Jason Koerner, MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images
- Fox News settled with Dominion on Tuesday, agreeing to pay $787.5 million.
- The network avoids a potentially embarrassing trial, while Dominion rakes in far more than its worth.
- The public misses out on watching Fox News hosts explain themselves from the stand.
Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday over its major defamation lawsuit against the network, just as the trial was set to begin.
Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million, the largest public sum in a defamation case. The network acknowledged "the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false," but will not have to apologize or issue retractions on air for the false statements that were broadcasted, a source aware of the settlement terms told Insider.
The settlement avoids what was sure to be a closely watched trial featuring some of cable TV's biggest stars and executives. Here's a breakdown of all the winners and losers.
The winners
Dominion Voting Systems: Fox News is paying Dominion $787.5 million — which amounts to nearly 10 times what the company is worth, according to an evaluation from 2018. The elections technology firm also gets to avoid a weekslong trial that, even if it prevailed, could have led to years of appeals.
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News hosts: Court documents from the case revealed texts Fox News hosts had sent each other criticizing former President Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, but the settlement means they now get to avoid answering questions under oath about those texts on the stand.
Smartmatic: Smartmatic, the only other election technology company caught up in conspiracy theories suing Fox News, said Tuesday it is still committed to its case against the network. The large payment Dominion received could signal good news for Smartmatic, which was initially seeking $2.7 billion in damages.
Fox News: Fox News gets to avoid a potentially embarrassing trial and the possibility of being found to have acted with actual malice, which would mean the company knowingly and intentionally ignored the truth when it broadcasted the false statements. Fox was also not required in the settlement to issue any apologies or retractions on air, even though the judge ruled and the company acknowledged they had broadcast false statements about Dominion.
The losers
Fox News: Fox News had to pay the largest public settlements ever in a defamation case to avoid the prospect of a potentially embarrassing trial. The company also acknowledged that its shows had broadcast false information.
Democracy: Some observers of the case thought a public trial was necessary in order to have Fox News sufficiently answer for platforming fake news about the 2020 election. Others saw it as a way to make the "big lie" — the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen — finally go away. Now there's no chance of that happening, at least not as a result of this trial.
Us: The public misses out on the chance to see some of the most-watched cable news hosts get grilled on the stand over their coverage of the 2020 election.
Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell: The former Trump lawyers who made the false statements that were broadcast on Fox News were in no way vindicated by the settlement. The judge in the trial had already ruled Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell had made false statements, and each is still facing lawsuits of their own.