The FOX News Channel is facing real legal peril in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over lies surrounding the 2020 presidential election -- the outcome of which legal experts say could effect all media.
Dominion Voting Systems claims it was the target of misleading, false and bizarre claims spread by former president Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of his election loss to Joe Biden. The company filed the defamation lawsuit against Fox in March 2021, arguing the cable news giant falsely claimed -- in an effort to boost faltering ratings -- that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election.
The network's hosts and executives have given statements under oath as part of the lawsuit, but none were perhaps as damaging as CEO Rupert Murdoch. Documents released by Dominion show the network's controlling owner was aware that some commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — endorsed the false election claims, and that he didn't step in to stop them, the Associated Press reported.
"How often do you get 'smoking gun' emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?" Rutgers University law professor Ronald Chen told NPR.
The massive lawsuit alleges that Fox News amplified inaccurate assertions that Dominion altered votes and "sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process." In the two-week period after Fox News declared President Biden the president-elect, the network questioned results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories at least 774 times, according to the lawsuit.
"The truth matters. Lies have consequences," the lawsuit says. "If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does."
Dominion said it attempted to factually address Fox's election fraud allegations, but Fox continued to connect the company to the claims. Fox has claimed it did nothing wrong and was just reporting allegations by then-President Trump. The network requested the lawsuit be dismissed due to First Amendment protections, but a judge ruled it could proceed and a jury trial is set to start in April.
University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told NPR she's worried about the long-term ramifications of the case, and the potential for encouraging similar lawsuits against news networks in the future.
"To simply say Fox is a bunch of liars — that they shouldn't be allowed to get away with this and their wild speculations should not be reported and should not be protected — I just think that that is a slippery slope," Kirtley said.
If Fox loses the case, Kirtley thinks other news organizations would scramble "to distance themselves from Fox's techniques and Fox's editorial decisions."
"The problem is that by lifting the veil on the editorial decision-making process, we are now going to see all news organizations called into question going forward," she told NPR.
While media outlets rarely lose defamation cases in court, the evidence could show that Fox was motivated by profit instead of the newsworthiness of the claims, putting the network's defense of journalistic duty to report the allegations in real jeopardy.
"The fact that there was arguably a motive by Fox to publish these accusations against Dominion based on its own economic interests in retaining Trump viewers would, if believed by the jury, probably destroy that argument," Chen told NPR.
At the same time, a Fox attorney said a loss for the network would make it harder for all journalists to serve the public.
"We err on the side of speech because the more and more speech you have, the better chance of having people actually getting the opportunity to point out what's right and what's wrong," attorney Erin Murphy told NPR. "And that's why we don't suppress the speech that we don't think is right."
"At the end of the day, it's going to hinder the ultimate objective of the First Amendment, of getting to the truth," Murphy added.
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