Fox Shows Dominion the Money, Tucker Carlson Out - Rob Horowitz

Fox Shows Dominion the Money, Tucker Carlson Out - Rob Horowitz

For all those bemoaning that the settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems did not require an on-air apology, there are 787 million reasons to get over it. Recall Cuba Gooding Jr’s demand of his agent, played by Tom Cruise in the 1996 film, Jerry Maguire: “Show Me the Money.” And this Fox was forced to do in a breathtakingly large amount.  The more than ¾ of a billion dollars Fox is paying to Dominion sends a message in the language that Americans understand best that there was great validity to and strong evidence behind the charge that Fox defamed Dominion, amplifying Donald Trump’s false claims of vote rigging by the company in the 2020 election, even though it knew them to be untrue.

 

The same point was made more pungently by former Philadelphia Congressman Ozzie Myers, my congressman back in the day: “Yeah. It's an old story. Money talks and bullshit walks,” Myers told FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik, “Ya know, that's how the game's played.”  People do intuitively know that is how the game is played, grasping that if the nation’s top-rated cable network had even a sliver of truth on their side or any other plausible defense, it would not have agreed to one of the largest monetary settlements ever in a defamation case against a media entity.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

Additionally, this settlement was not made in a public information vacuum.  The discovery process in the suit surfaced juicy texts and emails from Fox Hosts and executives making it clear that they privately realized that the specific allegations made against Dominion by Trump and his legal team were patent nonsense and that the former president had failed to produce any broader credible evidence of the level of voter fraud that would have been required to overturn the results of the election. Still, because they were concerned about losing audience share to Newsmax and other conservative cable outlets that were fully embracing the “Big Lie,” the primetime hosts, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, along with others at the network, still gave these falsehoods credence and strongly objected when correspondents on the news side did the occasional fact check, pointing out Mr. Trump’s falsehoods. 

 

Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News in a text to Lachlan Murdoch, expressed the dominant sentiment within the company, arguing that it needed to bend over backward to soothe the anger of some in its audience to Fox’s early and as it turned out correct call of Arizona for Joe Biden or risked a permanent decline in the ratings: “It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging, but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them,” Ms. Scott texted.  As I wrote at the time these texts first surfaced, the Fox version of respect for its audience is confirming their biases and telling them what they want to hear even if there is no reality to it. 

 

These widely publicized revelations had moved public opinion against Fox even before the historically large settlement amount was announced.  Sixty-five percent of Americans believed Fox News should be held accountable for its spreading of falsehoods about the 2020 election, while only 26% thought it shouldn’t be held accountable, according to a March Quinnipiac Poll. More to the point, more than 1-in-5 Fox News viewers indicated they were “less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed test messages and emails from Fox executives and on-air personalities,” according to a poll conducted by the data firm Maru/Blue for Variety.

 

I freely concede that it would have been delicious to watch the equivalent of hostage videos, where Fox hosts, such as Sean Hannity and Marie Bartiromo, were forced to apologize on air for spreading falsehoods about Dominion.  This would be satisfying to the overwhelming majority of the nation that already rejects the “Big Lie” but unlikely to persuade the holdouts. If one is such a fierce believer in Donald Trump’s continued insistence that he won the 2020 election that they remain unpersuaded by the revelations that Rupert Murdoch and the Fox hosts did not believe him or by the $787.5 million Fox paid out, one-off apologies--even on-air--are unlikely to do the trick.

 

It was expecting too much of any lawsuit that by itself it would create a sea change at highly rated Fox News or a broader return to journalistic standards that value “truth.”   But it is having an impact.  The abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson, the network's top-rated host, in the settlement's wake speaks volumes. At the margins, the outcome of the Dominion suit will make a difference.  Those at Fox News and in the rest of the media will be more cautious about amplifying and spreading falsehoods generally and the “Big Lie,” which we must continue to debunk, given that Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, refuses to let it go, will lose more altitude.