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

Ex-Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson blasted her former employer for placing profits and ratings over truth and media integrity.

Speaking to CNN on Wednesday night, Ms Carlson said the Donald Trump-hating messaging revealed by Dominion in the lawsuit represents the “travesty” of the network.

“Because I think it’s actually a threat to American democracy to promote that kind of misinformation,” she said.

“Let me be clear. There is a huge difference between espousing conservative viewpoints and having an intellectual conversation between conservatives and liberals, which I think is very important — there’s a huge difference between that and telling lies to the American public, and that’s where we have now become in the evolution of Fox News, at least with regard to the 2020 election and January 6th.”

Fox News has had very little to say about Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation lawsuit for nearly the entirety of its existence, but finally deemed the story worth covering on Tuesday when it announced the parties had settled.

In Fox News’ story — which comes in at 256 words, approximately 70 of which are a block quote from a Fox spokesman— we do not learn why the company was sued, just that it was broadly sued for defamation. We also do not learn how much it cost the network to make the trial go away.

(It was $787.5m, in case you missed it.)

Graig Graziosi has the story.

Fox News has other legal troubles brewing with Smartmatic revealing what it will take for it to also settle its case against the network.

The voting technology company’s lawyer said on Thursday it won’t accept any settlement smaller than the same $787m payout and will demand a “full retraction” and “apology” from the network.

“They need to get an apology. They need to get a full retraction,” Smartmatic lawyer Erik Connolly told Jake Tapper.

Rupert Murdoch‘s son has suddenly dropped his lawsuit against Australian news site Crikey days after Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems a landmark settlement.

Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch filed the Crikey suit last August a day after executives at Crikey’s publisher put their names to an ad in The New York Times inviting Lachlan Murdoch to sue to test the press freedom issue in court.

Murdoch’s lawsuit targeted the publisher, Private Media, its then-managing editor Peter Fray, who was also the website’s editor-in-chief, and Crikey’s political editor, Bernard Keane.

Murdoch claimed he was defamed by Keane’s column about the US congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol building which Crikey published in June last year under the headlines: “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator.”

Murdoch’s lawyer John Churchill said in a statement he had filed a notice of discontinuance in Federal Court on Friday.

“Crikey has tried to introduce thousands of pages of documents from a defamation case in another jurisdiction, which has now settled,” the statement said, referring to the Fox News settlement with Dominion Voting Systems that was announced Tuesday.

“Mr Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favor, however he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits,” Churchill said.