Sunday, April 23, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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There was not one apology from Fox News.
As much as most of America expected Rupert Murdoch to apologize to the country for lying and damn lying about the 2020 election, it was never going to happen. Not because he and all the rest of the fake news people at Fox aren’t responsible for deliberately misleading their viewers — because they are — but because telling its viewers that they had been duped was bad for Fox’s business. And we couldn’t have that, could we?
If Fox admitted to its bald-faced lies, even the rubes who have been sucked in all these years by an agenda designed by Fox owners to fool all of its viewers all of the time would have to admit they were duped. And if Fox and its friends would lie about something so monumental as a presidential election, what wouldn’t they do to keep their MAGA millions in check?
So it was no surprise — especially given the mountains of evidence of reckless disregard and knowing falsity that crammed the record in the case against Murdoch et al. — that there was a last-minute settlement.
And, no, Dominion Voting Systems did not owe the American public a Fox apology. It sued for damages to its business, and Murdoch owned up to the wrongdoing.
So, no, there wasn’t an apology from Fox — not the simple, straightforward kind that we all recognize. But there were 787,500,000 apologies in the form of U.S. dollars. And, if anyone thinks that that kind of money doesn’t come with an implicit acknowledgement of wrongdoing, then I have a story about a 2020 election that was rigged to sell them.
Sure, Dominion would have loved an on-air apology — probably from Rupert himself — but that was not the offer. So they took the money and ran to the nearest bank to salt it away for the next time they get between Rupert and his ability to make money off a small but passionate group of Americans who just don’t want to know any better. That’s the only reason I can think of why Fox News devotees continue to watch the lies.
In the meantime, there is a larger story to tell. And that is the one in which a Goliath of a company — lets call it a fox — tries to destroy an American business — a David, if you will — because by doing so it will send millions of dollars to its bottom line.
So the David in this story goes to court. The one place in America where everyone is considered equal in the eyes of the law. And the lawyers start spending millions and millions of dollars pursuing the case.
It’s a good thing Dominion had those millions or it would have been out of luck. If Fox was willing to spend almost $800 million to buy its way out of a devastating verdict in the court of public opinion, how much do you think it was willing to spend dragging the plaintiff through the judicial system?
This is all about dollars and cents, and the common sense that one would expect when grievances are laid before the bar are just the stuff of which dreams and wishes are made.
A little guy — if Fox had turned its guns on him — wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d be broke before he got to the court clerk’s office.
That’s why no one should fault Dominion for taking the dough. They took the risk and won. They owe the public nothing except voting machines that work.
The sad part about all this is that we will probably see this happen again. There is just too much money to be made selling pillows and survival equipment to the aggrieved in society for Fox and its ilk to change their ways.
So in the end, what have we learned?
Fox should have learned to stay off of emails and texts. It should have learned to pay attention to the few journalists it employs who have a conscience and a sense of fair play. But I am afraid all it has learned is to calculate its downside a little better the next time it wants to gaslight the gullible.
As for those who have been and continue to be glued to the Fox News TV screens across this country, they should have learned that a bit of circumspection could have avoided so much of the harm caused to this country in 2020 because Fox would not lie to them unless it thought it could.
In the end, you see, we are responsible for this republic. And that means we are the people who must hold the charlatans in our midst accountable.
We can’t expect that job to be the dominion of others.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
