Crazy Like A FOX

The lies piled up and finally cost the faux news outlet a lot of money, and the collateral damage included the network's biggest star

It was the biggest story of the week, but if you viewed Fox News exclusively, you would never know they agreed to pay $787.5M to make Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit for defamation go away. The network avoided what surely would have become a very damning trial, and with $4B cash on hand (plus insurance, which Stephen Colbert joked is “liability insurance…so they can lie”), they could afford the financial hit more easily than the reputational one.

Then it was eclipsed on Monday by news that Fox had forced Tucker Carlson out. More on that next time.

It’s one thing for study after study to show that those who view Fox News exclusively are less well informed than those who consume no news at all, but it is another thing entirely to let that cat out of the bag. The powers that be at Fox/NewsCorp simply could not have Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, or especially the boss, Rupert Murdoch, take the stand. Under oath, they would have had to acknowledge the truth of their texts and emails damning the Former Guy, in Tucker’s own words, as “pure evil,” or expressing that, “I hate him passionately.” And especially not this gem where a news producer who deigned to tell the truth was the subject of this Carlson text to Sean Hannity, “please get her fired.” He was desperate for something to be done because the “stock price [was] falling.” But my favorite is from Rupert Murdoch himself on the subject of election denialism: he deemed it “Crazy stuff.”

If you’re a TV network, losing money is one thing, but losing viewers is death, because advertisers always come and go, but once the audience goes, they rarely return, and advertisers don’t spend money on content, they spend it on ratings. Thus, bad ratings equals bad revenue.

For a few hours, Fox, obviously not knowing how to spin the settlement, sat on its hands. This while their sister media platform, The Wall Street Journal, placed the gory details on their page 1A, above the fold. They may be stablemates, but the Journal is a well-respected news organ. It, like all good papers, separates opinion from news reporting, and there is no love lost between Fox and the news side of The Wall Street Journal. The Murdochs can’t say anything to the WSJ editors because they know that to keep its credibility, it has to report accurately, a burden that Fox News does not share.

Fox News finally posted a very short, very positive summary in which it positioned itself as having simply settled a lawsuit, and in which it failed to name the huge number they’d agreed to pay Dominion. They made their media reporter, Howie Kurtz, say he could not “independently confirm” the number. This lie came moments after both the WSJ and my dog independently confirmed the $787.5M number.

About twenty years ago, SNL alum-cum-US Senator, Al Franken, released a very funny book called “Lies: And The Lying Liars That Tell Them: a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” The cover featured the then-cast of Fox News opinion hosts, and Fox News sued for defamation. The case was dead on arrival, and the judge, in dismissing it on day one said something like this to the Fox lawyers, you may not see the humor, and you may not like the depiction, but satire is protected speech, and since we gauge this book to be truthful, this case is dismissed. She literally laughed Fox out of the courtroom.

The point being, defamation is a really high bar, and these suits almost never get decided in the plaintiff’s favor.

The Fox News silo remains intact. Its dedicated viewers will likely never know their heroes settled for three quarters of a billion dollars rather than risk exposing their demeaning lies under oath in a court of law. Better to lose short term money than long term viability.

A Letter writer in the local paper last week vowed lasting fealty to the network, and lauded Tucker Carlson as his source for news. (Note: opinion hosts don’t do news, they do opinion.) Honestly, I thought I was reading well-crafted parody, because I couldn’t believe there’d still be such devotion to Fox hosts, what with all the publicity surrounding the texts and emails they sent to each other directly contradicting their on-air stances, and noting how they needed to continue the lies or risk sending their audience to other sources.

It surely makes the point about news silos. Even in the face of the settlement making front page headlines, and leading the news on every platform from OAN and Newsmax to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the $787.5M settlement that Fox paid to keep itself from having to admit its lies under oath, remained unknown to the faithful.

©2023 Jon Sinton