I’m not surprised that Fox News settled the Dominion defamation lawsuit, though like everyone else I’m taken aback by the amount. My suspicion is that the decision to drop the defense stemmed less from a fear of the jury verdict — which might have been much lower — than from the reputational toll a trial would have caused. And if there’s a lesson here, it’s not so much about Fox News as such but about the growing costs of pandering to your audience.
If you’re reading this column, you know the background. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s defeat in his 2020 re-election bid, many of his supporters insisted that there’d been fraud at the polls. No big deal. Allegations of fraud are as old as America, and had the matter been left in the realm of vague conspiracy charges, there would have been no litigation.
Instead, a number of those in Trump’s inner circle decided that the voting machines had somehow been tampered with, and announced that Dominion was the villain. Various Fox News programs repeatedly aired the claims. Since the allegations were utterly baseless, and the network refused to stop stoking them, Dominion sued.
