Fox News vs. Dominion Trial Delayed

The defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems Against Fox News is Finally going to trial. However, the Delaware judge overseeing it has just delayed the first hearing.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis stated that the trial, including jury selection, would be continued until Tuesday, and that he would announce the delay in court on Monday.

The Associated Press has noted that the trial has received international interest and that it was scheduled to start Monday morning with jury selection and opening statements.

In the lawsuit, Dominion alleges that the voting machine company was defamed by Fox News and its guests by spreading misinformation about the 2020 elections, particularly singling out Dominion for allegedly rigging the elections against former President Donald Trump.

Dominion subpoenaed phone records from various Fox News hosts, staff, and executives, and these showed that personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham knew that what they were presenting on air were lies yet still spread them anyway. Carlson in particular showed his contempt directed toward Donald Trump in those private messages.

Carlson also showed that he was more concerned about Fox's stock prices plummeting in telling the truth, rather than reporting what really happened.

Fox News Expected to Defend Its Election Lies in Court

Experts are saying that this case is unusual as unlike most plaintiffs in a defamation case, Dominion's case is very strong as the voting machine company has produced "as close to smoking-gun evidence as one can get," according to The Guardian.

Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted in a November 2020 email that what Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been saying on Fox News programming was "Really crazy stuff. And damaging."

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson also stated in a private message that another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, had been lying. Carlson reportedly stated while he knows she is lying, their viewers will still believe her, saying, "It's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it."

The election lies spread by Trump on right-wing networks such as Fox News have now integrated into the fabric of the Republican Party. This resulted in a wave of harassment against election officials, as well as efforts to overturn election results.

This all culminated in the January 6 Capitol Insurrection where Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the elections. Many of these Trump supporters believed in the lies spread by Fox News.

Political Misinformation on Trial With Fox News vs. Dominion Case

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for 1.6 billion dollars in this case. However, it is not just Fox News that is on trial, but also it's spreading of misinformation in 2020, as noted by the New York Times.

RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah, told the New York Times that this case is becoming "the most important defamation case in generations".

Jones added that "this conscious, corporate lie did to the country and its people." The first amendment scholar stated that Dominion wants to prove that "this lie was damaging not just to the individual voting machine company but to the entirety of the electorate and to the democracy itself."

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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