Fox admits lying and settles for $787 million.

[Say it aint so]

Some are suggesting that instead of taking the settlement, they should've just pressed on and made it go to trial. That way Fox News personalities would've had to publicly testify, under oath, that they were making stuff up about the election.

If Fox is throwing out 750 million dollar settlement offers (which is three times the valuation of the entire Dominion company), that likely means that they thought having this stuff brought up in a public trial would've been more damaging to their "brand" than shelling out a massive sum like this.

Fox's $787.5 million settlement is big win for buyout firm Staple Street

Staple Street Capital Group LLC, the small buyout firm that owns Dominion Voting Systems, has scored a $787.5 million windfall after Fox Corp settled a defamation lawsuit brought by the voting machine operator.

www.reuters.com

Even before Tuesday's settlement, Staple Street's investment in Dominion had been successful. Fox said in a court filing that Dominion was valued at around $226 million in the run-up to the 2020 election, citing exhibits it did not make public. That was up from the $80 million valuation when the acquisition of Dominion was clinched in 2018.

Ended up being a pretty nice investment for Staple Street in a relatively short amount of time...

I guess if you're an investor or looking to buy stock in a company, keep your eyes peeled for mid-sized organizations that Fox News has been badmouthing, because now that this settlement happened, I don't think it'll be the last one we see from Fox News.

While on air apologies would have been fanstastic, the money is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind if they went through an actual trial and FOX lost, there would have been years of appeals and a long time before they seen money if they lost the projected appeals process. Heck, I'm not sure the Sandy Hook parents have seen any money from Alex Jones.

 

[Pommer]

I purposely left that out. I felt nauseous reading it, especially that first sentence. I could feel the bile rising. So no way was I going to cut and paste it.

That statement was the result of many (billable) hours of crafting.

Fox News admits to lies about Dominion, settles case for $1.17 billion

“This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the company, owned by Rupert Murdoch, said at the conclusion of the case.

www.smh.com.au

Dominion’s CEO disclosed the settlement figure and said Fox had admitted to telling lies about his company.

Fox statement: 'We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.'

I betcha that that statement, had it not been included, the settlement would have come in at $850 M.

 

[Pommer]

While on air apologies would have been fanstastic, the money is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind if they went through an actual trial and FOX lost, there would have been years of appeals and a long time before they seen money if they lost the projected appeals process. Heck, I'm not sure the Sandy Hook parents have seen any money from Alex Jones.

Not to mention this case brings their revenue down because cable-companies will balk at the high price for FoxNews, given that they’ve admitted fudging the truth to keep their ratings/price high

 

[Bradskii]

That statement was the result of many (billable) hours of crafting.
I betcha that that statement, had it not been included, the settlement would have come in at $850 M.

I'm surprised there wasn't an obligation for an on air apology. Then again, not having to do one might have been at a considerable cost.

 

[Whyayeman]

instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues

That is disgusting, I agree. And abominably pompous. Fox pulled the trial at the point when the court was assembled. This was no gentlemen's agreement over the port and stilton. Fox was hanging on by its fingertips until the inevitable fall.

 

[pgp_protector]

Apparently Fox was going to use clips of the Simpsons in part of their defense

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News to show clip of Homer Simpson voting in defence of $1.6bn lawsuit

Network faces allegations it knowingly aired false claims about 2020 election

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Larniavc]

Fox statement: 'We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.'

All those conspiracy nut jobs were right! You CAN'T trust the MSM.

 

[Larniavc]

They knew it was false but fed it to you anyway to keep you from drifting.

And it was eaten up with spoons. The Rights capacity to discern grifter's is amazingly lacking.

 

[wing2000]

Details of the last minute mediation:


"...at the close of Friday’s hearing in the blockbuster defamation case against Fox News, Judge Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court asked the lawyers for both companies to try to work out their differences. Trial was set to begin Monday, and he implored them to see if they could find common ground.

The two sides obliged, and their lawyers spent the weekend attempting to hammer out a deal without getting far. Running out of time, they sent an emergency email Sunday morning to longtime mediator Jerry Roscoe, who was floating down the Danube River.

...
After that first call Monday morning, others quickly followed. Over Monday and into Tuesday, Roscoe estimated that he conducted as many as 50 calls with both sides. Some were long, others short, some on Zoom, others traditional phone calls. Lawyers and company executives joined, he said. When asked if Rupert Murdoch had joined the calls, Roscoe said that no potential witnesses had been part of the discussions with him."

Read more here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/19/mediator-fox-news-dominion-settlement/

 

[ThatRobGuy]

While on air apologies would have been fanstastic, the money is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind if they went through an actual trial and FOX lost, there would have been years of appeals and a long time before they seen money if they lost the projected appeals process. Heck, I'm not sure the Sandy Hook parents have seen any money from Alex Jones.

I think one of the major differences between the two is that Fox actually has that kind of money, as to where I was always skeptical if Alex Jones really had the amount of money they were suing him for (or even anything remotely close to it).

Joe Rogan (dubbed king of the podcasts) has a net worth of $120 million.
Ben Shapiro (who owns an alternative outlet that performs much better than info wars) is worth about $50 million

They were originally suing Jones for something like close to a billion if memory serves, he's been doing it longer than those two, but the notion that he exceeds those two financially seemed far fetched and the exorbitantly high amount they were suing for seemed like it was more about "sue him out of existence".

In Fox's case, they definitely had the amount of money Dominion was suing for.

 

[durangodawood]

And it was eaten up with spoons. The Rights capacity to discern grifter's is amazingly lacking.

I think history shows us periods when people are especially anxious and vulnerable to liars and false promises.

Right now this is mainly fear driven and so people seek a "great man" whos backward looking to lead them.
Other times its hope driven and people will rush headlong into an untested "utopia".

In either case truth seems to be an impediment to extremism. In this regard I think cults offer interesting cases which we can apply to the study of nations as a whole.

 

[Whyayeman]

What about costs? There must have been some kind of settlement on costs.

What about the personnel in front of the camera? Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity all vigorously and knowingly repeated the lies. Are they off the hook? Should they be?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

What about costs? There must have been some kind of settlement on costs.

What about the personnel in front of the camera? Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity all vigorously and knowingly repeated the lies. Are they off the hook? Should they be?

The chance of them getting any blowback from it went away with the acceptance of the settlement, barring any sort of civil litigation directly aimed at them in the future.

But I can understand Dominion's stance of just taking the money.

I imagine there was probably some behind-the-scenes pressure from the Staple Steet firm (that bought Dominion for 80 million) to take the deal as well.


I'd like to say if I was a company owner, and some rich mega-corp wronged me in that way, that I would stick to principle and demand that they all get up on the stand to embarrass themselves just to prove a point.

But if I had a company and they were dangling a check in front of me for 3 times what my company was worth, I can't promise that I wouldn't take the money.

A settlement that size for an organization the size of Dominion would mean a nice bump in their cash reserves, and hopefully a nice raise and bonus for every Dominion employee. (provided the higher ups at Dominion and Staple Street don't hoard all the cash to themselves and give their employees a meaningless stipend)

 

[Say it aint so]

I think one of the major differences between the two is that Fox actually has that kind of money, as to where I was always skeptical if Alex Jones really had the amount of money they were suing him for (or even anything remotely close to it).

Joe Rogan (dubbed king of the podcasts) has a net worth of $120 million.
Ben Shapiro (who owns an alternative outlet that performs much better than info wars) is worth about $50 million

They were originally suing Jones for something like close to a billion if memory serves, he's been doing it longer than those two, but the notion that he exceeds those two financially seemed far fetched and the exorbitantly high amount they were suing for seemed like it was more about "sue him out of existence".

In Fox's case, they definitely had the amount of money Dominion was suing for.

I can't speak on that, but i have seen where Jones was making $800k a day through with his show along with selling supplements and merch. Don't know much about Rogan and Shapiro other than what Rogan himself said, "no one should take him serious."

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I can't speak on that, but i have seen where Jones was making $800k a day through with his show along with selling supplements and merch. Don't know much about Rogan and Shapiro other than what Rogan himself said, "no one should take him serious."

Although, company revenue doesn't translate necessarily to how much money they have. (depending on the size, paying your employees and production team and leasing facilities can chew up a pretty hefty sum).

In Murdoch's case, he's a billionaire and the company had a pretty hefty sum in terms of cash reserves.

According to Forbes, Jones has assets the ballpark of $135 million (a large portion of which is in the form of real estate), and they said he has roughly 70 million in debts, so the prospect of suing him for $900 million (and expecting to actually get that money) was always a long shot.

 

[stevil]

I agree that the admission of guilt was the most important part of the settlement--although Fox's agreeing to a settlement of that size would certainly indicate that there was an overwhelming possibility they could lose in court whether there was an "admission" of guilt or not.

As far as I understand it defamation cases are very hard to prove.
The fact that Fox would rather hand over that sum of money shows that they clearly got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

It would have been much better (for USA democracy) if there was a trial so THE PEOPLE could have seen for themselves the evidence, however, with the "Don't look up" mentality it isn't very likely that Fox and Trump fans would have bothered keeping abreast of the trial.

I note that Dominion are a company and their concerns wouldn't have been USA democracy, but would have been regards to loss of profit and potential loss of contract for upcoming elections.

 

[stevil]

A settlement that size for an organization the size of Dominion would mean a nice bump in their cash reserves, and hopefully a nice raise and bonus for every Dominion employee. (provided the higher ups at Dominion and Staple Street don't hoard all the cash to themselves and give their employees a meaningless stipend)

Typically it would be bonuses for the board of directors and some of the Executives. Obviously the janitor didn't really contribute significantly to winning this case.
What I will be keen to see though, is whether this company can continue to provide their voting machines for future US elections. Or will the people on the US right be complaining?

 

[Belk]

The chance of them getting any blowback from it went away with the acceptance of the settlement, barring any sort of civil litigation directly aimed at them in the future.

But I can understand Dominion's stance of just taking the money.

I imagine there was probably some behind-the-scenes pressure from the Staple Steet firm (that bought Dominion for 80 million) to take the deal as well.


I'd like to say if I was a company owner, and some rich mega-corp wronged me in that way, that I would stick to principle and demand that they all get up on the stand to embarrass themselves just to prove a point.

But if I had a company and they were dangling a check in front of me for 3 times what my company was worth, I can't promise that I wouldn't take the money.

A settlement that size for an organization the size of Dominion would mean a nice bump in their cash reserves, and hopefully a nice raise and bonus for every Dominion employee. (provided the higher ups at Dominion and Staple Street don't hoard all the cash to themselves and give their employees a meaningless stipend)

 

[trunks2k]

As far as I understand it defamation cases are very hard to prove.
The fact that Fox would rather hand over that sum of money shows that they clearly got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

In this particular case it wasn't that hard to prove. The trial was, by that time, over whether or not there was actual malice. From what I've seen from lawyers, Dominion was almost certainly going to win that. So that leaves damages, which is where Dominion has a problem. They almost certainly were not going to get anything close to what they were asking for. It was certainly a reach. What Fox settled for was on the (very) high end of what Dominion could have reasonably expected to be awarded. So dominion gets a very large amount of money, probably more than they would have gotten at trial, and didn't have to worry about appeals, etc.

It would have been much better (for USA democracy) if there was a trial so THE PEOPLE could have seen for themselves the evidence, however, with the "Don't look up" mentality it isn't very likely that Fox and Trump fans would have bothered keeping abreast of the trial.

I note that Dominion are a company and their concerns wouldn't have been USA democracy, but would have been regards to loss of profit and potential loss of contract for upcoming elections.

There wouldn't have been much of anything in a trial that hadn't already come out. That's the point of trying to get summary judgements - present your best evidence now so you don't need to go to trial. Nothing much would come out that we didn't already know about.

 

[DaisyDay]

I agree that the admission of guilt was the most important part of the settlement--although Fox's agreeing to a settlement of that size would certainly indicate that there was an overwhelming possibility they could lose in court whether there was an "admission" of guilt or not.

They already lost the factual aspect of the case - the only thing left was damages.