The editors of the Wall Street Journal echo my reaction to the settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems:
The media cheering for Fox to lose were in effect cheering for a verdict that could have meant more lawsuits, many of them meritless, against journalists. Their hatred of Fox and conservatives is so strong that they ignored their self-interest.
One journalistic lesson of the Dominion case is not to indulge crank claims because your audience wants to hear them. That includes claims about Russian collusion or stolen elections. Mr. Trump could never admit he defeated himself in 2020, so he claimed the election was stolen. He tweeted a false “report†about Dominion, and the grifters who attend him, then and now, spread it.
Journalism is an imperfect craft, and mistakes are inevitable. That’s why the bar for proving libel should be high. But the obligation of a journalist is to discern the truth, or at least as close as one can get to knowing it, and tell it to your audience straight.
The philosopher George Santayana once wrote that fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. Media outlets are businesses so one of their objectives is to stay in business. As journalists they have another, higher objective is to tell the truth. When you abandon both of those objectives in trying to promote an ideology or a personality, what does that leave you with? Not much.
The same is true of the hatred of Fox News and of Trump. When pursuit of those objectives becomes your highest goal, above the truth or staying in business, you don’t have a lot left.
Wow! Mistakes? Its clear from the internal documents released that they knew Dominion was not guilty of the accusations, yet they persisted. It was clearly a business decision, not a mistake, and in all fairness it was probably a pretty good one. Murdoch publications have had many major suits, but they keep making a lot of money.
I doubt they really learn a lesson. Maybe they learn to be less specific? They went after specific voting machine companies, with no evidence, that could easily show real damages. Maybe next time they just refer to generic voting machine companies and not mention any by name.
Could this have generated more lawsuits? I actually doubt it. There is already plenty of incentive to file those lawsuits and the political right has filed plenty against the NYT and other favorites. However, there is a high standard so they dont win many. There arent many with such obvious issues as this one, especially where the defendant helpfully put so much in writing.
Steve