On Tuesday begins one of the most closely watched trials about press freedom in decades. Dominion, maker of voting machines, is suing Fox News for defaming the company during its coverage of the 2020 election. Fox hosts and plenty of more or less deranged guests had suggested that the election was stolen, spreading increasingly absurd theories about how the machines could flip votes from Trump to Biden.
Quite a few observers, including liberals, are anxious that a victory for Dominion could backfire: if the case reaches the US supreme court, the latter’s radical right-wing majority, evidently willing to overturn precedents like Roe v Wade, could use the occasion to hollow out protections for news organizations (a category to which Fox evidently does not belong). Ron DeSantis is already busy tightening libel laws, explicitly targeting “legacy media.”. So, while Fox having to pay $1.6bn dollars to Dominion might be deeply satisfying for critics of a Republican party propaganda channel, democracy as a whole could turn out to be the loser. Yet this handwringing is misplaced.
