US broadcaster Fox News will pay electronic voting machine company Dominion $787.5 million after a last-minute deal Tuesday that spared it an embarrassing lawsuit over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems,” the US conservatives’ favorite channel said in a statement, shortly after the judge who was to preside announced an agreement between the parties. the trial, in a superior court of the State of Delaware.
The channel also said it “takes note of a court ruling that found certain claims about Dominion to be false,” as the judge said in a March 31 order that it was “crystal clear that no claim about Dominion in the 2020 election (was) true”.
For his part, John Poulos, the boss of Dominion, declared that Fox News had “admitted to telling lies” which “caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and our customers”.
“Nothing can fix this.”
Dominion initially claimed $1.6 billion.
The company, whose machines operated in 28 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 been used to rig the ballot.
According to media reports, the terms of the agreement spare Fox News hosts a humiliating exercise: to apologize on the air, or admit to having broadcast lies.
It also saves the pearl of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire from suffering “the libel trial of the century” as the New York Times called it.
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.
The selection of the jury had ended on Tuesday and the debates were to begin in stride.
Even if the trial will not take place, the addition that Fox News will have to settle is “unprecedented” and represents “in itself a significant punishment” for the chain, explained to AFP Mark Feldstein, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland.
To win, Dominion would have had to establish a deliberate willingness to lie at Fox News.
Essential in the conservative camp but regularly accused of echoing conspiracy theories, the chain played big and wanted to make the trial an emblematic case of freedom of the press.
For her, 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 express themselves.
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”, wrote on November 19, 2020 about the Trumpist accusations the big boss, Rupert Murdoch, to the boss of Fox News, Suzanne Scott.
“We have to fire her,” also said one of the stars of the chain, Tucker Carlson, speaking of a tweet from a journalist of the chain sweeping away the accusations of fraud.
“This is hurting the business considerably. The stock price is down,” he added.
Fox News accused Dominion of having made a truncated and biased selection of messages.
After the deal was announced, Media Matters for America president Angelo Carusone said the channel had “shown that it is a partisan propaganda outlet willing to do anything for profit and power. “.
Even if Fox News will soon be able to turn the Dominion page, it may not be at the end of its troubles. The channel is being sued by another company, Smartmatic, in a similar case.
19/04/2023 01:06:33 Wilmington (United States) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
