Rupert Murdoch’s push to try to bury a landmark defamation case against Fox News aims to avoid further damage to his media empire’s reputation – and protect the 92-year-old from a gruelling court appearance as he formulates succession plans.
Judge Eric M Davis moved on Sunday to delay the start of the $1.6bn (£1.3bn) defamation trial between Fox Corporation and Dominion, which has alleged Fox News repeatedly broadcast false claims that its voting machines were rigged, amid reports of a settlement.
However, the following day Davis confirmed the six-week trial would begin a day later than planned, with jury selection starting on Tuesday, after talks between the parties failed – for now at least.
Nevertheless, a settlement deal could yet be brokered at any time, with a possible price tag mooted at about $500m less of a thorny issue than Dominion’s demand for a public apology from Fox.
“Any settlement will be very generous but the [Murdoch] empire can take and absorb such a shock; it has paid out more than $1bn over the last decade relating to phone hacking,” says Claire Enders, a co-founder of Enders Analysis and a longtime Murdoch watcher.
“Murdoch is someone who settles, quickly, efficiently and is extremely pragmatic in his settlements. Shareholders would find it a relief [but] it also spares a desire to put Mr Murdoch and others on the stand, de-risking any potential embarrassment from a public grilling.”
Murdoch is chairman of Fox Corporation, the parent of the rightwing Fox News network, while his eldest son Lachlan holds the role of executive chairman and chief executive. Other high-profile Fox presenters who had been expected to testify in person included its star host, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, a close non-official adviser to Trump.
Davis has previously warned the network’s attorneys not to make him “look like an idiot” in their efforts to keep the nonagenarian off the stand.
The judge, who said he had previously received a letter stating that Murdoch could not travel to the trial in Delaware because of Covid, said the mogul’s announcement that he was engaged to be married for a fifth time (since called off) with plans to travel between his homes in Los Angeles, Montana, New York and London show that “he’s hardly infirm”.
The case, along with another less well-publicised $2.7bn defamation suit by the voting machine company Smartmatic, stands in the way of a long-held ambition to reunite his TV and newspaper empires.
In January, Murdoch abandoned plans to reunite Fox with News Corp – the newspaper group home to the Times, Sun, Wall Street Journal and the Australian – a little over a decade after splitting his media empire in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.
Shareholders on both sides had balked at the plan, with issues including the outstanding court cases facing Fox as well as ongoing exposure to phone-hacking legal action at News Corp.
“It certainly would be devastating if Fox lost in court, as accusations of electoral rigging are obviously incredibly serious,” says Chris Hutchings, a partner at the law firm Hamlins. “A settlement would avoid further evidence being aired in court which could seriously damage the reputation not only of Fox but of the whole Murdoch empire.”
The case has been positioned as the most important test of US defamation law in a generation, which could curb the freewheeling and controversial style of broadcasting that has made Fox the most-popular news network and a $3bn-plus profit engine for Murdoch.
Davis has already concluded that Fox News and Fox Business did broadcast false claimed about election-rigging, but American media organisations are highly protected under the US constitution’s first amendment, which requires Dominion to prove Fox employees acted with “malice” in airing the unsubstantiated claims.
However, some analysts believe that the pre-trial stage of the case has already set a fresh precedent for US news coverage, even before the scheduled six-week court battle in front of a 12-person jury.
“What applies to Fox applies to other media organisations,” says Alice Enders, another co-founder of Enders Analysis. “The pre-trial determination has been seismic. The judge has been clear already saying that Fox knowingly broadcast falsehoods. What we have seen serves as a real warning to other outlets looking to pursue a hard line. It sets a new bar for talk TV in the US in terms of what can or can’t be said by presenters.”
