18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY APRIL 27-MAY 3, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Price of Lies In the media trial of the century, both Dominion and Fox News were driven by the same motivator: money. By Chris Lehmann FORUM The case concerning the torrent of lies that Fox News unleashed in the wake of the 2020 presidential balloting was resolved April 18 in an 11th-hour settlement of $787.5 million. The cash accord was a reminder of the real stakes of this high-profile battle over the meaning of defamation in a post-truth era. Money was the driving force behind Fox’s desperate embrace of the narrative of an election rigged and stolen—and money is what Fox has expended on a lavish scale in the hope that the whole sordid episode will quietly retreat to the forgotten reaches of news cycles past. Money also was front and center for the plaintiffs in the case, Dominion Voting Systems, which alleged that Fox’s misrepresentations of how the company’s voting machines worked and where they came from produced $1.6 billion worth of adverse publicity. Dominion, as Fox press releases tirelessly observed, is owned by a hedge fund, and the question of how for-profit administrators of our elections serve the commonweal was crowded out by the many sensational revelations of the inner workings of the Fox empire. Given that the vast majority of libel and defamation cases are settled before trial, the negotiated settlement isn’t out of the ordinary—nor was it necessarily a disappointment to the plaintiffs. “Dominion is concerned about Dominion and making money, and they got what they wanted,” says Robert McChesney, emeritus communications professor at University of Illinois and author of Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. The agreement doesn’t oblige the network to admit on-air that it broadcast false claims or apologize. Documents produced a steady torrent of damning evidence showing Fox executives and on-air personalities knowingly broadcast claims that weren’t remotely factual. The raft of pretrial revelations also included prime-time Fox personalities venting against Trump as—in Tucker Carlson’s words—a raging “demonic force” principally known for “destroying things.” “I hate him with a passion,” Carlson announced. (Carlson was dismissed from Fox on April 24.) CEO Rupert Murdoch wasn’t much more restrained; he directed Fox to try to “make Trump a nonperson” during the run-up to the January 6 insurrection, and made the case to call the 2020 election early and accurately for Biden. What kept Fox acting in defiance of these baseline acknowledgments of reality was the specter of losing market share to upstart right-wing news outlets like Newsmax. This was when the mood in the network’s C-suites turned to sober talk of salvaging the sacrosanct company “brand” and “respecting” the preferences of the audience—corporate doublespeak that roughly translates as “pandering harder for the sake of maintaining profitability.” Fox’s phony call for company-wide “respect” for the audience was a de facto marketing plan to infantilize the Fox viewership. Chris Lehmann is the D.C. Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. OPINION “Dominion is concerned about making money.” y y y
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