We are left with two questions, 1) what is the incentive for the plaintiffs to settle? (I don't see any) and 2) How will Murdoch and his on air minions convince the faithful that this is all the fault of Biden and the Democrats?
I've actually been in the position of the plaintiffs before. There is no reason on earth why they should settle for anything less than "all of it." Plus no release will be signed that includes a denial of liability, or one of those bullshit confidentiality clauses.
1) Money. The plaintiffs are corporations. They have no interest in anything but money. They are not allowed to turn down money in pursuit of a principle, at least not in the US, where the legal standard that corporations must *only* seek to enrich their stock holders (by pumping up the price of their stock so that said "investors" can make money selling their interest in said corporation; a perverse system conflates investment and speculation to an insane degree, but that's the system we have at the moment.)
To the suggestion that the plaintiffs might turn down a settlement because a jury award would enhance their reputation, which is worth money to them, I can only say that the math doesn't work out. Yes, a corporations reputation is potentially worth money. But money is worth actual money, so whether the corporation will turn down a sizable settlement in pursuit of an even larger judgement is based entirely on an unemotional and frankly skeptical evaluation of probabilities. A 100% of getting paid is worth much more than an 80% chance of getting paid (far more than 20% of the amount) and any confidence that there is a greater than 50/50 likelihood Murdock's corporation will ever pay a single penny to the corporations that Fox maligned is more an idealistic fantasy than mere optimism. Don't forget that winning in court isn't a guarantee, they would still have to survive the extended and repeated appeals of any outcome.
2) Through the barest of insinuation, which will alone be sufficient. Those "faithful" are more than eager to believe that every single person in the world is in on a conspiracy to cheat Trump out of his 2020 reelection.
All true, but discover could be the gift that keeps on giving. With that in mind, and given the level of offense against the plaintiffs, could you see a situation in which they proceed, at least thru discovery. Think of what else could go into the settlement at that point.
It's usually in the discovery phase of the case that settlement discussions start because that is when it becomes possible to gauge the possibilities of what the case is actually worth and what settlement possibilities there are. In corporate lawsuits, it's all about how much it will cost to make the plaintiff go away, because the cost of lengthy litigation and a jury trial 10 years down the road are just too damn high.
A reasonable perspective, but it assumes Fox is a legitimate business just trying to sell ad space. In the reality of this circumstance, it is all about how much it will cost Murdoch to prevent discovery from ever occurring. Which means the initial offer will probably be so high the plaintiff's won't be able to turn it down. The left and the real media will celebrate it as a huge defeat for Fox, but Fox and the right will just write it off as a convenient pay-off for the liberals and lawyers, and play it up as more "woke cancel culture" fuel for their conspiracy stories.
Apparently you missed my point, or just ignored it. Corporations aren't empowered to be opportunistic or even strategic in the way you're thinking. As for the cornucopia of dirt on Fox's actions (they aren't really a profit-seeking corporation, but merely a political strategy hiding behind a corporation) that discovery could reveal, that's all the more reason they will offer a settlement large enough that the plaintiff's can't legally refuse.
No, I neither missed the point nor ignored it. I am simply proposing an alternative theory of what could be done. I understand that corporations must act in the best interests of the shareholders (or the stakeholders in the new world). But is there a case to be made for the plaintiffs to hold out until the dirt is exposed? Should they allow Murdoch to, as usual, buy his way out of trouble without repercussions. Or should they force Fox to reveal the links between them and the terrorists that Murdoch wants so desperately to hide? Can they serve their shareholders and screw Murdoch at the same time? I think the answer is yes...if they want to push it.
> But is there a case to be made for the plaintiffs to hold out until the dirt is exposed?
No. You missed the point again. It isn't about "best interests", it is about numbers. It isn't about "stakeholders", just stock prices. It isn't about whether Murdoch is a terrorist or "repercussions". Just money. Only money. Nothing other than money.
Money is everything, but it is not the only thing. Think about it. Your company has been crushed by these assholes. Do you let them off with a simple monetary settlement or do you demand more?
Probably, but again, what incentive do the plaintiffs have to settle. They may decide that it's past time for Murdoch to feel real pain, and money won't hurt him at all, no matter how much.
Ironically, the judge pointed to Tucker Carlson's failed attempts to substantiate the crap that Maria Bartoromo and other Fox talking heads were spewing as evidence that Fox News knew, or should have known, that the "rigged" claims were nonsense. It's that "knew or should have known" standard that yanks the rug from beneath the feet of Rupert's lawyers. Once again they will be reduced to acknowledging that Fox News is not a news op in any sense, and instead is a purveyor of rightwing agit prop.
I am the only person who immediately thought of Bush and Cheney’s WMD lies when Putin’s biolabs lie was made public? They accused Saddam of not only having nukes but also chemical and likely biological weapons as a pretext for invading Iraq.
This is off topic but I just read another article about the religious aspect of this war. Our media has given very little attention the ways the Russian Orthodox Church has enahnced Putin’s power. (The current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, was an active KGB agent as was his predecessor.) The Russian Orthodox leaders are furious that the Patriarchate of Constantinople formally recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as separate from the Russian Orthodox Church and are very supportive of this war.
Consider the extremely successful campaign by the Soviets in the late 80's & early nineties, to convince the horribly afflicted populations of sub-Sahara Africa that the AIDS epidemic was a CIA plot.
I wish my memory was more reliable but it seems like there were some stories floating around years ago about churches comingling with Russia and some other politically far right States.
"That right-wing void was quickly filled by players like NewsMax and OAN..."
FauxNews has since demonstrated that they cannot allow interlopers from the right to push in on their market share of willing sheep, desperate to believe their lies and to click on their ads. To defend their profit margins, they have out-outraged NewsMin and ONAN to retain their lock on the minds of woefully under-educated American consumers of infotainment.
As I have posted before I and some of my friends know people who are actually well-educated who have bought into this right wing propaganda. I think they got seduced by a narrative that fed their own biases (the government is taking your money and giving it to those undeserving, low class blacks and Hispanics) and once in that universe they gradually got more and more brainwashed by it.
If we really want to educate people specifically to resist misinformation we need to institute a strong media literacy program like the one Finland has had for decades. That has been showed to actually make a difference in keeping Fins from believing fake information about things like politics, health information and scientific data.
Great point. It dovetails for me into the the problem of specialization vs broader knowledge of the world.
I've worked with lawyers who could brilliantly plot a complex legal strategy that must have taken incredible training and persistence to devise, but who could barely open or navigate an excel spreadsheet. There are people on Wall St that are worth billions but who are shocked to find out that only in the early 20th century was the US constitution amended to allow for the direct election of US senators.
Can you blame them? It takes work and care to get to know what the world is like outside of the paths of the revenue streams that demand hyper specialization.... But it's within that broader ocean of knowledge that citizens and decent people have to navigate to have a viable claim to self government, IMO...
Many of the MAGA supporters I know personally have revealed themselves to be some of the least introspective, most self-absorbed people I have ever encountered. It was almost like they had a dormant "Trump Gene" that was triggered by his notorious and improbable political ascendancy.
I'll agree with you about people like Trump bringing out the worst in his supporters.
Same thing happened here in the Philippines when Duterte got elected to the presidency.
Somehow, many of them were okay with him making misogynistic & vulgar remarks in his public speeches claiming he was being "authentic."
Add to that many were supportive of his bloody war against illegal drugs which mostly targeted lower class drug dealers & users who were gunned down instantly while the upper class drug lords & users weren't seriously targeted at all.
To the right-wing faction in the USA, the police "accidentally" killing unarmed, low-level, often non-violent street criminals (and sometimes innocent bystanders) is just the unavoidable collateral damage necessary to establish and maintain "law and order". Ironically, since law enforcement officers and public officials are rarely held personally responsible legally or financially, the taxpayer ends up picking up the tab for all the multi-million-dollar "wrongful death" lawsuit settlements. Just like with the higher-up 1/6 insurrectionists, any minimal consequences they might have to suffer is just the "cost of doing business". And many times, the real perpetrators actually get rewarded with riches and celebrity rather than punished. So, no accountability = no change.
I think social media has a cultlike effect on people. I consider WaPo's comment sections to be social media. A few days ago they published a story about a black manager of a donut shop who punched a white customer, age 77, in the jaw for calling him a n---er. The old man suffered a head injury and died. What was so horrendous was that most of the comments expressed the opinion that the old man deserved to die. I'm on my last nerve when it comes to internet comment threads. I cannot tolerate what kind of people I'm seeing more and more of every day.
Populism seems to bring out the worst in human nature. I'm reminded of the gladiators in the Coliseum and the audience with their thumbs down.
The American mainstream media seems to be more interested in pushing Americans of opposing political, religious & social to fight with one another online with insults and violent threats rather than foster a dialogue over how violence doesn't always solve a hot-button topic like racism.
Online conflict for them is something that they don't want to manage. They seem to believe that ramping up tensions in the comment sections is a profitable move in that it'll attract paid subscribers to join in so they can get an adrenaline & dopamine rush arguing with people they've never actually met.
Maybe they believe that keeping the heated arguments online would prevent any violent real world fights from happening.
However, what if the online arguments aren't enough for the participants and they decided to bring the fighting into the real world?
I also have family members and (former) friends who are very "well-educated", at least superficially in the form of undergrad and advanced college Degrees, who still staunchly defend their support of the MAGA-VERSE, in spite of the avalanche of information that has come to light re: the Trump cult's nefarious, blatantly illegal, traitorous anti-democracy misdeeds. The entire debacle, starting back in the 2015 campaign, has caused the most dramatic transformation in my social relationships since I decided to stop drinking forty-five years ago. And once again, in a good way, I might add ... ;>)
I think you are right, Theodora, but I would also add that many/most Americans are media illiterate. I’m sure that a large portion of Fox viewers (and other networks) are gullible in the extreme because they think "if it is on television it must be true.”
I know I’m a broken record on this, but journalists need to police themselves as a profession. Fox/OAN/Newmax are wrecking the profession.
You are right about that. That is why we need that to be embedded in school curriculum for all levels. The media could also make an effort to help people understand how to judge the information they are getting. However to do that journalists also need to be more literate in areas of science and math/statistics and apply that knowledge in more topics than just politics. I am constantly surprised at the poor quality of so much reporting about health issues, frequently interpreting correlation as causation or hyping results from small samples. Readers of The NY Times’s health articles are constantly calling out the reporters for doing that.
During the first few months of the pandemic almost all of the media reported on total deaths then used those numbers to compare how well countries were doing. During that time the UK actually had a significantly higher covid death rate than the US did but the media was so focused on total deaths that most didn’t seem to realize that.
It’s a real problem. “Highest gas prices ever” doesn’t take inflation into account. When a $5000 a year salary was enough to buy a house, 25 cent gas was probably the all time high…
I'm assuming the Murdoch's and the brass at Fox News simply ignored what their own lawyers were telling them. I can't imagine a lawyer that wasn't just a partisan to not realize what they were doing would put the company in jeopardy. Like Republicans and the right in general, it seems that Fox News got caught up in being dickish trolls. The attitude that everything a jerk says is OK because deep down they knew it wasn't true which to them means it's "just a joke".
Some people, like Trump and Murdoch, see litigation as a game. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, but the idea that winning is the only thing. When I worked in the court system, I remember the shock of learning that 2 insurance companies in America routinely selected at random a handful of auto injury cases to litigate, regardless of merit. In my court we got a case involving a nurse who was driving to work one day when a truck came barreling out of a residential driveway and into her path. Her injuries included chronic pain and partial paralysis. She could no longer work. The insurance company denied her claim. Win or lose, they saw it as business as usual. This is certainly a world where big companies do not care about the harm they cause.
It should be, because it's very bad publicity for Fox, especially when it comes to attracting advertisers, and of course when it comes to keeping investors.
This Murdoch story bundled with the Merrick Garland interview on NPR that reading between the lines, made it sound like the DOJ investigation into Trump is really happening, is what I will take into this weekend as something positive for a change. We all need some good news.
Murdoch has what? 90 billion? I doubt he cares too much about settling out or court for a few billion. Justice in America is easy to avoid when you have money. Sadly.
Run fast and win I'm guessing you know how the suit ended. It appears to me even though Rupert and Lachlan were mentioned in the suit they were not held personally liable. At least that's the way I read it.
"It's important to note that being implicated in a lawsuit doesn't necessarily mean that an individual will be held personally liable. The specific circumstances of each case and the applicable laws will determine the extent of any potential personal liability."
A little snark here. Fox is not about the news as they have stated in some of their previous lawsuit depositions. They have used the defense that they are a Entertainment Network. And that begs the question why the Reagan Democrat leadership continually allows them at press briefings.
The power of Russian oligarchs in the UK is really astounding. For example Evegeny Lebedev is the wealthy Russian with dual citizenship who lives in the UK. He owns the UK newspaper The Evening Standard along with his father Alexander who is a Russian oligarch and former KGB officer who worked for years out of the Russian embassy in London. They also own The Independent and the tv station London Live.
Boris Johnson has been a close friend of the Lebedevs since the early 2000s and has partied at their many mansions in the UK and other European countries. In 2020 Johnson nominated Evgeny for a peerage and, according to news reports, brushed aside the concerns of his security services about that nomination so Lebedev is now a member of the House of Lords with the bizarre title of “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation”.
This past Monday Johnson denied that he had overruled the concerns of his intelligence services to award Lebedev with that peerage but given what a pathological liar Johnson is his denial means nothing.
When there's a completely amoral and delusional cult of personality in power, that does not excuse the news media from reporting the truth, but of course outlets such as Fox, Breitbart, OAN and Newsmax have exempted themselves from responsible journalism. Murdoch apparently believed Fox is too big to be taken down, that his idea of combining ruthless capitalism and the philosophy of "if there's an audience for this crap, let's dish it out" would always work. I'm all for the First Amendment, but it was never intended to allow sociopaths and cult leaders to spread what is essentially propaganda and outright lies.
Murdoch would be a fool not to settle. These two companies have every capability of ruining Fox to the tune of billions, but even a settlement is likely to be huge. And what comes after? A huge loss of profits spurred by a loss of advertisers and hopefully, a loss of viewers. It's long overdue.
I pray to God that Dominion and SmartMatic DO NOT settle and that they take it all the way. My wish is that Fox is mortally wounded as an organization. In lieu of that, I would accept Murdoch suffering a devastating stroke from the stress of the litigation.
In addition to suing Fox, I believe the plaintiffs are also suing the individual on air employees. Is Murdoch and company going to cover their lawyer’s fees or are those liars on their own?
We are left with two questions, 1) what is the incentive for the plaintiffs to settle? (I don't see any) and 2) How will Murdoch and his on air minions convince the faithful that this is all the fault of Biden and the Democrats?
good Q’s!
I've actually been in the position of the plaintiffs before. There is no reason on earth why they should settle for anything less than "all of it." Plus no release will be signed that includes a denial of liability, or one of those bullshit confidentiality clauses.
I hope so.
1) Money. The plaintiffs are corporations. They have no interest in anything but money. They are not allowed to turn down money in pursuit of a principle, at least not in the US, where the legal standard that corporations must *only* seek to enrich their stock holders (by pumping up the price of their stock so that said "investors" can make money selling their interest in said corporation; a perverse system conflates investment and speculation to an insane degree, but that's the system we have at the moment.)
To the suggestion that the plaintiffs might turn down a settlement because a jury award would enhance their reputation, which is worth money to them, I can only say that the math doesn't work out. Yes, a corporations reputation is potentially worth money. But money is worth actual money, so whether the corporation will turn down a sizable settlement in pursuit of an even larger judgement is based entirely on an unemotional and frankly skeptical evaluation of probabilities. A 100% of getting paid is worth much more than an 80% chance of getting paid (far more than 20% of the amount) and any confidence that there is a greater than 50/50 likelihood Murdock's corporation will ever pay a single penny to the corporations that Fox maligned is more an idealistic fantasy than mere optimism. Don't forget that winning in court isn't a guarantee, they would still have to survive the extended and repeated appeals of any outcome.
2) Through the barest of insinuation, which will alone be sufficient. Those "faithful" are more than eager to believe that every single person in the world is in on a conspiracy to cheat Trump out of his 2020 reelection.
All true, but discover could be the gift that keeps on giving. With that in mind, and given the level of offense against the plaintiffs, could you see a situation in which they proceed, at least thru discovery. Think of what else could go into the settlement at that point.
It's usually in the discovery phase of the case that settlement discussions start because that is when it becomes possible to gauge the possibilities of what the case is actually worth and what settlement possibilities there are. In corporate lawsuits, it's all about how much it will cost to make the plaintiff go away, because the cost of lengthy litigation and a jury trial 10 years down the road are just too damn high.
A reasonable perspective, but it assumes Fox is a legitimate business just trying to sell ad space. In the reality of this circumstance, it is all about how much it will cost Murdoch to prevent discovery from ever occurring. Which means the initial offer will probably be so high the plaintiff's won't be able to turn it down. The left and the real media will celebrate it as a huge defeat for Fox, but Fox and the right will just write it off as a convenient pay-off for the liberals and lawyers, and play it up as more "woke cancel culture" fuel for their conspiracy stories.
Apparently you missed my point, or just ignored it. Corporations aren't empowered to be opportunistic or even strategic in the way you're thinking. As for the cornucopia of dirt on Fox's actions (they aren't really a profit-seeking corporation, but merely a political strategy hiding behind a corporation) that discovery could reveal, that's all the more reason they will offer a settlement large enough that the plaintiff's can't legally refuse.
No, I neither missed the point nor ignored it. I am simply proposing an alternative theory of what could be done. I understand that corporations must act in the best interests of the shareholders (or the stakeholders in the new world). But is there a case to be made for the plaintiffs to hold out until the dirt is exposed? Should they allow Murdoch to, as usual, buy his way out of trouble without repercussions. Or should they force Fox to reveal the links between them and the terrorists that Murdoch wants so desperately to hide? Can they serve their shareholders and screw Murdoch at the same time? I think the answer is yes...if they want to push it.
> But is there a case to be made for the plaintiffs to hold out until the dirt is exposed?
No. You missed the point again. It isn't about "best interests", it is about numbers. It isn't about "stakeholders", just stock prices. It isn't about whether Murdoch is a terrorist or "repercussions". Just money. Only money. Nothing other than money.
Money is everything, but it is not the only thing. Think about it. Your company has been crushed by these assholes. Do you let them off with a simple monetary settlement or do you demand more?
No doubt Murdoch will offer a settlement they can’t refuse. He’ll avoid discovery and deposition whatever the cost.
LOL nobody ever settles before discovery unless they're scared shitless they'll lose.
Or if they don’t want secrets getting out right?
What secrets? I don't know what you're referring to.
Anything that would become public knowledge through discovery that they’d rather keep secret.
Probably, but again, what incentive do the plaintiffs have to settle. They may decide that it's past time for Murdoch to feel real pain, and money won't hurt him at all, no matter how much.
If only they would make removing the word ‘News’ a condition… :/
Or deporting all the Murdochs to the Botany Bay of old.
2 billion? 3? 1? It’s a lot of money.
Ironically, the judge pointed to Tucker Carlson's failed attempts to substantiate the crap that Maria Bartoromo and other Fox talking heads were spewing as evidence that Fox News knew, or should have known, that the "rigged" claims were nonsense. It's that "knew or should have known" standard that yanks the rug from beneath the feet of Rupert's lawyers. Once again they will be reduced to acknowledging that Fox News is not a news op in any sense, and instead is a purveyor of rightwing agit prop.
Yes, the judge’s Tucker ref was pretty great
I am the only person who immediately thought of Bush and Cheney’s WMD lies when Putin’s biolabs lie was made public? They accused Saddam of not only having nukes but also chemical and likely biological weapons as a pretext for invading Iraq.
This is off topic but I just read another article about the religious aspect of this war. Our media has given very little attention the ways the Russian Orthodox Church has enahnced Putin’s power. (The current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, was an active KGB agent as was his predecessor.) The Russian Orthodox leaders are furious that the Patriarchate of Constantinople formally recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as separate from the Russian Orthodox Church and are very supportive of this war.
https://religiondispatches.org/in-his-forgiveness-day-sermon-a-slightly-more-sophisticated-globohomo-rant-kirill-lays-out-an-authoritarian-vision-in-which-his-version-of-god-might-dominate-and-rule-the-h/
Our media has a habit of shying away from negative stories about religion.
Consider the extremely successful campaign by the Soviets in the late 80's & early nineties, to convince the horribly afflicted populations of sub-Sahara Africa that the AIDS epidemic was a CIA plot.
And it spread to the US. I knew several black people who said AIDS was invented as a plot to commit genocide of African Americans.
Shying away…they avoid it like Black Death…
I wish my memory was more reliable but it seems like there were some stories floating around years ago about churches comingling with Russia and some other politically far right States.
I just read something about it but I can't remember where. The head of a big church in Russia is a former KGB agent.
"That right-wing void was quickly filled by players like NewsMax and OAN..."
FauxNews has since demonstrated that they cannot allow interlopers from the right to push in on their market share of willing sheep, desperate to believe their lies and to click on their ads. To defend their profit margins, they have out-outraged NewsMin and ONAN to retain their lock on the minds of woefully under-educated American consumers of infotainment.
As I have posted before I and some of my friends know people who are actually well-educated who have bought into this right wing propaganda. I think they got seduced by a narrative that fed their own biases (the government is taking your money and giving it to those undeserving, low class blacks and Hispanics) and once in that universe they gradually got more and more brainwashed by it.
If we really want to educate people specifically to resist misinformation we need to institute a strong media literacy program like the one Finland has had for decades. That has been showed to actually make a difference in keeping Fins from believing fake information about things like politics, health information and scientific data.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news
Great point. It dovetails for me into the the problem of specialization vs broader knowledge of the world.
I've worked with lawyers who could brilliantly plot a complex legal strategy that must have taken incredible training and persistence to devise, but who could barely open or navigate an excel spreadsheet. There are people on Wall St that are worth billions but who are shocked to find out that only in the early 20th century was the US constitution amended to allow for the direct election of US senators.
Can you blame them? It takes work and care to get to know what the world is like outside of the paths of the revenue streams that demand hyper specialization.... But it's within that broader ocean of knowledge that citizens and decent people have to navigate to have a viable claim to self government, IMO...
Many of the MAGA supporters I know personally have revealed themselves to be some of the least introspective, most self-absorbed people I have ever encountered. It was almost like they had a dormant "Trump Gene" that was triggered by his notorious and improbable political ascendancy.
I'll agree with you about people like Trump bringing out the worst in his supporters.
Same thing happened here in the Philippines when Duterte got elected to the presidency.
Somehow, many of them were okay with him making misogynistic & vulgar remarks in his public speeches claiming he was being "authentic."
Add to that many were supportive of his bloody war against illegal drugs which mostly targeted lower class drug dealers & users who were gunned down instantly while the upper class drug lords & users weren't seriously targeted at all.
To the right-wing faction in the USA, the police "accidentally" killing unarmed, low-level, often non-violent street criminals (and sometimes innocent bystanders) is just the unavoidable collateral damage necessary to establish and maintain "law and order". Ironically, since law enforcement officers and public officials are rarely held personally responsible legally or financially, the taxpayer ends up picking up the tab for all the multi-million-dollar "wrongful death" lawsuit settlements. Just like with the higher-up 1/6 insurrectionists, any minimal consequences they might have to suffer is just the "cost of doing business". And many times, the real perpetrators actually get rewarded with riches and celebrity rather than punished. So, no accountability = no change.
I think social media has a cultlike effect on people. I consider WaPo's comment sections to be social media. A few days ago they published a story about a black manager of a donut shop who punched a white customer, age 77, in the jaw for calling him a n---er. The old man suffered a head injury and died. What was so horrendous was that most of the comments expressed the opinion that the old man deserved to die. I'm on my last nerve when it comes to internet comment threads. I cannot tolerate what kind of people I'm seeing more and more of every day.
Populism seems to bring out the worst in human nature. I'm reminded of the gladiators in the Coliseum and the audience with their thumbs down.
The American mainstream media seems to be more interested in pushing Americans of opposing political, religious & social to fight with one another online with insults and violent threats rather than foster a dialogue over how violence doesn't always solve a hot-button topic like racism.
Online conflict for them is something that they don't want to manage. They seem to believe that ramping up tensions in the comment sections is a profitable move in that it'll attract paid subscribers to join in so they can get an adrenaline & dopamine rush arguing with people they've never actually met.
Maybe they believe that keeping the heated arguments online would prevent any violent real world fights from happening.
However, what if the online arguments aren't enough for the participants and they decided to bring the fighting into the real world?
Populism PLUS the anonymity of the Internet :/ ?!
I also have family members and (former) friends who are very "well-educated", at least superficially in the form of undergrad and advanced college Degrees, who still staunchly defend their support of the MAGA-VERSE, in spite of the avalanche of information that has come to light re: the Trump cult's nefarious, blatantly illegal, traitorous anti-democracy misdeeds. The entire debacle, starting back in the 2015 campaign, has caused the most dramatic transformation in my social relationships since I decided to stop drinking forty-five years ago. And once again, in a good way, I might add ... ;>)
*insightful* :)
I think you are right, Theodora, but I would also add that many/most Americans are media illiterate. I’m sure that a large portion of Fox viewers (and other networks) are gullible in the extreme because they think "if it is on television it must be true.”
I know I’m a broken record on this, but journalists need to police themselves as a profession. Fox/OAN/Newmax are wrecking the profession.
You are right about that. That is why we need that to be embedded in school curriculum for all levels. The media could also make an effort to help people understand how to judge the information they are getting. However to do that journalists also need to be more literate in areas of science and math/statistics and apply that knowledge in more topics than just politics. I am constantly surprised at the poor quality of so much reporting about health issues, frequently interpreting correlation as causation or hyping results from small samples. Readers of The NY Times’s health articles are constantly calling out the reporters for doing that.
During the first few months of the pandemic almost all of the media reported on total deaths then used those numbers to compare how well countries were doing. During that time the UK actually had a significantly higher covid death rate than the US did but the media was so focused on total deaths that most didn’t seem to realize that.
It’s a real problem. “Highest gas prices ever” doesn’t take inflation into account. When a $5000 a year salary was enough to buy a house, 25 cent gas was probably the all time high…
I know a few FB/Maga folks who never heard of RMurdoch😳
‘woefully under-educated American consumers of infotainment.’ Exactly.
I'm assuming the Murdoch's and the brass at Fox News simply ignored what their own lawyers were telling them. I can't imagine a lawyer that wasn't just a partisan to not realize what they were doing would put the company in jeopardy. Like Republicans and the right in general, it seems that Fox News got caught up in being dickish trolls. The attitude that everything a jerk says is OK because deep down they knew it wasn't true which to them means it's "just a joke".
Especially after both companies directly contacted Fox and detailed that network was lying. I’m sure lawyers told Murdoch to stop… but Fox never did
I'm not sure what this is. Is it dereliction of duty or simply the arrogance of people who think they can do whatever they want without consequences?
Some people, like Trump and Murdoch, see litigation as a game. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, but the idea that winning is the only thing. When I worked in the court system, I remember the shock of learning that 2 insurance companies in America routinely selected at random a handful of auto injury cases to litigate, regardless of merit. In my court we got a case involving a nurse who was driving to work one day when a truck came barreling out of a residential driveway and into her path. Her injuries included chronic pain and partial paralysis. She could no longer work. The insurance company denied her claim. Win or lose, they saw it as business as usual. This is certainly a world where big companies do not care about the harm they cause.
Sadly.
Maybe a couple of billion isn’t that much to 🦊?
It should be, because it's very bad publicity for Fox, especially when it comes to attracting advertisers, and of course when it comes to keeping investors.
But, they don’t need advertising all that much. The basis of their business is cable subscriber fees.
Seriously? Perhaps that used to be true at one time, but have you any idea how much a 30 second ad costs on Tucker Carlson's show?
This is the only good news I've read in quite awhile.
ha agreed!
Ditto!
I'm a big fan of this story... Wherein one of FauxNew's biggest on-air personalities takes it personal that someone calls out his lies on air:
https://www.sfgate.com/national-politics/article/Greg-Gutfeld-Ukraine-take-refuted-on-The-Five-16989879.php
Gutfeld truly is the worst
This Murdoch story bundled with the Merrick Garland interview on NPR that reading between the lines, made it sound like the DOJ investigation into Trump is really happening, is what I will take into this weekend as something positive for a change. We all need some good news.
I hope so. It’s been well over a year now.
Murdoch has what? 90 billion? I doubt he cares too much about settling out or court for a few billion. Justice in America is easy to avoid when you have money. Sadly.
I'm a bit confused. Are you implying that the Murdoch Family itself is being sued or Fox News corp or both?
If it's Fox News Corp, then this will be like the Sackler family.
The Sackler family's businesses took a hit but they personally came out financially whole, considering.
Yes.
Run fast and win I'm guessing you know how the suit ended. It appears to me even though Rupert and Lachlan were mentioned in the suit they were not held personally liable. At least that's the way I read it.
"It's important to note that being implicated in a lawsuit doesn't necessarily mean that an individual will be held personally liable. The specific circumstances of each case and the applicable laws will determine the extent of any potential personal liability."
A little snark here. Fox is not about the news as they have stated in some of their previous lawsuit depositions. They have used the defense that they are a Entertainment Network. And that begs the question why the Reagan Democrat leadership continually allows them at press briefings.
.
Regarding the lawsuits and the possible penalties, I will believe it when it happens. The power of money to get what it wants should not be underestimated. Take a look at Jonathan Pies rant on how Russia owns Britain. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/11/2085278/-Follow-the-money-Jonathan-Pie-rants-about-Londongrad-and-the-Russian-money-flooding-it?_=2022-03-11T07:21:56.000-08:00
The power of Russian oligarchs in the UK is really astounding. For example Evegeny Lebedev is the wealthy Russian with dual citizenship who lives in the UK. He owns the UK newspaper The Evening Standard along with his father Alexander who is a Russian oligarch and former KGB officer who worked for years out of the Russian embassy in London. They also own The Independent and the tv station London Live.
Boris Johnson has been a close friend of the Lebedevs since the early 2000s and has partied at their many mansions in the UK and other European countries. In 2020 Johnson nominated Evgeny for a peerage and, according to news reports, brushed aside the concerns of his security services about that nomination so Lebedev is now a member of the House of Lords with the bizarre title of “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation”.
This past Monday Johnson denied that he had overruled the concerns of his intelligence services to award Lebedev with that peerage but given what a pathological liar Johnson is his denial means nothing.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/07/boris-johnson-denies-overruling-spies-concerns-over-evgeny-lebedev-peerage
When there's a completely amoral and delusional cult of personality in power, that does not excuse the news media from reporting the truth, but of course outlets such as Fox, Breitbart, OAN and Newsmax have exempted themselves from responsible journalism. Murdoch apparently believed Fox is too big to be taken down, that his idea of combining ruthless capitalism and the philosophy of "if there's an audience for this crap, let's dish it out" would always work. I'm all for the First Amendment, but it was never intended to allow sociopaths and cult leaders to spread what is essentially propaganda and outright lies.
Murdoch would be a fool not to settle. These two companies have every capability of ruining Fox to the tune of billions, but even a settlement is likely to be huge. And what comes after? A huge loss of profits spurred by a loss of advertisers and hopefully, a loss of viewers. It's long overdue.
True… a jury could decide to up the penalty ?;)
Finally some good news. It’s tome to take Fox News down!
I pray to God that Dominion and SmartMatic DO NOT settle and that they take it all the way. My wish is that Fox is mortally wounded as an organization. In lieu of that, I would accept Murdoch suffering a devastating stroke from the stress of the litigation.
In addition to suing Fox, I believe the plaintiffs are also suing the individual on air employees. Is Murdoch and company going to cover their lawyer’s fees or are those liars on their own?
“Refusing to let itself be outflanked on the fringe-right…” ( Nice )