“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims
about Dominion to be false.” — Fox News.

Back in our days as an ink-stained wretch for daily newspapers, we were sued for libel. Won the case, thanks to the legal gymnastics of First Amendment lawyer Brady Williamson. So Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News was of occupational interest to this recovering journalist but critical to the mental health of our Republican brand.

Fox lied and Wisconsin Republicans died at the polling place. 

Regrettably, Tuesday’s 04-18-23 settlement did not force Fox to confess on screen its sins of commission and omission. Presumably, $787 million smackers will make Sean Trumpitty & Friends think twice about fanning nutcase Stolen Election lies. Maybe even quit pretending that January 6 was an AARP field trip. (Too much to ask?)

Let’s see what brighter lights have to say: 

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If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must also believe that there is a compelling pile of verifiable evidence that, for some inexplicable reason, was never presented by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in its myriad post-election lawsuits in November and December 2020. Furthermore, you must believe that when facing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion, Fox News never presented any of this evidence as a defense in this defamation lawsuit. Truth, or substantial truth, is an absolute defense in a defamation case.

But Fox News did not present that evidence; in fact, Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen. …

— Jim Geraghty, National Review

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One journalistic lesson of the Dominion case is not to indulge crank claims because your audience wants to hear them. That includes claims about Russian collusion or stolen elections. Mr. Trump could never admit he defeated himself in 2020, so he claimed the election was stolen. He tweeted a false “report” about Dominion, and the grifters who attend him, then and now, spread it.

— Wall Street Journal editorial

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Fox executives calculated that they could afford to lose anything but their viewers, including a defamation case, and they seem to have been right. … The people most likely to see the damaging information already distrust Fox. The network has pointedly avoided discussing the Dominion lawsuit on air (over the objections even of its top media reporter, Howard Kurtz), and many Fox viewers are so siloed that they are unlikely to hear much about the case.

— David A. Graham, The Atlantic

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RITOs are proving the Atlantic!

Social media chatter from OUR Facebook “friends”:

Bill Elmhorst — “FOX HAS JOINED THE SUBVERSIVES. FOX News has gone completely WOKE. FOX is complicit in this ploy to cover up the election fraud. FOX will plead guilty to reporting false information to cover up for the subversives who are desperate to destroy Trump and America. … FOX is now complicit in the election fraud.”

Tom Arliskas — “FOX is not WOKE– Just another victim.”

Meghas Leonidas — “Paul Ryan gave in again!”

Corey Proctor — “Only In modern America can you get punished for telling the truth about Democrats.”

Michael Muskovitz — “I will never believe the BS that is being presented .. anyone with brains knows there is nobody that can attain even the same amount of votes, that Trump did in 2020, and he didn’t get fraudulent votes either! Trump Haters just can not understand what Honesty is all they know is win and make $$ like Biden and his kid have done with the help of Obama.”

Blaska’s Bottom Line — If the Brewers had a baseball player that couldn’t hit his grandmother and blamed the umpires, the scorekeeper, and the ticket taker for his ineptitude, he’d be shipped off the roster before you could rewind the pitch clock.

What are YOUR damages?