{"id":26042,"date":"2023-04-20T12:01:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26042"},"modified":"2023-04-20T12:01:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:01:59","slug":"why-the-dominion-fox-news-settlement-is-rubbish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/20\/why-the-dominion-fox-news-settlement-is-rubbish\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Dominion-Fox News Settlement Is Rubbish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Why<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A billboard truck seen outside Fox News HQ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Erik McGregor\/LightRocket via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn\u2019t protected American democracy.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apr 19, 2023 Robertreich.Substack.Com<\/a> (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have agreed to settle Dominion\u2019s defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million. (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion over allegations that Fox defamed the voting company by knowingly or recklessly airing false claims tying voting machines to a conspiracy to undermine the 2020 presidential election.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lawyer for Dominion celebrated the agreement, saying, \u201cMoney is accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rubbish. The Fox Corporation has an estimated value around $17 billion<\/a>. The settlement amounts to a cost of doing business for Fox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The settlement also means that Fox\u2019s major figures \u2014 including Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, and Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo \u2014 won\u2019t have to testify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump\u2019s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which in turn means they won\u2019t have to explain all the pretrial evidence (emails, depositions, and so on) showing that they knew<\/em> Trump lied about the 2020 election being \u201cstolen\u201d but they went ahead and joined Trump\u2019s lie nonetheless \u2014 in order not to lose viewers to Newsmax, One America News, or any other group to their right with even fewer scruples \u2014 so they\u2019d preserve their revenue stream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fox said in a statement that \u201cwe acknowledge the court\u2019s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.\u201d It added: \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move forward?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump\u2019s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn\u2019t protected American democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing about the lawsuit or its settlement has been aired on Fox News. Fox viewers continue to be in the dark about all of it \u2014 Trump\u2019s big lie, Fox\u2019s amplification of the big lie, the lawsuit, and the emails and pretrial testimony showing that Fox News and its hosts knew it was all a big lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Trump continues to push his big lie. Presumably, Fox News will continue to push it as well because, hey, it sells<\/em> to the Trump base that Fox News helped create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s really what this is all about: Money. Money to Trump.<\/em> Money to Dominion. <\/em>Money to Murdoch. <\/em>Money to people such as Carlson and Hannity and Ingraham and Bartiromo \u2014<\/em> all of whom long ago cashed in their integrity for big bucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though their traitorous behavior has brought America to the cusp of civil war \u2014 including an attack on the U.S. Capitol \u2014 they\u2019ll continue to do whatever is necessary (short of defaming a deep-pocketed voting machine company) to keep the money flowing in their direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, the Grifter-in-Chief announced the release of a second round of superhero-style digital trading cards with cartoonish images of him at $99 apiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fox\u2019s and Trump\u2019s grift goes on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 2021 robertreich.substack.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Reich, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A billboard truck seen outside Fox News HQ. \u00a0(Photo by Erik McGregor\/LightRocket via Getty Images) Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn\u2019t protected American democracy. ROBERT REICH Apr 19, 2023 Robertreich.Substack.Com (CommonDreams.org) Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have agreed to settle Dominion\u2019s defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million…. Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[444],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26043,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26042\/revisions\/26043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}