Fox News agreed on Tuesday to pay a $787.5M settlement to resolve a $1.6B defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
The
settlement averts a potentially embarrassing six-week trial that may
have seen leading Fox News executives and presenters called to testify.
- The last-minute agreement between Fox and Dominion was announced by Judge Eric Davis only hours after the trial's jury was sworn in on Tuesday.
- The witness list included 92-year-old Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lacklan, who serves as Fox Corp.'s CEO.
- Other witnesses may have included Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and leading Fox presenters Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
- The lawsuit alleged that Fox News defamed Dominion by broadcasting misinformation suggesting that Dominion participated in voter fraud in the 2020 election.
- Fox claimed that its actions were protected
by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment due to the newsworthiness of
former president Donald Trump's election fraud allegations.
- The news outlet agreed to the settlement after evidence came to light that top Fox presenters and executives did not believe the fraud claims were true.
- The settlement comes as a financial blow to Fox Corporation, which said that it held about $4.1B in cash and "cash equivalents" at the end of 2022.
- Fox News still faces another $2.7B lawsuit related to its 2020 election coverage.
