4 ms·

I am not sure why Fox would have settled. Outside of a few statements by Dobbs, it seems like the interviewees were the ones who defamed Dominion, not Fox News

• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Because that's now how libel laws work. If you could always use the "well, it's just what the interviewees said" defense, then any broadcast company could easily seek out the craziest nut jobs to spew lies, give them tons of airtime, and have interviewers give lots of leading/suggestive comments (it's not lost on me that, sadly, this is how a lot of "news" organizations work these days). Now, the thing that makes it hard to prove defamation against a news organization is the "actual malice" standard (the legal term is actually a bit different from what those words normally mean). That is, if the Fox interviewees came on and spewed their lies, and there was no evidence that Fox itself disbelieved them or were highly skeptical, Fox would be fine. But the thing that was so damaging to Fox is that they were publishing lies while at the same time commenting in private messages that they knew it was all BS. That is why Fox had so much legal jeopardy.