The Fox News/Dominion Voting Systems Defamation Trial begins at the Grand Unified House of Representatives on Elections Day 2020

Tuesday is when the defamation trial between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems will start, shining a spotlight on Fox propaganda on American politics and election denialism.

The trial was on the verge of opening statements and the settlement was brokered as a result. After swearing in the jury earlier Tuesday, an unexplained hours-long delay paused proceedings in court, which yet again triggered rampant speculation that a deal was quietly in the works.

Private text messages and emails released as part of the case revealed that top executives simply didn’t believe the debunked conspiracy theories they were peddling on-air.

The communications also provided a window into Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, when throngs of its viewers rebelled against it for accurately calling the election for then-candidate Joe Biden. The messages show network personnel trying to appease the angry viewers but also admitting it was what viewers wanted.

Dominion can also prevail by proving that these figures inside Fox may not have intentionally promoted lies, but that they acted with a reckless disregard for the truth.

The outcome of the trial, however, is not likely to dramatically change the dishonest way in which Fox News operates. The channel is the profit engine in Murdoch’s media empire and its business model is dependent on feeding its viewership a steady stream of right-wing infotainment.

The case was suppressed by Fox. And, in a remarkable move, lawyers for the network sent an apology to the judge Friday, showing contrition and taking responsibility for the “misunderstanding” that led to the special master’s inquiry.

A last-second settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems’ historic defamation lawsuit against Fox News, the parties announced Tuesday in court.

Dominion and Fox News are facing lawsuits over allegations of ballot rigdling in Georgia and a lawsuit by a Venezuelan businessman

It was crucial for you to be here. The judge told the jurors that the parties would not have been able to resolve the situation without them.

The terms of the settlement don’t require Fox News to tell election lies on air according to a representative for the company.

What is Dominion asking for? Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages. They say Fox’s on-air lies destroyed its reputation and is causing election officials to cancel their Dominion contracts. CNN recently reported on the growing distrust in voting machines in heavily Republican counties.

What are the trial logistics? The trial is expected to last five to six weeks and will be overseen by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, who was appointed to the state bench in 2012 by a Democratic governor. A panel of 12 jurors and 12 alternates are being seated.

There won’t be a video of the proceedings in the courtroom. There will be no photography inside the courtroom.

Who is supposed to testify? Expected witness include Fox Corporation executives Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch; Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace; prominent TV hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Bret Baier, among others.

Both sides are also hoping to put on testimony from their handpicked experts who specialize in election statistics, the security of voting machines, journalism ethics, the impact of disinformation in public discourse, and more.

The postmaster in Erie, Pennsylvania was chased from his home after a conservative media outlet aired a story suggesting that he had altered mail-in ballots to vote for Joe Biden. In Georgia, a voter faced violent threats after the filmmakers behind the debunked 2000 Mules documentary falsely claimed he had illegally deposited multiple ballots into a drop box. Two election workers in Georgia were accused of ballot fraud by Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, and two right-wing media outlets.

There are other cases that have been settled. Newsmax reached a settlement with Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion voting systems, over false claims that he rigged voting machines. Fox News settled a lawsuit brought by a Venezuela businessman who was wrongly tied by Lou Dobbs to voter fraud conspiracy theories.

Legal experts say the very steep challenge of proving someone lied about things they knew or should have known were false has made defamation cases quite rare. A wave of credible cases have come to the court’s attention because of the surge in false narratives about the election.

RonNell Anderson Jones, a media law professor and former journalist at the University of Utah, said that by building a body of case law, they could have a lasting impact.

“What we might see is that the collective whole makes a difference in a way that individual suits cannot,” Andersen Jones says. “In this new era of deliberate creation of known lies for politics or profit, we get a few cases that put us in a place where the evidence body is broad enough and deep enough to get a conviction,” the author said.

Traditionally, it has also been difficult for ordinary individuals to afford the high cost of legal battles against media organizations and high-profile figures.

The people who take advantage of this dynamic are flooding the news and the world with deceptions. Attorney Sara Chimene-Weiss of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit legal group, stepped in to represent some private individuals who were targeted by election-lie narratives because they were exaggerating lies for personal and political gain.

“I think we see this as, in order to have a thriving democracy, we need to be operating on a shared reality and a shared set of facts. “That’s what we’re aiming to do,” says Chimene-Weiss.

Filing a defamation suit against Fox Business: A study by A. C. Dobbs, W. J. Lidsky, C. A. S. Jones, J. P. Smartmatic, J

In certain cases, the act of filing the suits appears to have caused immediate results. Andersen Jones notes that the TV show of Lou Dobbs, then a Fox Business host who pushed conspiracy theories about voting machines, was canceled immediately after voting-machine maker Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox.

There is a problem with the information ecosystems where some people make money selling lies. A professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Florida, says defamation law can’t always do everything about that. “Partly, you’ve got to look at the supply side for this information. I think you have to look at the demand side. Is consuming false information a pleasurable activity, or is it more difficult to find true information?

There is a risk that defamation lawsuits can be weaponized against people who raise factually grounded criticisms, and this is why a careful balance between protecting people’s reputations and free speech has always been a key concern at the heart of defamation law.

“It’s really pretty easy to bring a defamation action if you’re rich and powerful. Any time you come in for sharp criticism and it’s not necessarily easy to win, but you can inflict a lot of pain on another individual just by suing them,” says Lidsky. You have to be careful not to use defamation as a way to suppress free speech and criticize government officials.