(Opinion) The question is: what’s the right price to pay to try to sweep infamy under the rug of public opinion and can you ever make it totally disappear?
When you have said something really bad, when you have broadcast lies to sell a faulty and dangerous product or defamed an honest person or company, on what scale can you weigh the hurt, monetary, reputational, and psychic?
These are questions for Lady Justice, the blindfolded iconic woman holding the scales of justice whose roots go all the way back to ancient Greek and Roman mythology and whose sculpted likeness stands guard over almost every courthouse, giving inspiration to the mortals who must answer them in real time.
Ah, to have been a fly on the wall when the Dominion and Fox News mortals marshalled their arguments and put forth their terms for the settlement.
One can only imagine the near-impossible mandate issued by 92-year-old Fox owner and Chief, Rupert Murdoch.
He would have insisted that Fox News would first and foremost pay anything (or almost anything) not to have to ‘apologize on air’.
What would it look like for Fox and its star anchors Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Maria Bartiromo, who had spewed post-election lies to maintain their audience ratings, to have to admit to and apologize for them on air?
Better that the endless text and email messages admitting they knew they were broadcasting lies not be aired in open court.
As the NY Times reported: “Fox News has avoided an excruciating, drawn-out trial in which its founding chief, Rupert Murdoch, its top managers and its biggest stars would have had to face hostile grilling on an embarrassing question.
Why did they allow a virulent and defamatory conspiracy theory about the 2020 election to spread across the network when so many knew it was false?”
Dominion’s lawyers knew that Fox’s ability to pay was nearly limitless. But the trial before the jury, sitting impatiently in the courtroom while awaiting the beginning of proceedings, might fail to bring forth a verdict against Fox.
Dominion wanted more than money. They wanted ‘accountability’. They wanted, as dog trainers know, that to change behavior it’s good to rub their noses in it.
But at what cost?
These questions stymied the negotiators for Dominion and Fox News that they could only settle on the need for an independent referee to be called in to balance the scales.
He had to weigh Dominion’s desire to hold Fox News to public ‘accountability’ and receive generous compensation for the business, reputational and staff damages suffered, and Fox News’ reputational embarrassment for having to admit lying to its audience and how much they should pay to avoid it.
In the end, if Fox didn’t get everything it wanted, it was saved the indignity of having to tell its loyal listeners that what had been fed to them was false.
It ended up putting out the kind of neutered statement hopefully no one would ever read.
“We are pleased to have settled 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.”
That corporate statement, acknowledging “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false” would hardly qualify for banner headline status on one of Murdoch’s famed tabloid papers.
And the self-serving and fig leaf “commitment to the highest journalistic standards” was almost too much for CNN anchor Jake Tapper to read on the air after laughing and saying, “this is going to be difficult to say with a straight face.”
One supposes it must have been an epic battle between money and exposure.
Putting an understandably brave and positive face on the result (and who wouldn’t have been celebrating a historic settlement of more than seven hundred million dollars) Stephen Shackelford, a Dominion lawyer, said outside the courthouse, “The truth matters. Lies have consequences…Today’s settlement of US$787,500,000 represents vindication and accountability,”
It could not have been what he might have liked to have said.
Put simply, is US$787.5 million – ten times the value of Dominion according to CNN – a fair price for Fox News to pay to make the infamy of having knowingly lied about Dominion voting machines flipping votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, go away, or at least be removed from the spotlight?
Said John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO: “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my Company, our employees, and our customers. Nothing can ever make up for that. Money is accountability and we got that today from Fox.”
As he said, Dominion got the money, but did they truly get ‘accountability?’