Fox News, Unapologetic and Unwavering, Steams Ahead After Staggering Dominion Settlement

Fox News was fully prepared to go to trial even as it worked to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ staggering case against the network. Fox had booked one of those newfangled TV-studio-in-a-truck companies just in case, say, Sean Hannity had to host a show from court in Wilmington, Delaware. He would be able to climb into the back, put on a mic, sit in front of a big screen, and be virtually transported out of legal hell. The shows would go on, that much was assured.

The truck was never really needed. Instead, on Tuesday afternoon, before attorneys for Fox News and Dominion even delivered opening statements, the two parties agreed to a gargantuan—$787.5 million—settlement that stopped the trial in its tracks. Fox released a statement acknowledging the court “finding certain claims about Dominion to be false” and claimed to stand for journalistic excellence. Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and Hannity, among others, will be spared the embarrassment of having to testify.

There have been plenty of uncomfortable moments for Fox these past few months, as private messages and emails have revealed key Fox actors disparaging Donald Trump and his allies, like lawyer Sidney Powell, whom they gave a platform on air. But all the while, Fox’s message has been the same. I picked up on it when I called the Fox News PR department for comment last week and asked them what they wished more media outlets would mention about the lawsuit. Other reporters sensed it too when they skimmed the emails that Fox PR blasted out to counter Dominion. The network wanted to make one thing abundantly clear: It was still as popular as ever. Nothing about this lawsuit has impacted its ratings.

“Fox News Channel’s viewership has not been impacted by the Dominion case, according to data from Nielsen Media Research,” one of the PR emails said last week. This is accurate: I have been eyeballing Fox’s daily ratings ever since Dominion started to release embarrassing texts and emails from the network’s biggest stars, and the ratings have not wobbled one bit.

This should not be surprising, since Fox News functions as a 24/7 advertisement for Fox, with every media-bashing segment doubling as a warning not to trust other media outlets. But it is striking that Fox wanted its ratings victories to be front and center since, after all, the ratings underscore that millions of people were misinformed by Fox’s villainizing of Dominion after the 2020 election.

For Fox, this message was crucial to the parent company’s long-term business interests. Fox trumpeted its ratings and bought ads touting its “trusted” brand because, long after Dominion receives its payout, Fox will be raking in far larger sums of money from its advertisers and distributors. Fox News executives insist that sponsors have not been spooked by the Big Lie scandal, nor have the cable and satellite providers that carry the network. In the negotiations that are taking place this spring between Fox and the likes of Comcast, Fox wants to break past the three-buck mark—meaning three dollars per cable household per month, according to sources familiar with the matter. Even though the American cable universe is shrinking, Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch are still extracting billions of dollars. 

So in the wake of the settlement, if Murdoch feels at all dismayed by his company’s slightly lighter bank account, he can find comfort in the ratings, just as he has for decades. Picture the elder Murdoch as the owner of an ethically compromised yet spectacularly successful football team—a team that responds to rivals’ jeers by standing defiantly and pointing at the scoreboard. Fox wields its winning status—it is usually the number one network across all of cable—as a taunt, as a defense, as an excuse. Sometimes it uses it to shush critics who say its programming poisons the public discourse. Millions of viewers can’t be wrong, can they?

The ratings are also a reminder of the supply-and-demand dynamic that’s apparent across right-wing media. Dominion sued the suppliers of disinformation—Fox, Newsmax, Rudy Giuliani, and so on. But you can’t litigate away the demand for antidemocratic conspiracy theories.

That’s in large part why the settlement news spurred feelings of disappointment and disillusionment in some quarters on Tuesday. (As the settlement news sunk in, Stephen Colbert channeled liberals’ emotions on his CBS broadcast: “Damn it, I want my trial! I want it! You were supposed to provide me six weeks of delicious content!”) Dominion won, yes, but Fox won too. The only losing party is the public. All of the court exhibits that Fox fought to keep secret, and thus were redacted before trial, will now stay sealed. Yes, many of the network’s secrets spilled out into view, but an untold amount will remain private. “There’s a lot of relief at Fox,” former Fox politics editor Chris Stirewalt said on NewsNation Tuesday night. The Fox way is to “never apologize,” as execs used to boast back when Roger Ailes ruled the place. They did not have to air apologies to Dominion. “This was always, always about the money from day one,” a Murdoch associate sniffed.