It came as a surprise. Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion asked for damages of $1.6 billion because Fox aired false stories claiming that Dominion’s voting machines were susceptible to hacking and had flipped votes from President Donald Trump to Joseph Biden. it is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.
The settlement, one of the largest ever in a defamation case, was the latest extraordinary twist in a case full of remarkable disclosures that exposed the inner workings of the most powerful voice in conservative news. In addition to the huge payment, Fox News acknowledged in a statement that “certain claims” it made about Dominion were false.
Dominion divulged extraordinary details about Fox employees’ doubts privately expressed about voter fraud claims, even as they struck a different tone on the air.
According to court filings, the $787.5 million payout is nearly 10 times the company’s valuation from 2018 and roughly eight times its annual revenue in 2021. Dominion still has outstanding cases against Fox‘s smaller rivals, Newsmax and OAN, plus several former President Donald Trump associates.
