WILMINGTON, Delaware: Fox News has reached a last-minute settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit and agreed to pay $787.5 in damages over its blatant lies and misreporting the 2020 presidential election.
The right-wing media network had claimed that vote had been rigged against former US president Donald Trump.
Fox News agreed to pay the colossal amount to end a protracted two-year legal battle that widely shredded its credibility.
According to CNN, Fox News’ damages settlement with the voting machine company was the largest defamation settlement concerning a media company in US history.
The settlement was announced hours after the jury sat for trial at the Delaware Superior Court. Rumours of the settlement swirled in the courtroom when the proceedings were halted during a lunch break for nearly three hours with no explanation while the parties hammered out an accord.
After three hours of wait, Judge Eric Davis heading the 12-member jury announced that the parties have agreed to resolve their case, vociferously praising the counsels from both sides and gaveling out the media “trial of the century” before it could even begin.
Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said that the pioneering settlement represented vindication and accountability for country’s democracy to endure for another 250 years, and hopefully, much longer and everyone must share a commitment to facts… Today represented a ringing endorsement for truth and democracy.”
In a statement, Fox News said it “acknowledged the court’s rulings that specific claims about Dominion were false — referring to Fox News broadcasts of 2020 that falsely asserted that Dominion rigged the presidential election. But Fox News won’t admit on-air that it spread lies about Dominion voting machine, a Dominion representative told CNN.
The $787.5 million settlement is roughly half of the $1.6 billion that Dominion initially had sought. However, according to court filings, it was nearly ten times the company’s valuation from 2018, and roughly eight times its annual revenue in 2021.
