Fox News has avoided going to trial by reaching a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s smearing of the company following the 2020 election.
Some have cautioned against celebrating the settlement, along one of two tracks. The first group warns of precedent and the supposed watering down of reporters’ First Amendment rights that the lawsuit represents, an argument that, as writers on an editorial page that frequently criticizes the politically powerful, we would presumably be sympathetic to.
Yet while it would be a disaster for democracy for the press to suddenly be liable for criticism, denunciations and damaging revelations, or for reporters to have to bear the brunt of mistakes of the sort that are inevitable in daily coverage, Fox’s actions were neither legitimate criticism nor simple error.
