 million euros approximately) to the electronic voting machine company Dominion in order not to go to court over its controversial coverage of the 2020 presidential election in the United States.
“We are pleased to have reached a resolution to our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems,” the US conservatives’ favorite channel said in a statement shortly after Tuesday, April 18, announced a last-minute deal. minute between the parties by the judge who was to preside over the trial before a superior court in the State of Delaware.
Even before the debates, 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 the big boss Rupert Murdoch, hardly believed, in November 2020, to the scenario of a rigged election, while the accusations flourished on the air.
“Lies have consequences,” said Dominion company attorney Justin Nelson, publicly announcing the infamous amount Fox News agreed to pay. The company he defends initially claimed $ 1.6 billion, more than double what it will receive.
Rupert Murdoch will not take the stand
The network said, for its part, “to take note of a decision of the court finding false certain assertions concerning Dominion”, while the judge had declared in an order of March 31 that it was “clear as water rock that no assertion about Dominion in the 2020 election [was] true”.
The deal spares Rupert Murdoch, 92, whose Fox News is the media empire’s flagship channel, the prospect of possibly having to testify in court. The selection of the jury had ended on Tuesday and the debates were to begin in stride.
The Dominion company, whose machines operated in twenty-eight states during the presidential election won by Joe Biden, was the pet peeve of Donald Trump’s close guard, who accused him at length and without proof of having served to rig the ballot. Many Donald Trump voters still believe the election was stolen from them, and that protest came to a head on January 6, 2021, when thousands of his supporters attacked the Capitol, the heart of democracy. American, to block the certification of the results of the November 2020 election.
If the court case was found to be strong, the company still had to establish a deliberate intent to lie at Fox News and the jury had to reach a unanimous verdict for a conviction.
Freedom of expression
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. A must in the conservative camp but regularly accused of echoing conspiracy theories, Fox News was playing big and wanted to make the trial an emblematic case for freedom of the press. For the network, it was legitimate to give the floor to the Trump camp when it contested the vote and “essential for the search for the truth” to let all parties speak.
But Dominion relied on internal discussions to argue that Fox News was lying on purpose, so as not to lose its viewers won over to Donald Trump. A “really crazy thing.” And damaging,” Rupert Murdoch wrote to Fox News boss Suzanne Scott in November 2020 about Trump’s accusations of fraud.
“Gotta fire her,” also said one of the network’s stars, Tucker Carlson, of a tweet from a network reporter that brushed off accusations of fraud. “It’s hurting the business significantly. The stock price is falling. This is no joke,” he added. Fox News accused Dominion of making a truncated and biased selection of messages.
