No Regrets

Would Fox News do anything differently?

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People walk by the News Corporation headquarters in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Join me on an emotional journey.

The journey we’re about to take is brief, having played out on Tuesday afternoon in little more than an hour. But the emotional ground it covers is vast.

Shortly before 4 p.m. ET: A Delaware judge stuns reporters packed into his courtroom by announcing that the defamation trial of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News has been canceled. After two years of legal jousting, with opening arguments at last set to begin, “the parties have resolved their case,” he declares.

Despair.

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Comments (163)
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  1. Grafakos

    Words are cheap and hollow. Money talks. As long as you pay me $787 million, hell, I'll apologize to *you*!

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  2. Marla Hughes

    Its really interesting to see the number of conservatives who have forgotten the revolving doors between Democrats and 'journalists', CEOs of networks and so on.
    I don't care about FoxNews lying to it's viewers because _THEY ALL DO IT_.
    I stopped watching FoxNews when it went full Trump.

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    Olympus Mons

    Cripes Nick, how depressing.

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  4. Samuel Mpona

    This will not go on forever.
    At one point Fox News will have to reform or die. Being a safe space of delusion is lucrative, but it has a cost, which will one day be too much.
    Already, COVID claimed a disproportionate share of conservative lives. You can prop fossil fuel only so far, when renewable alternative are getting cheap and cheaper. All the propaganda in the world can’t convince every women that a 6 weeks embryo is a baby. Something will have to give.
    Propaganda may delay political reckoning but it can’t forestall it for ever. Fox News and the GOP will either reform or they will die.

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  5. Linilulu

    With the strong MAGA supporters the STEAL is an article of faith. There is no convincing them through facts.

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  6. Twvacek

    I personally have some doubts about the settlement amount. From a betting perspective, Fox just needed a couple holdout jurors, and even of those who hate Trump and Fox, I think a few would have recognized how laws, news, and sausages are made. And they probably would have been able to get a judgment reduced on appeal. My guess is the settlement amount was a lot less. Or maybe the top line amount only kicks in depending on certain conditions. Or maybe Fox will be using a large part of that on an initiative that it will own, like a counterpoint channel.

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      PaulH

      I was surprised by the amount because I don't think Dominion could have possible suffered that much damage -- its revenue is less than $100 million per year and it is not clear that it has lost much revenue because of the slander Sure they might also have gotten some punitive damages, but even those need to proportionate. My guess is that Fox was afraid that having their host revealed as such obvious weasels at trial would have had a huge negative impact on the networks business (though I am not convinced the true believers that watch Fox would have cared).

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        LBernard

        If I had to guess, I would say that Fox agreed to pay extra in exchange for Dominion dropping their apology demand.

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    Theirnscott

    “What good would it have done?” If forcing an apology from Fox would destroy their viewership, good. That’s another and even more damaging form of punishment. Maybe that would force a change in culture.

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  8. Kittcomm

    Seems like modern technological advances have made lying, cheating, and stealing more prevalent and more dangerous than ever. I can’t even begin to imagine what can be done about it.

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    1. ULTRA M.A.G.A.

      Lying, cheating and stealing got a megalomaniac conman, crony capitalist pig and GOP crasher elected POTUS. And no one in my formerly beloved party is doing a damn thing about The Art of the Steal author and wicked fabulist now residing in the Obersalzberg, I mean a third world dictator/drug lords ocean side villa. Like with Germany and Italy, things will get a lot worse before the United States recovers from cancer of Donald Trump. Thanks for taking my rant. ✌️

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    Gnp

    "The intractable problem with conservative media is that you’re forever one litmus test away from losing your audience, however much credibility with the American right you think you might have built over the years."

    This quote really applies to most people, not just conservative media, and is an awful indictment of civilized humanity. A small subset of people (though admittedly a large subset of The Dispatch readers) actually want access to straight news. Most people, given the choice between news and propaganda, want propaganda. They may not think about it that way or be willing to admit it, but behavior across the ideological spectrum bears that out pretty clearly.

    This is also not new (look at competing "news"papers during the American Revolution, the Adams/Jefferson beefs, the abolition period, the Hurst papers, etc.). What has fluctuated over the centuries is the degree to which average Americans have had access to high quality, widely distributed, and generally relevant propaganda versus news. In eras where straight news ticked those three boxes better than propaganda, people gravitated to news. But in eras where propaganda even approaches straight news in those boxes, it's propaganda all the way.

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  10. Colby

    John Prine’s song Grandpa was a Carpenter has a lyric “…voted for Eisenhower cause Lincoln won the war.”

    What might this line of thinking portend for future GOP electability (especially for the under 40 crowd) given how Trump has so defined Republicans?

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