Truth v. Playtime

Many of you care more about Fox apologizing or changing its practices than Dominion does, which is understandable.

Dominion has investors who expect a return on their investment. They filed a lawsuit to be made whole and are getting a big payout. That’s what they sued Fox for.

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) April 18, 2023

Or:

I completely get why Dominion made this settlement and if I were their lawyer I probably would have told them to take the money.

But I'm NOT their lawyer and so I can also recognize that this is a cop out and why once again we should NEVER expect corporations to save us.

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 18, 2023

I think the reason this is disappointing is that Dominion gets $787.5 million dollars. But we, the people who supported them over the lies and misinformation spread by Fox... get nothing.

I'd feel better if I got a cut. Instead. I just get more of Tucker Carlson's smirking face.

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) April 18, 2023

What, you wanted Fox burned to the ground and the ground sown with salt? You wanted a magic time machine to reset history and make it that FoxNews never was? Would that have made you feel better?

Save us ̷D̷o̷m̷i̷n̷i̷o̷n̷ Smartmatic, you're our only hope. pic.twitter.com/C4nIf4nuGW

— Schooley (@Rschooley) April 18, 2023

 I sympathize with Elie most of the time, but this is schoolyard bullshit.  This isn't a movie where the good guys win and the bad guys are vanquished/dead or smashed up so badly we take over and rewrite their entire system of government.  The point of a civil suit is compensation.  The court is not authorized to "save democracy."  Dominion didn't go to court for "all of us." They went to court for their shareholders.  This was a civil suit.  The end result was always going to be a judgment for money.  It was never going to end with Rupert Murdoch in chains and FoxNews burned to the ground and people pissing on the ashes.

You expect corporations ever save us?  You really want to parade that naivete in public?  And as for Tucker's smirking face, you were expecting him to get the death penalty? Cut your cable and starve the beast, and ignore people who re-tweet his nonsense. It'll actually do you some good. I don't even click the videos on Twitter.  Life's too short to spend anytime on that smirking idiot.

Any 1A lawyers know if it would be standard for such a settlement to include requiring Fox to retract its defamatory statements on air? If the damage was to the company’s reputation, I can’t see how they would settle without demanding that in some fashion

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) April 18, 2023

That was never going to happen. The court wouldn't order it in a final judgment. The jury wouldn't have the power to demand it (it is itself a First Amendment issue). Dominion was not going to stand on it and get in the way of this settlement. Libel suits are all about and always about damages paid for the injury, just like any torts case. The plaintiff is made whole by cash, not by a court ordered public shaming complete with acts of contrition. The settlement itself is an admission of libel, even if Fox tries to say it isn't. If they thought they could win at any level (up to the Supremes), they'd have pocketed the coin and welcomed the battle, and declared in the end they still disagreed with the jury and the courts. They didn't. This is as much an admission of responsibility as you're going to get; especially from a corporation, which really only understands costs and benefits. And here the costs far outweighed the benefits.

(Sorry.  The whinging on Twitter just makes me nuts sometimes.)

Besides, we do get this:

gotta burn getting lectured by Oreilly on journalistic ethics.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 18, 2023

Granted, it's a bit like Trump gloating over DeSantis' self-inflicted wounds, but it's still enjoyable. Like this:

Fox News statement pic.twitter.com/BuNpg714JL

— Schooley (@Rschooley) April 18, 2023