Page 8 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2023

FEATURE
Dominion v. Fox Teaches
John Culhane
What
Does the ‘actual malice’ standard hold up in today’s media landscape?
The Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network media circus came to town in April of this year, but the tents were folded before they were even fully erected. The (in)famous defamation case settled for $787 million just before the parties were set to go to trial.
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The story that led up to this anti-cli- mactic denouement is even more in- teresting and important than many realized at the time. There are limits, it turns out, to the right of self-described news outlets to push knowingly false information, and to be complicit in efforts to overturn a fair and free elec- tion. The settlement should under- score that point to anyone considering a similar campaign in the future. And the 2024 election season is already well under way.
Recall the events leading up to this defamation claim against Fox by Do- minion, a company that manufactures and sells electronic voting hardware,
software and voting machines. Shortly after the 2020 election was called for President Joe Biden, Fox’s leadership and on-air personalities signaled accep- tance of the results and did not initially join the growing chorus of Trump at- torneys and spokespeople who quickly moved to discredit the election — in large part by calling into question the security and reliability of the voting ma- chines provided by Dominion.
Among other absurd claims, Sidney Powell and others pushed the fact-free assertion that long-dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was responsible for creating the machines to ensure that he’d remain in power, and that the