Fox News Dominion case: Rupert Murdoch son drops lawsuit against news site as Smartmatic eyes trial

CNN has a new behind-the-scenes account of how the historic $787.5m settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems came about.

Litigator Jerry Roscoe told the network he took an urgent call while on a European river cruise celebrating his 70th birthday on Sunday asking if he would mediate a deal between the two parties.

The lead attorneys had been “really far apart” on a settlement figure, Mr Roscoe said.

But after an intensive 24-hour period of “shuttle diplomacy” involving phone calls and Zoom meetings, Mr Roscoe had negotiated the largest known defamation payout against a media organisation in US history.

According to a business profile, Mr Roscoe has over 30 years experience resolving complex commercial, healthcare, employment, and environmental disputes.

The Independent’s Sean O’Grady writes:

“The truth matters. Lies have consequences”. The lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems put it better than any of Rupert Murdoch’s mercenary army of journalists ever would; or, indeed ever be permitted attempt to do so (the sensational story doesn’t figure much on his channels or in his titles). And it is about time that someone, somewhere, decided “enough already with the fake news”.

Without wishing to come over as sanctimonious – we journalists are all of us flawed – the humiliation of Fox News at the hands of Dominion, a hitherto obscure election machinery company, is a victory for truth.

It’s not as simple as that – because no defamation case of this magnitude can be – but the world is now just a little better off, a little safer, a little more protected from the abuse of media power than it was before Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News decided to cave in to Dominion.

The $787.5m defamation payout by Fox News was above the fold on the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Mountains of evidence boxes were wheeled into a seventh-floor courtroom on Tuesday morning, moments before lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems planned to eviscerate Fox News and its Fox Corporation leadership for the volley of false claims about the company in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Later that morning, jurors were sworn in. They ordered lunch. Hours later, it was over. And Fox News admitted that statements on its airwaves about Dominion were false, agreeing to pay the voting machine company more than $787m in a settlement that averted one of the biggest-ever defamation trials in American history.

Alex Woodward on the made-for-TV courtroom drama that would never be televised.

Dominion Voting Systems agreed to settle its defamation lawsuit with Fox News for $787.5m on Tuesday — but its legal battles are far from over.

While the Fox News case attracted most of the headlines, Dominion filed a swathe of defamation suits against right-wing networks, lawyers and media personalities in the months after the 2020 election.

Here’s everyone who is being sued by Dominion.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson cracked a smile as he listened to Elon Musk describe slashing 80 per cent of Twitter’s employees after taking over.

“Turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter,” Mr Musk said. “If you’re not trying to run some kind of glorified activist organisation, and you’re not caring that much about censorship, you can really let go of a lot of people it turns out.”

Josh Marcus has the full story.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper couldn’t help but chuckle on Tuesday as he announced the news that Fox News averted a bruising defamation trial over false election claims by paying a $787.5m (£633m) settlement to voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems.

The host hesitated multiple times as he read a statement from Fox News, which framed the settlement as a sign of “Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards” and a move which “allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

Tapper, for his part, told viewers the settlement “can only be interpreted as one of the ugliest and most embarrassing moments in the history of journalism”.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, Fox Corporation has acknowledged for the first time the massive $787.5m settlement payout to Dominion Voting Systems.

The filing included a statement issued by Fox after the last-minute deal was reached on Tuesday, and was signed by the public company’s chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh.

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, noted on Twitter that Fox Corporation had previously said in an SEC quarterly filing in February that it did not anticipate that the Dominion defamation lawsuit “will have a material adverse effect on its business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.”

Fox News declared it was “pleased” to have paid out $787.5m to Dominion Voting Systems and avoided a grueling six-week courtroom examination of its shoddy journalistic practices.

Yet the measured celebration in Fox’s statement after paying out the second largest defamation award in US history may be short-lived.

The thousands of emails, texts and private documents unearthed during Dominion’s discovery process have pried open Fox’s internal decision-making process, and the willingness of its anchors and executives to lie for the sake of ratings, like never before.

Stephen Colbert could barely contain his laughter as he discussed the news that Fox News has settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion for $787.5m.

“Damnit! I want my trial! I want it!” he shouted. “I wanted to see Rupert Murdoch put his hand on the Bible and burst into flames.

“I guess it’s satisfying for Dominion that Rup-y had to fork over a pile of cash, but that does nothing for our democracy.”

Isobel Lewis has the full story.