Rupert Murdoch
A judge ruling in favor of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit moving forward signals the possibility of looming financial woes for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. According to The Guardian, Delaware Supreme Court Judge Eric David in June ruled that Dominion Voting Systems could proceed with its defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation.
The lawsuit is a legal pushback against Fox News' reporting and perpetuation of voter fraud and election misinformation following the 2020 presidential election.
Per The Guardian, David determined "that it was a reasonable inference that Murdoch and son Lachlan either knew outright that Dominion had not manipulated the election or 'recklessly disregarded the truth' when Fox disseminated lies initially launched by Donald Trump."
Speaking to The Guardian, a number of legal experts have offered their perspective on the case and why it suggests trouble ahead of Fox News. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Stetson University constitutional law professor and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, weighed in on Dominion's case as she noted that the voting technology company appears to have a substantial argument.
“Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News,” Torres-Spelliscy said to the news outlet, adding that "all of the 'conspiracy theories about Dominion’s machines were just pure bunk,'" She also noted that "Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of [Trump’s] ‘big lie’ a megaphone.”
“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” said Media Matters for America chief executive, Angelo Carusone.
However, Fox News is confident that it will survive this legal battle.
A Fox spokesman told also released a brief statement to the news outlet on behalf of the network. “We are confident we will prevail in this case, as the First Amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected,” the spokesman said.
In addition to the lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion also has a $1.6 billion lawsuit against conservative news networks One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
