All things Fox News

[Cmaier]

And counting. Putting aside smartmatic, Dominion still has suits against Newsmax, Giuliani and the rogues gallery, etc.

 

[Eric]

LMAO

 

[GermanSuplex]

Well, Fox hinges on everything Trump says, and Trump himself said only guilty people settle lawsuits.

Unfortunately, much like January 6 was not a wake-up call for the modern republican party, I don't think this will do much to change coverage on Fox. They may think twice before naming names, but they'll just mask their lies in ambiguous "questions". "Things seem fishy, it demands we take a look at how elections are run" is how they spin it.

In other words, its viewers will be no more informed than they are now.

 

[dada_dave]

“and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”

Yeah neither of those defenses worked so well the last time. I guess they hope to get an incompetent judge this time around?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

And counting. Putting aside smartmatic, Dominion still has suits against Newsmax, Giuliani and the rogues gallery, etc.

And I think Dominion will have no problem paying for top lawyers now.

 

[Cmaier]

And I think Dominion will have no problem paying for top lawyers now.

I wonder if this was a contingency case.

 

[Cmaier]

Hey, all. Keeping in mind that we’re all friends here, let’s everyone just be extra careful to avoid redirecting our political disagreements into personal attacks.

Thanks!

 

[Citysnaps]

It’s far easier to con someone than it is to convince someone that they’ve been conned.

 

[Yoused]

If you are OK with that, then let's just completely do away with gendered bathrooms & locker rooms.

It will happen. Bathroom privacy will gradually go away, because, why do we need it? Once young people become comfortable with the idea that everyone does it anyway, no one will be particularly embarrassed to be seen (maybe not in full exposure mode, but with minimal privacy) relieving themselves. It will solve a lot of problems.

 

[mac_in_tosh]

To get back to the Fox/Dominion law suit, it's most disappointing that the settlement doesn't include requiring Fox to admit their wrongdoing on air to their audience. Those are the people that need to be told about this but they will never hear it by continuing to watch Fox. So Fox will just continue to lie but do so in a more legally discrete manner. Dominion got a lot of money but could have done more for the country.

 

[Cmaier]

To get back to the Fox/Dominion law suit, it's most disappointing that the settlement doesn't include requiring Fox to admit their wrongdoing on air to their audience. Those are the people that need to be told about this but they will never hear it by continuing to watch Fox. So Fox will just continue to lie but do so in a more legally discrete manner. Dominion got a lot of money but could have done more for the country.

If they had a trial, fox wouldn’t have been forced to make such an admission either. There was nothing dominion could do to force that to happen, and a court couldn’t have forced it to happen.

 

[Roller]

If they had a trial, fox wouldn’t have been forced to make such an admission either. There was nothing dominion could do to force that to happen, and a court couldn’t have forced it to happen.

A trial would have kept attention on Fox for its duration, though I don't think it would have done much, if anything, to convince Fox News' viewers that they're being lied to. I also doubt that Dominion would have settled had they been convinced they would get much more than the settlement provided. I've read that some internal emails at Dominion cast doubt on their system's reliability, which could have worked against them.

 

[Cmaier]

A trial would have kept attention on Fox for its duration, though I don't think it would have done much, if anything, to convince Fox News' viewers that they're being lied to. I also doubt that Dominion would have settled had they been convinced they would get much more than the settlement provided. I've read that some internal emails at Dominion cast doubt on their system's reliability, which could have worked against them.

Any such internal emails could not have been presented at trial, because at summary judgment the judge ruled that Fox’s statements were false; the emails therefore would not be probative of any fact in dispute, and the judge already ruled that such evidence would not be relevant.

Dominion likely thought it would get more $$ at trial, but they needed to take into account risk and delay. If they won, say, $1 billion, they wouldn’t have it in hand for a long time, because Fox would undoubtedly appeal. $780M now vs $1B in 3 years is a fairly easy calculation to make. It could even be 5 years, because it would likely get a second appeal to the Supreme Court. It’s actually more complicated due to risk, of course. They may have figured they had a 25% chance of winning $250M, 50% chance of winning $1B and a 25% chance of winning $1.5B. Then they figure on the chance of winning at appeal, having their award reduced at appeal, or having the award sent back to the lower court for retrial after appeal. You weigh every possible occurrence by the likelihood it happens, and calculate the average damages recovery, with error bars, and taking into account time value of money. Taking all that into account, Dominion apparently came up with a figure in the high $700M range.

They also know that they have more money coming, from Newsmax, Mike Lindell, etc.

 

[Herdfan]

I've read that some internal emails at Dominion cast doubt on their system's reliability, which could have worked against them.

Any such internal emails could not have been presented at trial, because at summary judgment the judge ruled that Fox’s statements were false; the emails therefore would not be probative of any fact in dispute, and the judge already ruled that such evidence would not be relevant.

Could you expand on this a bit more?

So a judge decided that Fox's statements were false, but if these emails would provide evidence that Fox's statement's weren't false, how does that work?

 

[Roller]

Could you expand on this a bit more?

So a judge decided that Fox's statements were false, but if these emails would provide evidence that Fox's statement's weren't false, how does that work?

I can't remember where I read about the emails — I'll try to find the source again when I get a chance.

I'm not an expert, but I suspect that if the emails were about glitches that were different than the statements about Dominion being made on Fox News, they wouldn't have been considered relevant. Saying that software or hardware has bugs (which is always the case) isn't the same as claiming conspiracy to achieve a particular result. But @Cmaier can authoritatively say if my analysis is incorrect.

 

[AG_PhamD]

I think the settlement was probably the best situation possible. There are a number of lawyers I think are pretty objective who believe had Fox gone to trail, probably would have been able to have won on appeal, however at the expense of probably having a lot more negative internal information exposed. It’s in their best interest not to have this go to trial. Had Fox lost it could be a slippery slope of first amendment speech issues for the media.

But even if Fox did not break the law as written, ethically speaking they certainly did. That much is absolutely true.

I will say the settlement amount seems extreme in my opinion. 3/4 of a billion dollars to a company that likely lost nowhere near that amount of money seems extreme. In my opinion the real victim here are the public who were mislead by this misinformation.

And while Dominion received a massive windfall, I wonder how their future contracts with Republican states will look. This possibly may have damaged some of their sales potential out of mere spite by red states. Thats possibly the true extent of the damages.

I wonder too how Fox shareholders will feel about 3/4 of a billion dollars getting shelled out in a single lawsuit. I would think there are some very unhappy shareholders who will be looking to sue Fox.

 

[Yoused]

I will say the settlement amount seems extreme in my opinion. 3/4 of a billion dollars to a company that likely lost nowhere near that amount of money seems extreme.

Surely some of it was meant to be punitive.

 

[Cmaier]

Could you expand on this a bit more?

So a judge decided that Fox's statements were false, but if these emails would provide evidence that Fox's statement's weren't false, how does that work?

Fox had its chance to argue that the statements were false. It never really directly argued they were true - instead it argued that they were taken out of context, were fair reporting, etc.

Dominion had the burden to show that the statements were false, and the judge said it overwhelmingly did so, even taking into account every argument that Fox made to the contrary.

In other words, the court found that nothing Fox presented as evidence presented an actual question of fact as to the veracity of the statements; there was nothing for a jury to consider on that point, because there was no actual dispute. These emails either don’t say what people want them to have said, or they aren’t relevant to the false statements that were made by fox, repeatedly.

 

[Cmaier]

Surely some of it was meant to be punitive.

If someone spread a rumor that you murdered babies, and you started getting death threats and were shunned by the community, and you lost your minimum wage job, is the proper measure of damages merely the income you lost?

Thank goodness the legal system doesn’t work like that.

Dominion was worth over $200M in 2020. Who is going to buy their machines now? The company could have been successful for a 100 years - how much will they have lost in that time due to people now being afraid of buying their machines lest there be riots?

 

[Eric]

Moved all of the trans in sports talk to it's own thread to keep this on topic, I think I got all of it but message me if I missed anything.

Carry on.