Friday, July 4, 2025
  • Login
CEO North America
  • Home
  • News
    • Business
    • Entrepreneur
    • Industry
    • Innovation
    • Management & Leadership
  • CEO Interviews
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Environment
  • CEO Life
    • Art & Culture
    • Food
    • Health
    • Travel
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Business
    • Entrepreneur
    • Industry
    • Innovation
    • Management & Leadership
  • CEO Interviews
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Environment
  • CEO Life
    • Art & Culture
    • Food
    • Health
    • Travel
No Result
View All Result
CEO North America
No Result
View All Result

CEO North America > Opinion > Rupert Murdoch’s settlement of Dominion case still a victory for fake news

Rupert Murdoch’s settlement of Dominion case still a victory for fake news

in Opinion
Rupert Murdoch’s settlement of Dominion case still a victory for fake news

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 16: Rupert Murdoch attends 'The Tree Of Life' premiere during the 64th Annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 16, 2011 in Cannes, France

Share on LinkedinShare on WhatsApp

Let no one deny it: Rupert Murdoch is clever like a fox. He’s slyer than his adversaries in mainstream media. They still think in real-world terms. But Murdoch thinks in terms of the world that he’s created — the world of fake news, of lies that play because they carry the ring of vengeful mythology (life as a Charles Bronson film that never ends). The world that Fox News pretends is reality.

You could make a case that in recent weeks, Murdoch’s circus of happy-talk dystopian propaganda (otherwise known as any random half hour of Fox News) took a major hit. The release of documents subpoenaed during the Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News revealed something that was, or should be, profoundly embarrassing to the network: that there are moments when its star huckster, Tucker Carlson, actually tells the truth (at least in private).

The revelation that Carlson, along with a number of Fox News executives, peddled Donald Trump’s crackpot assertion that he won the 2020 election not because they believed it, but because they thought they had to go along with what their viewers wanted to hear, made the Fox team look like craven cowards. The lawsuit never made it to trial, but because those documents were leaked you could say the damage was done. And to keep the trial from happening, Murdoch had to cough up the mother of all defamation settlements: $787.5 million.

To you and me, that sounds like a lot of money. But in Murdoch Land there’s a phrase for a sum like that. It’s called chump change. And yes, in this case the chumps are all of us. The whole rest of the world. Or, at least, those of us who wanted to see this trial bring Rupert Murdoch and everything he stands for to task. What does Murdoch stand for? The power to run a “news” network that can make up bogus facts every day and pass them off as reality.

Murdoch isn’t just the dynastic owner of a media-entertainment empire. He’s the Wizard of Oz crossed with George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. And what Murdoch accomplished by settling with Dominion is to prove that he could buy off justice — that he could effectively short-circuit the American legal system. For a moment, in the Carlson texts and emails, and in the revelation that Murdoch himself thought that Stop the Steal was “crazy,” we glimpsed the man behind the curtain. But then the curtain began to fall back into place, the damage effectively undone.

That’s because the world of media politics, merged with showbiz, has a very short memory. We all have short memories now, and the toxic ADD ecosphere created by Rupert Murdoch’s revolving door of overheated tabloid catnip is one reason why.

Here’s why he’s clever like a fox. The $787.5 million paid to settle the Dominion lawsuit is, to Murdoch, another digit on a ledger; it’s the cost of doing business. Yet what he bought for that money is priceless. With a kind of quintessential Murdochian double-think cunning, he neutralized the damage of all of us knowing that the stooges of Fox — notably Carlson, that smug bow-tied P.J. O’Rourke as reptilian ringleader of misinformation — are even bigger liars than we thought.

So what if we know? Fox fans don’t care; the MAGA faithful don’t care. The real news is that Fox brazenly lying on the air, and doing so with what seemed to soar over the legal bar of malicious intent, will not be branded a defamation, a libel, a crime. In a funny way, it will be…just another juicy gossip story. (Oh wow! Did you hear what Tucker Carlson said??!!)

There are no consequences for Fox, and so there is no precedent set. This means that Fox can just keep doing what it does, supporting Donald Trump’s lies (due to an extended mother-in-law visit, I’ve watched a lot of Fox News over the last month; the network is far more in the tank for Trump than most mainstream media outlets realize), selling its own facts when it suits the narrative, hewing to the heightened reality of Murdoch World.

There’s one ray of hope here. Fox News still faces a major defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, a second maker of voting machines that, like Dominion, was smeared by Fox News broadcasts during the aftermath of the 2020 election. There are rumors that Smartmatic may be less willing to settle than Dominion was. And since a case this big is always, on some level, a matter of public relations, the executives at Smartmatic would be smart to look at how Dominion came off after the company’s settlement with Murdoch. The images of the attorneys who represent Dominion exiting the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del., flashing grins and thumbs up signs, were (in my opinion) not a good look. It made the whole thing look like a payday, rather than what it should have been: an exercise in justice.

Let’s repeat: Defamation is a crime. It’s one that, if you commit, you should be branded with; it’s not one that you should get away with. But the ultimate legal standard for libel is whether it passes the truth test (if you can prove in court that something is true, by legal definition it can’t be libelous), and what Rupert Murdoch and Fox News stand for, every day, is an assault on truth. Whether or not they’re guilty in court, they’re libeling reality. This settlement, at heart, is a promise that they’ll continue to do so.

By Owne Gleiberman / Variety

Tags: EntertainmentFox NewsMediaNewspaper

Related Posts

How a Data-Driven Mindset Powers McAfee’s Growth
Opinion

How a Data-Driven Mindset Powers McAfee’s Growth

Blackstone’s Jon Gray on Strategic Discipline, AI, and Entrepreneurial Leadership
Opinion

Blackstone’s Jon Gray on Strategic Discipline, AI, and Entrepreneurial Leadership

Canada, India move closer to trade deal
Opinion

Informing Strategic Planning Amid Tariff Uncertainty for Canadian Municipalities

A paradigm shift in supply chain operations: From agent-led to AI-led
Opinion

A paradigm shift in supply chain operations: From agent-led to AI-led

6 steps toward your retirement goals
Opinion

6 steps toward your retirement goals

Dollar continues record rally
Opinion

U.S. Economic Confidence Slightly Improved, Still Negative

How U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs would impact Canada’s economy
Opinion

The impact of US trade policy on jobs and inflation in Canada

Key Takeaways From Treasury’s Foreign Exchange Report
Opinion

Key Takeaways From Treasury’s Foreign Exchange Report

CVCA CEO Kim Furlong to step down
Opinion

What I’ve learned about building winning businesses

Inspiring vs. Infuriating: The Science Behind Great Leadership
Opinion

Inspiring vs. Infuriating: The Science Behind Great Leadership

No Result
View All Result

Recent Posts

  • What makes the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo so special?
  • Beyond the Machine: Why Human-Made Art Matters More in the Age of AI
  • 7 Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training
  • Paramount CEO explains why company paid Trump millions in 60 Minutes settlement
  • SAS CEO announces Air France–KLM to become majority owner

Archives

Categories

  • Art & Culture
  • Business
  • CEO Interviews
  • CEO Life
  • Editor´s Choice
  • Entrepreneur
  • Environment
  • Food
  • Health
  • Highlights
  • Industry
  • Innovation
  • Issues
  • Management & Leadership
  • News
  • Opinion
  • PrimeZone
  • Printed Version
  • Technology
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

  • CONTACT
  • GENERAL ENQUIRIES
  • ADVERTISING
  • MEDIA KIT
  • DIRECTORY
  • TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Advertising –
advertising@ceo-na.com

110 Wall St.,
3rd Floor
New York, NY.
10005
USA
+1 212 432 5800

Avenida Chapultepec 480,
Floor 11
Mexico City
06700
MEXICO

  • News
  • CEO Interviews
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Environment
  • CEO Life

  • CONTACT
  • GENERAL ENQUIRIES
  • ADVERTISING
  • MEDIA KIT
  • DIRECTORY
  • TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Advertising –
advertising@ceo-na.com

110 Wall St.,
3rd Floor
New York, NY.
10005
USA
+1 212 432 5800

Avenida Chapultepec 480,
Floor 11
Mexico City
06700
MEXICO

CEO North America © 2024 - Sitemap

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Business
    • Entrepreneur
    • Industry
    • Innovation
    • Management & Leadership
  • CEO Interviews
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Environment
  • CEO Life
    • Art & Culture
    • Food
    • Health
    • Travel

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.