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    Voting equipment company Smartmatic settles defamation lawsuit with far-right network

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    The voting equipment company Smartmatic has agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit with the far-right One America News Network (OAN) over lies broadcast on the network about the 2020 election.Erik Connolly, a lawyer for Smartmatic, confirmed the case had been settled, but said the details were confidential. Attorneys for Smartmatic and OAN notified a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday that they were agreeing to dismiss the case, which Smartmatic filed in 2021.Smartmatic sued OAN in November 2021, saying the relatively small company was a victim of OAN’s “decision to increase its viewership and influence by spreading disinformation”. Smartmatic was only involved in the 2020 election in a single US county, Los Angeles, but OAN repeatedly broadcast false claims that its equipment had flipped the election for Biden. Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell played a key role in advancing the outlandish claims.Defamation cases are difficult to win in the US, with plaintiffs having to clear a high bar of showing that defendants knew the information was false and published it anyway. The settlement comes months after OAN lawyers apparently accidentally turned over documents showing that the network had obtained a spreadsheet with Smartmatic employees’ passwords. It’s not clear if the passwords were authentic, but Smartmatic lawyers said in court filings that the network may have committed a crime.The settlement also means that internal documents from OAN showing how the network weighed and evaluated claims about the 2020 election will not become public. Before the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox last year, those kinds of internal documents offered smoking gun evidence that key personnel at Fox knew election claims were false.The settlement is the latest development in a series of defamation cases that have sought to hold media outlets accountable for spreading false information about the 2020 election. In 2022, OAN settled a defamation case brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Atlanta election workers it falsely claimed were involved in stealing the election. The network issued an on-air report saying there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election officials and clarifying that Freeman and Moss “did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct”.Smartmatic still has a pending $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox.Earlier this month, a Delaware judge set a September trial date for Smartmatic’s defamation case against Newsmax. Both Smartmatic and Dominion also have ongoing defamation cases against Powell, Giuliani and Mike Lindell.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLegal scholars are carefully watching the cases to see whether defamation law can be an effective tool in curbing misinformation. More

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      ‘Political germ warfare’: rightwing media fervently defend Trump

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      After he was indicted for the third time, Donald Trump reacted with his now-standard, twin-pronged approach: first, expressing outrage and denying the charges, and second, asking his many loyal supporters for money.But the former US president, who faces four charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, also found defenders among rightwing media in America which has often fervently defended him, sometimes flying in the face of reality to do so.In the minutes after the Trump indictment was filed in federal district court in Washington, conservative commentators rapidly scrambled to his defense. Rightwing pundits lined up to compare the charges to “criminalizing thoughts” and the dropping of “fifteen dozen” atomic bombs – and that was just on Fox News.Rightwing TV channel Newsmax, which has drained some of Fox News’s audience in recent months, brought on Rudy Giuliani, an unnamed co-conspirator in Tuesday’s indictment, who railed for seven minutes about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Biden being a “crooked president”.In America’s rightwing media ecosystem it was a largely united front. News outlets repeatedly pressed the idea that Trump’s free speech was being criminalized: that the former president had done nothing more than talk about the election being stolen.The effort, perhaps deliberately, ignored prosecutors’ allegations that Trump had convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.“This is like lawfare, they call it,” Jesse Watters, Fox News’s newly-installed prime-time host, railed in the moments after the indictment was announced. “Legal warfare. If this was political, this would be, like, a political war crime. This is overkill. This is political germ warfare. These are political war crimes. It’s an atrocity. It’s, like, not just dropping one atomic bomb, you drop 15 dozen.”Those claims were made on Fox News’s The Five show, which Watters co-hosts. By the time he got to his 8pm show, he hadn’t calmed down.Watters assembled a panel of experts, which included Alina Habba, a former Trump attorney who now works for Trump’s political action committee and Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law.In the wake of the 2020 election Trump “did exactly what you would want a president to do”, Lara Trump said.“He upheld and defended the constitution of the United States by trying to ensure that we indeed had a free and fair election. That was his whole goal, that’s what he wanted to ensure was going on,” she said.“[And] what about his first amendment freedom of speech.”Sean Hannity, a friend of Trump who was disciplined by Fox News in 2018 for appearing on stage at a Trump campaign rally, brought John Lauro, a Trump attorney, on to his 9pm show.“This is the first time, in the history of the United States, that the Justice Department has weaponized and politicized political speech,” Lauro claimed.Newsmax, meanwhile, went where Fox News – the channel recently settled a lawsuit after repeating the kind of claims that Giuliani lobs out incessantly – apparently feared to tread. The right-wing channel hauled on an emotional Giuliani, who referenced his own book as he criticized Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the indictment.“You don’t get to violate people’s first amendment rights, Smith,” Giuliani said. “No matter who the hell you are, no matter how sick you are with Trump derangement syndrome.”There were some calmer voices of dissent in conservative media. One anyway: the Wall Street Journal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an op-ed the editorial board of the Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, criticized Trump’s behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election, but worried that the indictment “potentially criminalizes many kinds of actions and statements by a president”.“You don’t have to be a defender of Donald Trump to worry about where this will lead,” the editorial board wrote.“It makes any future election challenges, however valid, legally vulnerable to a partisan prosecutor.”Away from the non-rightwing media, the interpretation was largely covered in a sober fashion in the US. The mainstream newspapers New York Times and the Washington Post stuck to a undramatic descriptions of the charges, while ABC News reported on the “sweeping indictment” Trump faces – noting it was his third in the last four months.None of that mattered among conservatives.One America News Network pivoted to Hunter Biden – always a source of interest among right-wing news – with an OANN correspondent pushing an emerging conspiracy theory that the Trump indictment was timed to coincide with Biden Jr’s tax charges trial.Elsewhere, a senior editor of the Blaze website suggested that the Republican-led House should force a government shutdown – which could see about 800,000 federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay – in the hope that the case against Trump would collapse.Perhaps the most berserk take, however, was the one pushed by Trump’s own campaign.“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” the campaign posted to Truth Social.On a day when the rightwing media seemed willing to do and say anything to defend their man, none of them was willing to go as far as that. 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      Geraldo Rivera quits Fox News after being fired from panel show The Five

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      Fox News mainstay Geraldo Rivera has parted ways with the network as staffing shake-ups at the conservative institution continue.Rivera first shared word of his departure from the channel on Thursday, posting a video on Twitter showing him on a boat off the coast of Long Island while saying that he had been dismissed from a panel show which Fox airs weekdays at 5pm ET.“I’ve been fired from The Five, and as a result of that I quit Fox,” Rivera said in the video.When asked for comment on Rivera’s remarks, a Fox spokesperson provided a statement which said that the network had “reached an amicable conclusion with Geraldo over the past few weeks”. The statement, written on Thursday, added that Rivera’s appearance on the Friday morning edition of the Fox & Friends show would be his last appearance on the channel. Rivera notably joined the show a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.Rivera, 79, was magnanimous when he appeared on Fox & Friends for his farewell segment on Friday, saying: “I’m deeply touched – I’m honored.“I love Fox, I love the people at Fox, I always will,” Rivera said. “I’ll never let anyone separate us, but I am beyond grateful for this. This is so deeply affecting. I love you for it – thank you.”Fox has not said that Rivera’s departure was at all related to the $787.5m settlement that the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel reached with Dominion Voting Systems in April to end a defamation suit over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud when he lost his 2020 presidential re-election campaign. But it is among a handful of changes at the network since the settlement was announced.The most notable of those was the firing of host Tucker Carlson within days of the settlement. Fox has maintained that Carlson’s dismissal was unrelated to the settlement, and it has replaced him with Jesse Watters. The network’s ex-star has not commented.Meanwhile, Carlson’s former managing editor Alexander McCaskill resigned in mid-June after a banner headline which he was thought to be behind described Joe Biden as a “wannabe dictator” during a broadcast.The banner – or chyron – also said that the president had “his political rival arrested”, referring to a federal indictment filed against Trump which charged him with improperly storing government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.McCaskill had also been accused of having “habitually belittled female employees” – among other things – in a lawsuit brought by the ex-Fox talent booker Abby Grossberg which accused the channel, its owners, and its workers, including Carlson, of fostering an abusive workplace environment.Rivera embarked on his career in broadcast journalism in 1970. He hosted a daytime talkshow for 11 years beginning in 1987. And, among other gigs, he was a CNBC news host from 1994 to 2001 before joining Fox, where he worked as a war correspondent, weekend anchor and host of the Cops: All Access series.Generally known to have a flair for controversy and self-promotion, Rivera stood out in recent years for his outspoken criticism of Israel over its attacks on Gaza and other Palestinian targets. With his participation, The Five would often outperform Fox’s other prime-time shows in terms of ratings.In some quarters, one of the most memorable episodes of Rivera’s run at Fox saw the US military boot him out of Iraq in 2003 for broadcasting details about American troop movements there.Two years before that, in an on-air flub he blamed on “the fog of war”, he claimed to have been at the scene when three American military members had been slain by friendly fire in Afghanistan before the Baltimore Sun later established that he had been more than 300 miles away. More

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      CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

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      Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning.“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.”As it happens, quite a lot of people said that not only did CNN fail to get answers but it was repeating the terrible mistake of 2016 when it treated Trump as an entertainer not a hostile politician by giving him hours of airtime to spout freely because he was good for ratings, and therefore profits.One of CNN’s own reporters, Oliver Darcy, was less enthused than his boss.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he said in his daily newsletter, Reliable Sources.Darcy then listed all that was wrong. The same old “professional lie machine” that is Trump ignoring the question, talking over the moderator, unleashing “a firehose of disinformation upon the country”.“And CNN aired it all. On and on it went. It felt like 2016 all over again,” he wrote.More than a few Republicans shared that view. Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the George W Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, condemned the news network.“CNN was completely unprepared to hold Trump accountable. CNN has done a complete disservice to our democracy,” he wrote. “CNN, you failed journalism and our country.”The New York Times said Trump’s advisers were delighted: “They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”Which raises the question of how television, in particular, should cover Trump as the next election comes into focus. It’s a question even Fox News, which has fallen out with the former president, is now grappling with.Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC News’s Nightline, asked what the alternative is to television time for a leading contender for a return to the White House.“So no more live political events, because politicians can be nasty? Because politicians can tell lies?” he told the New York Times. “I’m not sure that news organisations should necessarily be in the business of making ideological judgments. Is he a legitimate object of news attention? You bet.”Bob Schieffer, the former CBS news anchor who moderated presidential debates, took much the same position.“We’re in the business of telling people who’s running for what and what they stand for,” he said.But many Americans wondered if it had to be in front of a supportive, jeering audience that evidently included a fair number of his “Make America great again” supporters with little to restrain his torrent of lies, distractions and evasions.Mark Lukasiewicz, former vice-president at NBC News, said of the programme that the mistake was to do it live: “Proving again: Live lying works. A friendly Maga crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punch lines – including re sex assault and January 6 – and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”Even Fox News recorded its most recent interviews with Trump.Writing in the Washington Post, Perry Bacon said CNN’s mistake was to say, in the words of its political director, David Chalian, that is it going to “treat Trump like any other presidential candidate”.“CNN should, of course, treat Trump differently from other candidates. His record of anti-democratic behavior makes him a much more dangerous potential president than other candidates,” wrote Bacon.“In 2016, the media not only played down Trump’s chances of winning, but also suggested Trump would not pursue the outlandish and far-right ideas that he was running on if he won. This attitude was summed up by an Atlantic article titled ‘Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally’. This perspective was entirely wrongheaded.”Part of the problem is that few journalists in the US, striving for ill-defined objectivity and almost invariably deferential to present and former presidents, are a match for a man who views the established norms of interviewing and discussion as a provocation. As Kaitlan Collins proved, as she tried, and failed, to contain Trump, even as he called her a “nasty woman” on her own air.Bacon is not alone in worrying that Trump will continue to exploit CNN’s desperation to win back at least some of the Maga voters it lost when the former president led chants of “CNN sucks” at his rallies.That’s certainly how Trump saw it, writing on his Truth Social site shortly before the programme that CNN was “rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again.“Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens?” he added.As it turned out, what was good for CNN and Trump was viewed by a large part of the rest of America as another disaster in the making. More

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      Dear CNN, giving Trump a town-hall platform is the height of irresponsibility | Siva Vaidhyanathan

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      With 18 months to go before the next US presidential election, it’s already clear that – barring a physical collapse or two – Joe Biden will represent the Democrats and Donald Trump will carry the hopes of Republicans.This will be the first presidential election after one of the candidates, the president at the time, tried to foment a violent insurrection to overturn the last election. It will be the first election since 1912 in which a former president (in that case Theodore Roosevelt) challenges a sitting president (in that case William Howard Taft). It will be the first election in American history in which one candidate has already been impeached – twice, in fact. It will be the first election since 1800 in which one of the major candidates can reasonably be called a threat to or disloyal to the United States of America (Aaron Burr in 1800 was the first). And Burr had not yet revealed his propensity for treachery in 1800. It will be the first election in which one of the candidates has been indicted on state criminal charges (and possibly federal charges by the time of the election).In other words, it will be a weird election in every way. Yet, despite staring at a growing, violent, nativist, fascist-like movement that doggedly supports Trump, the mainstream American news media seems poised to treat both candidates as if they are viable, reasonable representatives of the traditions their political parties have grown to symbolize.It’s as if they have learned nothing.CNN, the leading 24-hour news network, will host Trump for a “town hall” forum in New Hampshire on Wednesday, as if he were a regular candidate leading the race for the nomination of a regular party. Of course, CNN will probably do the same for the three or four others who are likely to challenge him for the Republican nomination (so far, the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are the only viable non-crank candidates).A few more might jump in, but the more challenges Trump faces, the more likely he will lock up the nomination on the first primary day, rather than a month later.Putting a microphone and three cameras on Trump as if he were just another candidate and not an instigator of the violent disruption of American democracy and leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the results of a national election is the height of journalistic irresponsibility.The conservative columnist Alyssa Farah Griffin defended CNN by saying that the host, Kaitlan Collins, is “tough” and won’t let Trump “get away with lying without being called out”. That’s exactly the problem. CNN is in the business of performing toughness and balance, not primarily producing journalism that serves to enlighten citizens and enhance democracy. CNN seems to exist to create tweetable moments of anchor “toughness”, through which the celebrities who appear on air make events and interviews all about them. The CNN faces are tough enough to stand in the wind and rain of a hurricane, and tough enough to call out a politician – even a bully like Trump – for lying. But that’s easy and shallow. Ultimately, it hurts democracy.The issue is not whether Trump gets caught in a lie or “gets away” with something. Trump doesn’t care when that happens and neither do Republican supporters. We have 40 years of Trump shamelessness to demonstrate that – seven years of Trump as a political figure. He has been “called out” time and time again. It makes no difference to his support or to his habits. Exposing Trump as a liar changes no minds about anything.But he will receive the imprimatur of respectability for warranting this platform in the first place. CNN and all journalists must concede that they perform that work, despite wishing and pretending they did not. They have just been too lazy to question doing things the way they had always done things. Every major news organization has done the same. No one has wanted to admit it is a dangerous moment or new environment.So how should mainstream journalistic organizations like CNN cover Trump – or any candidate – through the election? All plans and policies should be based on the realization that democracy is under direct threat from many small factions in the United States, supported by at least one foreign power (Russia), and that they all support the return of Donald Trump to power. Trump himself is immune to shaming and exposure. So that 20th-century assumption about shining a light or exposing or embarrassing a wrongdoer is not appropriate now. The situation is more dire and the political climate in the United States is beyond such tepid, genteel moves.News organizations should do everything differently. No more “town halls” for any candidate, not just Trump. No more interviews in comfortable chairs and good lighting intended to demonstrate both access to power and a certain toughness in approach. No more unfiltered coverage of rallies and speeches as if they constitute “news” before they are ever broadcast or rendered in text.Coverage should be driven by clear editorial choices. Journalists should decide what the candidates will respond to. They should approach each story based on an issue at hand, in the country, in the world, rather than whatever the candidate chooses to say that day. Every report should be couched in deep context, with every quote encased in statements and reminders of the candidate’s record, the facts about the issue, and what the choice is for voters.Reports should be delivered as multimedia packages, accompanied by deep research just a click away from the video, audio or text that invites the citizen into the story. Organizations should begin planning such coverage now so that nothing they do gets hijacked by shenanigans or games by any candidate – with full knowledge that hijacking the normal practices of 20th-century political journalism was precisely Trump’s strategy from 2015 through today. Steve Bannon told us so. Editors and reporters chose not to take it seriously.If a potential story does not serve to inform voters about what is at stake, it should never make it to publication or broadcast. That’s a simple test: does this story enlighten and enable the electorate? Or does this story merely serve to enrage and entertain the electorate? The moment when news organizations began gathering deep and sophisticated data about audience engagement, they began competing for attention against games and pornography and sitcoms and YouTube clips. That’s a fact of the business and a fact of life. But pandering to that fact instead of resisting it is rendering journalism incapable of functioning because journalism can never win the entertainment game.News organizations must accept that they make news by virtue of their choices. They don’t cover things that already exist as “news”. They are political actors. They must choose democracy or risk being used for free by the forces that oppose democracy. The stakes are too high to continue doing business as usual. The stakes are high in a business sense, of course. But they are higher in the sense of our survival as a democratic republic in a world in which democracy is in danger. More

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      Tucker Carlson said Fox Nation streaming service ‘sucks’, leaked video shows

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      Before he was fired by Fox News, rightwing TV host Tucker Carlson said the Fox Nation streaming service for which he produced content “sucks”, leaked video showed on Monday.The news follows widespread reporting that comments about his employer, including “highly offensive” remarks about executives, contributed to Carlson’s shock firing last week.In the new footage published by Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, Carlson discussed an interview with the controversial rightwing social media star Andrew Tate.Carlson spoke to Tate in August 2022. Some of the footage was shown on Fox News, trailing a longer broadcast on Fox Nation.In December 2022, Tate was arrested in Romania over allegations of rape, people trafficking and organised crime, which he denies.In the leaked video, Carlson sat on his Fox News set, talking by phone to an unidentified male Briton and gave an unflattering opinion of the Fox Nation website and the size of its audience.“I don’t want to be a slave to Fox Nation, which I don’t think that people watch anyway,” Carlson said.Discussing what he would wear for the interview, Carlson said: “I want it to look official. I don’t want it to be like bro talk … But nobody’s going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. So I’d really like to just … dump the whole thing on YouTube.“But anyway, that’s just my view. OK. I’m just frustrated with it. It’s hard to use that site. I don’t know why they’re not fixing it. It’s driving me insane. And they’re like making, like, Lifetime movies but they don’t … work on the infrastructure of the site.“Like what? It’s crazy. And it drives me crazy because it’s like we’re doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It’s unbelievable, actually.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionContent produced by Carlson for Fox Nation included Patriot Purge, a conspiracy-laced documentary series about the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and The End of Men, which included a discussion of testicle tanning.On the footage leaked to Media Matters, Carlson said: “We’re like working like animals to produce all this content, and the people in charge of [Fox Nation] … like, they’re ignoring the fact that the site doesn’t work. And I think it’s like a betrayal of our efforts. That’s how I feel. So I, of course, I resent it.”Fox News declined to comment. It has been bullish about its streaming service.The New York Times has also said it obtained video of Carlson speaking off-air.In its footage, the paper said, Carlson discusses “‘postmenopausal fans’ and whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds ‘yummy’.” More

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      Don Lemon says he has been fired by CNN: ‘I am stunned’

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      The TV news anchor Don Lemon said on Monday he had been fired from CNN – the news breaking shortly after word of another major US media departure, that of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon, 57, wrote on Twitter not long after appearing on CNN This Morning, the revamped show he co-hosted with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.“I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly.“At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.”CNN did not say why Lemon had left but it did dispute his version of events.It said: “Don Lemon’s statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”In a separate statement, the chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, said: “CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”Licht also said CNN This Morning, which has struggled for ratings, “has been on air for nearly six months and we are committed to its success”.In February, Lemon was rebuked by Licht and briefly taken off-air over televised remarks about Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor now running for the Republican presidential nomination.Speaking to Harlow and Collins about Haley’s call for mental competency tests for ageing politicians, Lemon said Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry”, adding: “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Haley is 51.In a recording obtained by the New York Times, Licht told staffers that Lemon’s remarks were “upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organisation”.Lemon apologised, saying, according to CNN: “I’m sorry that I said it. And I certainly see why people found it completely misguided.”He added: “The people I’m closest to in this organization are women.”Haley told Fox News: “I have always made the liberals’ heads explode. They can’t stand the fact that a minority, conservative, female would not be on the Democratic side.“He made that comment. I wasn’t sitting there saying sexist middle-aged CNN anchors need to have mental competency tests, although he may have just proven that point.”Announcing his firing on Monday, Lemon said: “It is clear that there are some larger issues at play.“With that said, I want to thank my colleagues and the many teams I have worked with for an incredible run. They are the most talented journalists in the business and I wish them all the best.” More

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      Fox and Dominion settle for US$787.5m in defamation lawsuit over election lies

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      Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement in a closely watched defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.The settlement came before scheduled opening statements and after an unexpected lengthy delay Tuesday afternoon just after the jury was sworn in. Neither party immediately disclosed the terms of the settlement other than the dollar amount, and attorneys for Dominion declined to answer questions about whether it requires Fox to issue a retraction or a formal apology.“The parties have resolved their case,” judge Eric Davis told jurors on Tuesday afternoon before excusing them from the courtroom.In a press conference outside the courthouse, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said the more than $787m represented “vindication and accountability”. The settlement amount is less than half of the $1.6bn Dominion demanded in its lawsuit.“Truth matters,” he said. “Lies have consequences. The truth does not know red or blue,” he continued. “People across the political spectrum can and should disagree on issues, even of the most profound importance. But for our democracy to endure another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts.”In a statement, Fox said the settlement reflects its “continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards”.“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” the statement said.Opening statements were scheduled to start on Tuesday after a lunch break, but the judge and jurors did not return to the room until close to 4pm. During the more than two-hour delay, attorneys huddled and left the courtroom to convene in adjacent meeting rooms.After returning to the courtroom, Davis thanked the jurors for their service, and called the efforts by the lawyers on both sides “the best lawyering I’ve had, ever” in his career on the bench since 2010.The anticipated six-week jury trial was originally set to begin on Monday, but Davis, the judge overseeing the case, postponed the start of trial by a day as the sides worked to reach a settlement agreement.The trial in Wilmington, Delaware, was set to be a blockbuster media trial. Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old chief executive of Fox, was called to testify in the case, along with top Fox talent including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo.The lawsuit was seen as one of the most aggressive efforts to hold Fox, or any actor, accountable for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. It was a lie that led to threats against election officials across the country, and ultimately helped fuel the violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January. Nine deaths have been linked to the event.Though the case was settled, Dominion had unearthed a stunning trove of internal communications from Fox laying bare how top talent and hosts knew the outlandish claims about Dominion and a stolen election were false. The extensive messages offered a remarkable insight into how some of the most powerful hosts in America did not buy the allegations they were broadcasting to their audience each night.Dominion, a relatively obscure company until the 2020 election, sought $1.6bn in damages in the case. It challenged repeated claims made on Fox’s air after the general election that Dominion switched votes, paid government kickbacks, and was founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez.In the press conference Tuesday, Dominion CEO John Poulos called the settlement historic because of Fox’s admission that it was telling ties.“Throughout this process, we have sought accountability,” he said. “We believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading lies. Truthful reporting in the media is essential to our democracy.”Even before trial, Davis had already concluded that Fox’s claims about Dominion were false. “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote in a ruling earlier this month.The question that would have been before the jury was whether Fox committed “actual malice” in airing the claims. That required Dominion to show whether key decision makers were aware the claims were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.Fox still faces several legal battles related to its decision to broadcast false claims. Smartmatic, another voting equipment company, is suing the company for $2.7bn. Abby Grossberg, a former Fox employee who worked for Bartiromo and Carlson, is also suing the company, alleging she was coerced into giving misleading testimony.The network also faces a separate lawsuit from a shareholder who is seeking damages and argues that executives breached their fiduciary duty to the company by causing false claims about the election to be broadcast.During the press conference, Stephen Shackelford, an attorney who was set to give opening arguments for Dominion on Tuesday, said that the company will continue seeking accountability.“Money is accountability,” he said. “We got that today from Fox. But we’re not done yet. We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming for them.” More

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      With $1.6bn at stake, Fox News is suddenly interested in freedom of the press | Margaret Sullivan

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      As it tries to defend itself against the accusation that it knowingly spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, Fox News has touted some lofty notions about the role of journalism in a democratic society.“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” said a recent company statement, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v Sullivan.”The background, of course, is that Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6bn in damages from the media giant, arguing that Fox News spread damaging falsehoods purporting that the voting machine company rigged the election to defeat Donald Trump. Dominion intends to show that network representatives at the highest levels – right up to Fox News’s founder, Rupert Murdoch – knew that this was utter nonsense, that the election was valid, and that their primary concern was not truth-telling but appeasing their disappointed pro-Trump audience.Don’t get me wrong. I believe press rights belong to a wide spectrum of media organizations, whatever their political leanings.But Fox’s reliance on first amendment protections – while part of a legal strategy that may prove successful in court – is the height of hypocrisy. America’s founders believed it was essential that American citizens be well-informed about the behavior of public officials and other powerful entities, and thus be capable of self-governance.The recent revelations from court filings, however, make it clear that such a noble mission was far from top of mind at Fox, not just in the aftermath of the 2020 election but going back years.Take, for example, one of the network’s biggest stars, Sean Hannity, who ventured far outside the bounds of journalistic norms when he appeared with Trump at a 2018 campaign rally. (Fox brass, normally tolerant of their stars’ excesses, went so far as to reprimand him.)Hannity, who has stated that he’s not a journalist, has played the role of a Trump insider – even an informal adviser to Republican officials. Recall his January 2021 text message to former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Republican congressman Jim Jordan: “Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days,” apparently referring to persuading Trump to conclude his presidency peacefully before inauguration day.“When Hannity advised the president about the ongoing insurrection he did not do so as a journalist but as an ally, a confederate, a teammate, rather than an umpire or observer,” the famed first amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told me last year, characterizing this as “non-journalistic behavior, in fact almost the precise opposite of journalistic behavior”.And given Fox’s clear reliance on the landmark press-rights case Times v Sullivan, why haven’t its journalists grilled their new heartthrob, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, about his newsworthy desire to weaken the journalistic protection it provides?DeSantis wants the courts to revisit Times v Sullivan, but somehow this doesn’t get the attention of Fox News interviewers. His alarming views on that landmark decision, which established a higher bar for defamation lawsuits involving public figures, haven’t provoked a single challenge in his 12 Fox appearances this year, according to a Media Matters for America database.Initially, Fox even forbade its own Howard Kurtz, who hosts a weekly show on the news media, from covering the Dominion case. After Kurtz, to his credit, publicly expressed his disagreement with that prohibition, and after plenty of outside criticism followed, the bosses relented long enough last weekend to let him discuss the case and call it a test of the first amendment.Meanwhile, Fox hosts for years have urged their grievance-hungry audience to despise journalists. (Granted, over the years, Fox has sometimes filed “friend of the court” briefs in support of other media outlets.)Rants against the media are a mainstay for personalities like Laura Ingraham, who drops disparaging phrases like “leftwing media hacks” and “regime media” into her segments.But it took Tucker Carlson – the very face of Fox News – to go further in a 2021 interview, calling mainstream journalists “cringing animals not worthy of respect”.“It just makes me sick. I really hate them,” said Carlson, who more recently has been busy portraying the violent insurrection on 6 January 2021 as a largely peaceful protest or even a friendly tourist visit.Yet somehow, when it comes time to defend the network’s profit-driven willingness to circulate lies, Fox News is eager to claim solidarity with those supposedly despicable cowards. Now, you see, it’s all about journalists standing together, arm-in-arm, on the very underpinnings of American democracy.I’m all for press rights and for applying them broadly. But somehow, I don’t think this was what the founders had in mind.Fox News doesn’t deserve the second word in its name.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More