Gag me with a MAGA hat
Here’s the news my conservative friends probably will never get — FOX News settles the Dominion defamation suit for a whopping $787.5 million. But to me a more important question lingers beyond all this — will FOX News have the integrity to the repair the damage it’s done to our nation? Not a chance.
After coughing up more than three-quarters of a billion dollars yesterday to resolve a libel lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, FOX News simply absolved itself with this brief statement.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of 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. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
After all these years of false reporting, that’s all FOX News had to say? This settlement would be a sweet, delicious irony if the damage FOX News and the conservative media echo chamber has done to our nation weren’t so serious and so enormously consequential. Consider this — the self-proclaimed fair and balanced news outlet paid this exorbitant and unprecedented amount to settle a defamation lawsuit rather than having to suffer the public embarrassment of having its owners, officers and talking head personalities testify under oath that they knew the stolen election excrement offered by the former president and his allies after the last presidential election was as false as false can be, and despite that knowledge, FOX News endorsed those lies over and over and over again anyway.
Worst of all, those who only get their news from the conservative echo chamber will never discover FOX News and its personalities offered these falsities simply because it feared other upcoming conservative media outlets might steal some its profits because FOX News and most of the conservative media echo chamber will never report a word of this lawsuit or its settlement to their audiences.
While this settlement may be good news for Dominion, it’s terrible news for our county. The lies and the divisions will continue unabated and unresolved and all our family members and friends lost to this fraud will never return because the liars will never have to fess up. That public admission, my conservative friends, is the only thing that “allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
As a journalist, I am a frequent watcher of FOX News (an many other outlets as well), and because those talking heads will never acknowledge or even mention any of this, the sores that arose as a result of these falsehoods will continue to grow and fester in our body politic.
As an American, I say it’s a sad and foreboding day for my country because something like half of my fellow citizens will continue to believe in these lies despite the largest defamation lawsuit settlement in history.
Ah, yes, “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.” Are you kidding me?