The out-of-court settlement between the American television network Fox News and the electronic vote counting company Dominion (Voting Systems) was a rather surprising development, shortly before the two sides faced each other in a court in the state of Delaware. The unexpected news was announced “on the air” by Neil Cavuto, one of the most famous presenters of Fox News.

As he specifically reported, “Fox News has agreed to pay $787 million in a settlement, following a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion. This information comes from the Wall Street Journal. The settlement prevents a trial of allegations that Fox, its hosts and guests, had advanced complaints about the technological reliability of the election process in the 2020 election.”

“Admission, but not a full apology”

In 2020, Donald Trump did not recognize his defeat by the Democrats and Joe Biden, in fact he attributed it to “fraud”. The ultra-conservative Fox News network seemed to embrace, at least in part, the claims, although the lines were often blurred. Was he simply recording current political affairs, as Fox News itself claims, or was he acting as a pro-Trump propagandist, as Dominion claims, even demanding the mythical amount of 1.6 billion euros in compensation?

Finally, the compromise “closed” at 787.5 million dollars. This is a much smaller amount than what Dominion was claiming, but as Cary Colianesi, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, reports, “it’s certainly a huge amount. The only similar case that I can remember is a case that was closed with a compensation of 175 million dollars. Here we are talking about almost 800 million, it seems to be a record amount”.

American analysts point out that with the out-of-court settlement, the 92-year-old head of Fox News Rupert Murdoch and other leading executives of the channel are spared the trouble of appearing in court as witnesses to answer persistent questions about the company’s internal operations.

Appeals continue…

The head of Dominion, John Poulos, speaks of a “historic settlement”, while his lawyer Justin Nelson states that “truth comes first and lies cannot but have consequences”. The story doesn’t end here. Another appeal by the electronic vote-counting company Smartmatic is pending against Fox News. But Dominion has also filed other lawsuits against US networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as former Trump associates such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and ultraconservative activist Mike Liddell.

As for Fox News, Professor Colianesi believes that “on the one hand it admits that some of its assessments of Dominion were wrong, on the other hand it does not apologize emphatically. He does not give the impression that he has suffered a defeat in court. But at the end of the day, we’re talking about almost $800 million, a significant amount for a company like Dominion…”