The truth matters. Lies have tangible consequences.
For Fox News, this consequence took the form of a $787.5 million dollars. Fox paid the settlement to Dominion for spreading baseless lies and conspiracy theories about Dominion’s voting machines after the outcome of the 2020 election. In the settlement, Fox explicitly acknowledged that false claims were made about the 2020 election.
What you need to know: The impact of the settlement
If Fox had not settled, there were concerns that if the case made it up to the Supreme Court it would weaken the protections given to the media in a 1964 Supreme Court ruling which set a very high bar for defamation cases against media outlets and news organizations to succeed.
The judge handling the settlement said that it’s not sufficient to claim that a news organization just neutrally reported what other individuals and groups stated if what the individuals and groups claimed turned out to be baseless, untrue, and defamatory.
Election disinformation continues to be a problem. The impact of the settlement warns other news organization to tread carefully when spreading election disinformation but does not provide a legal precedent for other cases to follow.
For more information, check out this podcast from NPR.