Dominion Settled and We All Lost
FOX will never admit their lies, and now their viewers will never know the truth
The lawyer for Dominion keeps saying how proud he is of Dominion’s employees and continues to cite the evidence presented during the pretrial depositions as proof of FOX’s lies. There is just one problem: no one who watches FOX will ever know this.
Yes, Dominion got money and quite a lot of it. But FOX viewers won’t know that either because they don’t tend to get news from any source except FOX.
The lawyer said he’d “like to think” that FOX would tell the truth about it, but how naïve can this man be? FOX hosts told blatant lies, knowing they were lies, and now he thinks they will put on their big boy pants and be honest out of the goodness of their hearts?
The judge already made rulings confirming that FOX consistently made defamatory falsehoods. Again, FOX viewers don’t know this. But given how little was left to prove in a trial and with all the discovery complete, the trial itself could have been concluded in relatively short order.
Had Dominion refused to fold and forced FOX to go to trial, they could have petitioned the judge to require, as part of the damages claim, that FOX announce their complicity in broadcasting those lies, and perhaps could even have required that they announce it on every FOX show involved in pushing those lies in the first place. But now that they’ve settled, that will never happen.
Instead, the company decided to take the money and run. And again, it’s a ton of money, but contrary to Dominion’s lawyer’s claims, money is not accountability. Money is just money. If Dominion employees urged this settlement to put to rest a case that has caused them so much personal damage due to accusations against them made by FOX viewers, they are delusional to think that the weak announcement made by FOX would put an end to that.
The announcement they allowed FOX to air as an explanation of this settlement agreement allowed FOX to continue to pretend only “certain” claims about Dominion were false (and they didn’t say which ones) and ended their short announcement with the claim that they are “continuing their commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
What FOX said on air after the settlement was pure spin, which completely misrepresented what happened in this settlement. But we knew they’d do that if Dominion didn’t force them to do otherwise.
And now, whatever harassment Dominion employees have been subjected to will likely continue because, as far as FOX viewers are concerned, FOX didn’t lose this suit. Instead, the network claimed to have settled “amicably,” conceding only partial fibbing on “certain” claims and never even mentioning the $787.5 million they have to pay Dominion.
So much for accountability.