Detroit Today: What Fox News’ Dominion settlement says about the media landscape
Fox News agreed to pay-out nearly $800 million to avoid a court case that would’ve shed light on allegations of lying to its audience.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the 24-hour news cycle rose to prominence in the U.S. The biggest promoters of this were news networks like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.
The name of the game for these networks was — and still is — to keep your attention to generate more advertising dollars.
These changes have had a big effect on the way large news corporations do business, sometimes leading them to lie to their audience in order to keep ratings high. That’s what has happened in the case of Fox News, which was recently uncovered.
Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit, and through the trial Fox News admitted to lying its audience about election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
“This is a business corporation and its primary means for existing is to make a profit” — John Watson, American University
Listen: How our information ecosystem and news environment has shifted.
Guests
Katie Robertson is a media reporter for the New York Times. She’s been covering the lawsuits filed against Fox News, including the one from Dominion.
Robertson says Fox News is still facing more litigation for lying to the public and defaming another voting technology company.
“This is not the end of Fox’s culpability for spreading these election lies,” says Robertson.
Paul Levinson is a professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University. He says Fox News has intentionally lied to its audience in order to keep viewership high.
“All news operations are public facing and they desperately want to know, are they getting through to their audience…they want to keep their audience and increase their audience,” says Levinson.
John Watson is an associate professor in the school of communication at American University. He says the Dominion Voting Systems law suit will not do much to hold Fox News accountable.
“This is a business corporation and its primary means for existing is to make a profit,” says Watson. “Businesses generally don’t follow ethics. They follow the law.”
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