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Fox News knew they were lying about election

Susheel said:
Well contrary to dominant opinion, social responsibility need not be a priority for businesses. Ultimately only the bottom line matters. You can wirte this entire thing as a lost cause. There will be no repercussions for Fox and it will be business as usual.
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You’d think the dozens (Hundreds? Thousands?) of death threats Dominion’s execs and staffers received for untold months would’ve stirred up a desire for a little extra stick-in-the-knife-and-twist retribution, but hey, those Ferraris are sooo pretty.
 
lobosrul5 said:
"I didn't think there was any way they would get $1.6 billion – even when they proved their case, even if they proved it overwhelmingly to a jury. Let's remember, by its own estimation, Dominion valued the entire company at somewhere between $30 and $80 million. This settlement is 10 times the value of Dominion as an entire company. That's how strong a statement this is with this number," Honig explained.

And:

Dominion still has pending lawsuits against election deniers such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell
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Puts a whole new spin on Maria "The Money Honey" Bartiromo's old moniker.
 
It wasn't Dominion's job to nail FOX to the wall for their lies and deceit, just to get a settlement that would prevent them being out of business by those lies. If FOX's behaviour hasn't broken some law they can be charged for, well that's someone else's problem.
 
Garrison said:
It wasn't Dominion's job to nail FOX to the wall for their lies and deceit, just to get a settlement that would prevent them being out of business by those lies. If FOX's behaviour hasn't broken some law they can be charged for, well that's someone else's problem.
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You can hardly blame them. They took a 40 million dollar company and received 3/4 of a billion dollars.
 
The problem is modern discourse is setup to make any attempt at combating disinformation impossible.

Fox News deliberately lied about the American Electoral Process in order to get someone who didn't win the election into office. This is a fact and it is not in dispute.

But what happens now?

Wrong people have a billion and one excuses about why they are allowed to be wrong solely because nobody else gets to tell them what to say/think/do.

Can you imagine the screeching if Fox News actually gets punished for lying from the "Oh so I guess the government think it gets to decide what is true, 1984! Groupthink!" crowd?
 
I don't understand why FOX even fought it, they could have just openly admitted "Yeah, we lie all the time" and 99.9% of their viewers will still vote for whichever Republican they're told to. America is post-truth. Reality doesn't matter, if it ever did.
 
I wonder if the impact may be similar to Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc.WP? The tabloid newspapers were somewhat more careful with their lies after the Enquirer was convicted even though the final settlement was a rather picayune amount.

The Wikipedia article is worth a read as some of the issues of the case are similar . . . and others are not.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I don't understand why FOX even fought it, they could have just openly admitted "Yeah, we lie all the time" and 99.9% of their viewers will still vote for whichever Republican they're told to. America is post-truth. Reality doesn't matter, if it ever did.
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The positive side is I think Fox is pretty much preaching t the converted anyway.
I just cannot understand people who only go to one source for their news.
 
Garrison said:
It wasn't Dominion's job to nail FOX to the wall for their lies and deceit, just to get a settlement that would prevent them being out of business by those lies. If FOX's behaviour hasn't broken some law they can be charged for, well that's someone else's problem.
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Funny, my attorney sister said the same thing over the phone last night. Dominion got basicallly more then the company was ever worthm and although I suspect they would love to see Fox totally humiliated, you can never tell what a jury will do, and just one Fox Fan in the Jury Box could mess up the pooch.
 
I also think that anybody who though even if DOminion won the full amount, that would have forced Fox News off the air is living in a fantasy world.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I wonder if the impact may be similar to Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc.WP? The tabloid newspapers were somewhat more careful with their lies after the Enquirer was convicted even though the final settlement was a rather picayune amount.

The Wikipedia article is worth a read as some of the issues of the case are similar . . . and others are not.
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Maybe - but that impact seems to have been short lived. The recent NY Trump indictments well document strong cooperation between Trump and that very same Enquirer. Lots of "catch and kill" strategy from the Enquirer on Trump's behalf. The newspaper effectively colluded with Trump in non-reporting of campaign expenses.

I expect little change from Fox. Their reporters seem to be banned from stating the actual amount of the payoff. They'll be less likely to falsely name specific people of companies of specific crimes.

But they'll be happy to be just a little less specific. Instead of saying "Dominion did this and Symantec did that they'll instead just say that "Dominion and Symtanec and other companies did this wobbly accusation". Then they can fall back on claiming that the accusation was too general to specifically indict any specific person or company and was therefore fine. Or fall back on "Sources say" and making a habit of deliberately failing to do any due diligence at all so they can just blame the "sources" for false information.

So Fox lost about a half a year's profits. That and minor tweaks on how they lie will be the only real change.

Worse - even if they did change, new "news" sources would fill the void. It in ingrained in our culture now. Remember when people thought the solution was to get O'Reilly and Limbaugh off the air? To get Fox to drop Beck? To get Radio stations to drop Alex Jones? None of it worked. O'Reilly's off the air, Limbaugh is dead. Jones and Beck found new outlets to keep spewing and they still have millions of listeners. Tucker and others rose to fill the gaps left by Rush and Bill's exit.

I am very cynical abut all of this. The paranoid and superstitious part of American culture is alive and well and will always find ways to screw up the world.
 
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dudalb said:
Funny, my attorney sister said the same thing over the phone last night. Dominion got basicallly more then the company was ever worthm and although I suspect they would love to see Fox totally humiliated, you can never tell what a jury will do, and just one Fox Fan in the Jury Box could mess up the pooch.
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Which is exactly what I said to my sister today. Another reason Dominion may have agreed to settle is because it avoids any appeals by Fox which could have gone on for years and delayed Dominion receiving the money.

I'm happy Dominion employees with receive some of that money for what they've had to endure:

Staple Street co-founder Hootan Yaghoobzadeh told CNBC Wednesday that whatever remains of the $787.5 million after legal fees and corporate taxes would be distributed to shareholders, including Staple Street, as well as management and employees.
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I think Smartmatic can likely use the same evidence that Dominion used (the texts, emails) since it has become public and most, if not all, was not Dominion specific.

I think Fox will likely settle with Smartmatic now, too.
 
Stacyhs said:
I think Smartmatic can likely use the same evidence that Dominion used (the texts, emails) since it has become public and most, if not all, was not Dominion specific.

I think Fox will likely settle with Smartmatic now, too.
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Smartmatic sued for $2.8 billion. So based on Fox's approximately 50% agreed value to settle, that should be $1.4 billion for them.

Again, even adding that to the Dominion payout, it won't bankrupt Fox. But it will account for maybe another couple of years of profit. So it will be a massive financial dent for an extended period. But, of course, Rupert and the talent won't be cutting down on their caviar-and-champagne budgets. ;)

A bigger impact will be on Fox's standing as a conservative news channel. While there may be nothing said about these whole affairs by Fox directly, hands down all their crazy-cat rivals will be chat-showing and talk-backing it up like no tomorrow. And it will be on all the non-conservative media for the next couple of years at least. Fox's reputation will be mud, in most parts of the world.
 
Apart from the payment and in future some people being more careful what they put in writing this will not change anything for Fox.
 
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