Dominion is combing through thousands of personal text messages and emails among Fox News employees. They are looking for evidence of what's called in legal terms actual malice. And that's the standard that Dominion will have to meet before a jury, which essentially means people at Fox knew this was false but put it on the air anyway.
What’s one way to stop misinformation? It might just be a giant defamation lawsuit. This week, media titan Rupert Murdoch was deposed in a $1.6 billion suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News and Fox Corporation. They allege Fox knowingly and maliciously aired baseless claims accusing Dominion of an election fraud conspiracy. Somewhat surprisingly, instead of settling out of court, Fox News is denying the allegations, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in April. To unpack the lawsuit and the revelations it has brought (and will continue to bring) to light, we turned to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, who says this could be “one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.”
He breaks down the case, the souring Murdoch-Trump alliance and Fox News’s future. Plus, we review Ron DeSantis’s chances in 2024 (outlook: not good) and Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk’s chances of one day besting Murdoch (outlook: somewhat better).
You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.
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