Crooked Media - What A Day: OutFox'd

Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News: gone too soon!
 

• Discovery in the lawsuit has revealed huge secrets about Fox’s internal workings during the 2020 election, some of them truly damning, but it looks like the trial is over before it even began. Just one day after the jury had been selected and hours after a special master had been appointed by the judge to investigate Fox’s lawyers—and as we were getting our popcorn ready—Fox and Dominion reached an out-of-court settlement. 
   

• Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million, presumably to avoid the years of litigation necessary to fight a case they were likely to lose, as well as any subsequent appeals (the prospect of further humiliation probably didn’t make the trial look very appetizing, either). Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis announced that the case had been “resolved” after bringing the jury and 12 alternates back into the courtroom after a protracted break in proceedings. 
   

• The massive cash settlement is good for Dominion (and let’s be honest, any loss for Fox is a win for humanity) but it’s far less than the full $1.6 billion originally sought by the voting systems company. Dominion attorney Stephen Shackleford said: “Money is accountability and we got that today from Fox.” That much is true: It may be less than they asked for, but they’re getting it now, and Fox can’t appeal an out-of-court settlement. Still, it appears that part of the settlement agreement is that Fox News will not have to acknowledge the lies they knowingly spread to their millions of viewers about Dominion in the aftermath of the 2020 election. So we won’t get the satisfaction—or the benefit to society writ large—of hearing Fox News hosts report that Fox News hosts lied.

Despite Fox’s best efforts to spin the settlement as a victory, most of us can see it for what it is: an admission of guilt in the face of a mountain of evidence against them. 
 

• Some pundits have said that not even a public admission of guilt or the the loss of a jury trial could convince the Fox News faithful that Trump really did lose in 2020, but we’re not so sure. Fox News Host and commentator Howard Kurtz admitted that “It’s been a very rough week” for the network and reported the settlement on-air, after having been previously barred from covering the trial by the network. He read Fox’s statement: “Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished first amendment rights. While Dominion has pushed irrelevant and misleading information to generate headlines, FOX News remains steadfast in protecting the rights of a free press…” Lol. Yep, that’s the kind of spin we’ve come to know and hate from the network, all right. 

• Evidence unearthed during the discovery phase of this not-quite-a-trial has still had huge implications for Fox. Last month, a survey commissioned by Variety found that, as a direct result of the internal Fox communications coming to light, 21 percent of viewers lost trust in the network, and 13 percent no longer believe the election was stolen. One in five(!!) of their viewers lost trust in one of the most socially destructive forces in the United States. Like die-hards of any ideology, many of them will remain committed to the Big Lie, but those numbers show that there is, in fact, a substantial persuadable margin among the network’s own viewers. 

Where we are now was best summarized by Crooked’s own News & Politics contributor Max Fisher: “The trial may be settled, but the questions it would have raised—about media liability in an era of disinformation, about Fox’s eroding power of the right—are not.” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson echoed that sentiment, saying that while today is a victory, “disinformation will not go away.” Another voting system company, Smartmatic, still has their defamation lawsuit against Fox teed up and ready to go, and that’s not even close to the end of the network’s legal woes.

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In the past year or so, we’ve covered numerous investigations into illegal child labor in American manufacturing plants that serve some of the country’s largest companies. Now, there appears to be a coordinated effort by Republicans not merely to avoid cracking down on child labor, but to legalize it. Sounds right for them! Last month, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) signed a law making it easier for companies in the state to employ children under 16. Early on Tuesday morning after a marathon session, the Iowa State Senate passed a law that would permit the employment of children as young as 14 and would let their paymasters work them for longer hours, including in jobs from which they are currently prohibited, like serving alcohol and working in meat freezers and on roofs. The vote was 32-17 with two Republicans breaking with their colleagues to join all Democrats in opposition. The State House of Representatives still has to pass the bill (and is expected to) before it goes to Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA). Republican supporters of loosening child labor laws claim that jobs will “teach children valuable skills,” but it looks more like a money grab for corporate interests that don’t want to pay adults a livable wage. Iowa’s minimum wage is the federal minimum of $7.25, and a full-time worker at that wage would sit just at the federal poverty line.

A group of conservative, anti-abortion doctors asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the revocation of the 23-year-long FDA approval of mifepristone handed down last week by an extremist Trump-appointed judge. 

Southwest Airlines briefly grounded all of their planes nationwide on Tuesday due to an “intermittent technology issue” according to the airline, leading to more than 1,800 delayed flights just four months after its much larger system crash over Christmas. 

Elon Musk announced that he is planning to launch an artificial intelligence platform that he’s named “TruthGPT” (absolutely fucking kill me) to challenge Microsoft and Google’s AI platforms. He complained about the alleged partisanship of OpenAI…in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News :). 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has joined a growing number of Republicans in pledging to block Senate Democrats from replacing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on the Judiciary Committee. 

According to banking executives, consumers are starting to fall behind on their credit card and loan payments. Maybe because interest rates are punishing and wages have stagnated for decades? Who can say. 

Don’t worry, though, banks are making enormous profits from the high interest rates. Thank goodness!! 

Speaking of very moral banks, a federal judge ruled that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will be deposed in an upcoming class action suit. The plaintiffs are seeking to hold the bank accountable for its relationship with sex offender to the stars and former client Jeffrey Epstein. The deposition is expected to take place in May.

McCurtain Gazette-News reporter Bruce Willingham secretly recorded officials in McCurtain County, OK after citizens made their way out of a public meeting last month. The audio is unconscionably damning. A county commissioner was heard complaining that public officials could no longer yank Black people out of jail, “take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a…rope,” according to the Gazette-News, which published the recording and a transcript. County sheriff Kevin Clardy allegedly mocked a local woman who had recently burned to death in a house fire while trying to save her two dogs, likening her to “barbecue.” County Commissioner Mark Jennings and Clardy appeared to suggest murdering Willingham, who had reported on their misconduct. On Sunday, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) called for the immediate resignation of four officials who were part of that conversation, including county commissioner Jennings, Clardy, the sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning, and county jail administrator Larry Hendrix. The governor said he was “appalled and disheartened,” and told the Washington Post in a statement: “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place.”

The U.S government has offered $3.5 billion in grants to build carbon capture factories, so far the largest global effort to help curb climate change through direct air capture. 

The IRS answered 2.4 million(!) more taxpayer calls this year than in 2022, an almost 600% increase in live assistance thanks to funding for 5,000 new IRS staff. Crazy how when you actually fund a government service, it works??

Several high-profile cis female athletes like Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird have signed a letter in opposition to a proposed blanket ban on trans athletes in sports. 


Students and faculty at Ralph Yarl’s high school in Kansas City, MO walked out of their class in support of 16-year-old Yarl, who was shot in the head by an 84-year-old White man because he went to the wrong house to pick up his brothers.