Is Fox News's Goose Cooked?

Fox News was terrified of its ratings falling and so, even though they all knew that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, they went ahead with airing the nutbag claims about Dominion Voting Systems.

Caveat: Although I'm a retired lawyer, First Amendment and defamation law wasn't my field. But here are some semi-educated thoughts.

First off, there is a basic principle in defamation law and that is that truth is an absolute defense. If I were to say that a certain person was a kiddie fucker and he had been, in fact, convicted of child moelstation, he couldn't prevail in a lawsuit against me. Oh, he could try, but I'd move to sanction his lawyers and file ethics beefs against them so fast that their heads would spin.

Second, there is a case called New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). In that case, the Supremes held, by an unanimous vote, that a public figure cannot prevail in a defamation/libel case absent proof of actual malice. That standard requires a showing that the party accused of defamation knew that what they were saying was false, or had reckless disregard for the truth. It is a very difficult thing to prove, which is why the chances of public figures successfully suing the press is vanishingly small. Most cases are probably dismissed fairly early in the process.

But here, it's going to be rather easy for Dominion to show that their case against Fox News meets that standard. The various players at Fox News knew that the claims that they were airing were lies and that they chose to lie to the American people because the truth was anathema to their core viewers. Their viewers wanted to believe a lie and Fox indulged them.

And now, it's probably going to cost them. For as Alex Jones has found out, juries are not at all sympathetic to media blowhards who lie for fun and profit.

Right now, the issue before the trial court are motions for summary judgment. I doubt if Fox will prevail. There is no First Amendment right to knowingly lie about someone (and let's not forget that, as a matter of law, corporations are people). For Dominion to prevail, they much convince the judge that there is no dispute of material fact (Fox aired lies about Dominion and knew that they were lies) and so, as a matter of law, Fox is liable.

I tend to doubt that the judge will so rule in Dominion's favor. Judges don't like to rule for plaintiffs on summary judgment, preferring to let the case be tried to a jury.

So that's what I think will happen. Dominion will prove that Fox News hosts lied, that Fox's management knew they were lying. And then they will ask for dmages. Which I expect will reach well into the ten-figure range.

Rupert Murdoch: Warm up your checkbook.