No matter how many times Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell proclaimed they had overwhelming evidence, the failure to produce it made flagrant from the outset that they were full of shit. They raised, at best, questions. Any fool can raise questions, possibilities of what could have been, or could not have been. The distinction was evidence of what was, and the louder they cried they had it but failed to produce it, the more full of shit they came off. At least to some of us. Yet to others, the belief was unshakable because they didn’t want to shake it.
Fox News abruptly agreed on Tuesday to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election, averting a lengthy and embarrassing trial just as a packed courtroom was seated in anticipation of hearing opening statements.
That’s hardly nuisance value. The only issue remaining for trial was whether the “actual malice” standard of New York Times v. Sullivan was met. That it was false was CRYSTAL clear. As Dominion’s lawyer said, money talks.
“Money is accountability,” Stephen Shackelford, a Dominion lawyer, said outside the courthouse, “and we got that today from Fox.”
For its part, Fox made a curious statement.
We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.
Squaring this concession that what Fox broadcast was clearly false reflects its “continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards” speaks volumes about Fox’s standards. It was selling what its customers wanted to buy, even if its own performers admitted in writing to each other that it was batshit crazy nonsense.
Some have blamed Dominion for settling “for money” rather than following through with trial in order to reveal to the world what Fox News did to the psyche of its willing audience, creating credence to the lie that twisted them into believing that they were on the side of truth, justice and democracy when they were merely useful pawns in Trump’s narcissistic butthurt caused by his rejection as president.
The nature of civil litigation for defamation is to obtain monetary damages for harm, not to serve “justice.” Even so, this is merely the first step on a journey that will involve Smartmatic’s suit against Fox, et al., as well.
At least, the public will be deprived for now. Smartmatic is still suing Fox for $2.7 billion, though no trial date has been announced yet. “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly said in a statement on Tuesday. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”
And then there are the claims against the individual players, Rudy and Sidney, which could provide hours and hours of fun fodder for cross-examination CLEs.
Is this sufficient to change minds? Do those believers finally accept that the big lie, that the election was stolen, was a lie, was always a lie, and they were willfully deceived? Do they now realize that their “hero” lied to them for his own benefit at their expense to assuage his humiliation of being a pathetic loser?
And do they now appreciate that their trusted sources at Fox, “we report, you decide,” knew they were spewing lies on air and did so anyway? Can they ever be trusted not to lie? Will they still lie, as the cost of settling is relative to the cost of fooling their happily fooled audience to watch them night after night?
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All one need do to determine if this changed the minds of FOX viewers is go to their website and read the comments. Most continue to support the Big Lie with a variety of excuses as to why FOX agreed to the settlement. I suppose the difficulty of admitting you were hoodwinked is simply too much for their audience.
I know several who believe the election lie so am not surprised they refuse to see the truth. After all, many of these gimps are the same ones who believe the world is controlled by a cabal of child-eating cannibals, so their minds are probably not receptive to logic and reason.
I’m guessing it matters to Dominion Voting Systems. As for the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers in the Fox News comments section, sure, that’s still a problem, though I doubt it is a problem Dominion v. Fox News intended to solve. It’s certainly not one I expected it to solve.
I’d say it matters to the smiling gaggle of lawyers seen leaving the courthouse yesterday who just got a huge payday, but beyond that, not really. A quick search of the FoxNews homepage yields no mention of the settlement. Formal apologies or retractions aren’t being issued on their programming. The settlement should have required that.
As it stands, it’s probably a win for Fox. They retained some of their viewers by spewing lies the viewers wanted to hear, and they won’t have to tell those viewers that they lied. I’m sure 800m is an acceptable loss to them. Their viewers don’t care, and they clearly don’t care about being lied to. Hell, the whole reason FoxNews embarked on this travesty was because their viewers didn’t like being told the truth that Trump had likely lost. They are a lost cause.
My father, a loyal viewer, has no clue about what’s been uncovered so far. He continues to believe their news segments are of the highest standards, despite the fact that their top two news anchors (Wallace and Shepard Smith) left because of the opposite. He doesn’t know that Baier was prevented from fact checking or debunking the outrageous claims made by the opinion show hosts. And he doesn’t care. But he’s really concerned about how CNN and other outlets “interfered in the election” by not devoting 24/7 coverage to Hunter Biden’s laptop when that originally quite questionable material surfaced on the eve of the election. And he parrots the FoxNews folks commentary that that shows the 2020 election *was* rigged.
That massive moving of the goalposts about sums it up at this point. FoxNews viewers literally don’t want to be told the truth. So why would the network even care to start now?
Well, it matters to the plaintiff, which has probably come out well ahead of any actual damages suffered. Perhaps it will also matter to Fox News, or even other “journalists” who may find themselves tempted on future occasions to spin some flagrantly false tales for political purposes. That’s probably about as much as we can expect. At this point, we have to assume people who still follow the “stolen election” theory are simply impervious to reality.
As Carl Sagan observed, “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
No, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another media distraction.
This story is a great excuse to crack jokes about the mouth-breathers who believe Fox news, but those people are not so different from you. I spent many years living in California and New York, and the people I met there were mostly decent, hard-working people who just wanted to make a good life for themselves and their children. I live in North Carolina now, and the people here are mostly the same. They may believe a different brand of nonsense, and trust a different set of greedy lying politicians, but the differences are only cosmetic.
When I lived in California, my friends loved Hillary and Rachel, and they believed that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election. That didn’t stop me from enjoying their company. People here in NC love Trump and Tucker, and think that Biden stole the election. I tell them the same thing that I used to tell my friends in California and New York. Turn off the TV, go outside and enjoy nature. The real world is much nicer than the one you see on TV, and real people are much nicer than the caricatures that the media wants you to hate.
Spot on.
Exactly the same, except we landed in rural Maryland instead of NC (had to compromise with the wife)