I suppose I ought to comment on the news of the day, Fox’s settling with Dominion for more than three-quarters of a billion (that’s billion with a “b”) dollars for its lies about voting machines manufactured by Dominion falsifying the 2020 election. Some are relieved; some are outraged.
Fox has saved itself several hundred million dollars, possibly more, and ongoing bad publicity which is probably even more damaging; Dominion has received vindication and will get its damages sooner.
IMO most of the media reports lamenting that Fox didn’t have to pay even more are misguided—they’ve dodged a bullet. If Dominion’s suit had gone to its conclusion and been upheld, there is a possibility that the very high standard for libel in American law would have been relaxed which would have made every major news organization vulnerable to suit. It would have been a mess.
I agree, based upon Justice Kagan’s writing before she joined the Court, she’s probably a vote to overrule NY Times v. Sullivan if the opportunity arose. And a number of issues with the NY Times standard are present here, it’s expensive to litigate, resulting in strong incentives to settle though not necessarily with any sense of expediency that would serve the public interest.
I’ve seen no reporting on insurance coverage. Standard CGL policy covers these types of lawsuits, and insurance usually drives a lot of the litigation events.
As someone who doesn’t watch cable news except on very rare occasions, my reaction is a shrug.
Cable news generally has low viewership, and its viewers are generally old. It’s a dying industry. All the gnashing of teeth about cable news, especially Fox, seems mostly irrelevant except to a very small cohort of political hobbyists who just end up signal-boosting it with the vitriol.
As far as the bigger picture goes, the idea of changing the standard for libel is growing on me, despite my principled free-speech bonafides. Hopefully, the scale of this reward will be a deterrent to others to engage in the kind of stupid chicanery that Fox did.
I dont think you would have needed to change the standard for libel to find Fox guilty as what they did was especially egregious. Still, it was the right decision for Dominion since you can never be sure. For Fox it was necessary to keep their people off the stand.
Steve