$787M Judgement is FNC’s Price of Doing Business
Record libel award won’t stop right-wing network from polluting the airwaves
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The much-anticipated FOX “News” Channel (FNC)-Dominion Voting Systems libel trial ended with a dull thud on Tuesday when the network settled for the grand total of $787 million. Although the public was denied seeing the dirty inner workings of FNC, the conservative so-called news network still walks away with a damaged reputation. The settlement was the largest media libel judgment in American history, which is quite appropriate for one of the worst networks in history.
Revelations from the lawsuit left FNC bloodied. The lawsuit showed FNC cared more about ratings than the truth and lied to its audience to stay on top. The Dominion revelations should have destroyed what little legitimacy FNC has. It’s a network that mocks and despises its own viewers, regularly features hosts who say the complete opposite of what they believe and backed a president they despised and knew was unqualified and out of control. Of course, to regular media watchers, none of this was surprising. The revelations from the Dominion lawsuit only confirmed what we had long suspected about FNC.
However, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a frequent FNC critic, expects nothing to change at the network.
“They’ll take this license to lie they just purchased and pivot to rebuilding audience bond,” he added. “Fox will feed viewers [the] rarest of meat, work audience into frenzy and leverage that for political power and for cable carriage increases.”
Media Matters also stated last year FNC made about $2 billion from cable fees, including consumers who didn’t even watch the network!
