The trial in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 election is expected to begin in Delaware on Tuesday (April 18), ABC News reported. According to the news outlet, the jury selection in the case has been underway since April 13 and will conclude soon, after which opening arguments will be made. The whole process has been taking place behind closed doors with Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis privately questioning prospective jurors. Around 300 potential jurors have been summoned to the court — out of this, a panel of 12 jurors and 12 alternates will be selected. After the 2020 presidential election results were announced, Dominion came under attack by the allies of President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed that the voting-tech company rigged its voting machines to help elect Joe Biden as the next president. Dominion has accused Fox News of deliberately airing these baseless claims and alleged that the television network’s coverage tarnished its image. The libel case is being closely followed as its outcome might not only severely impact Fox News’ reputation and finances but also have huge implications for the First Amendment to the US Constitution — it protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. What is the case against Fox News? Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion dollar libel suit against Fox News, claiming that its reputation was damaged in the months after the 2020 election after the television network “repeatedly aired false statements that it was part of a conspiracy to fraudulently elect Joe Biden,” The Washington Post reported. Various media reports show that Fox News’ hosts accused the company’s voting machines of running a secret algorithm that could switch votes from one candidate to another. They also claimed that Dominion was founded in Venezuela in a bid to help that country’s leftist leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections. The voting-tech company in its court filing said although senior Fox executives and on-air hosts expressed their scepticism and even disdain regarding baseless allegations against Dominion, they didn’t do much to change the content of their shows. The New York Times reported, “Dominion lawyers have laid out how they plan to show that senior Fox executives hatched a plan after the election to lure back viewers who had switched to rival hard-right networks, which were initially more sympathetic than Fox was to Mr. Trump’s voter-fraud claims.” Meanwhile, Fox News has argued that the voting-tech company has provided no evidence showing that the network's executive chairman Rupert Murdoch; his son Lachlan Murdoch, who is Fox Corporation’s executive chairman; or other top executives directly ordered to air election-fraud claims on the network. It has also said that allegations by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and Fox News’ hosts had not endorsed the falsehoods about Dominion. Most notably, the network said that its commentary and reportage on the 2020 presidential elections were protected under the First Amendment. “Far from reporting the allegations as true, hosts informed their audiences at every turn that the allegations were just allegations that would need to be proven in court in short order if they were going to impact the outcome of the election,” Fox lawyers said in their filing, NYT reported. “And to the extent, some hosts commented on the allegations, that commentary is an independently protected opinion.” Can Dominion win the case against Fox News? Defamation cases against news outlets aren’t uncommon in the US but they’re mostly junked by courts as it is quite difficult to prove libel in the American legal system. This is because of the Supreme Court’s 1964 judgement in New York Times v Sullivan case, which set a high legal bar for a public figure to establish that they have been defamed. NYT said, “A plaintiff has to prove not just that a news organisation published false information, but that it did so with “actual malice,” either by knowing that the information was false or displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.” Dominion claims it has enough evidence, in the form of text messages and emails, to prove that Fox News hosts and executives knew that there was no evidence to prove the conspiracy theories against the voting-tech company but aired them anyway. Even legal experts suggest that Dominion’s case is much stronger than most defamation lawsuits. However, it would still be a daunting task for them to win. An analysis published in NYT said, “Proving this in a legal sense is more complicated than proving it in the court of public opinion.” What can be the implication of the defamation lawsuit? Observers believe that the outcome of Dominion's libel case against Fox News will realign the boundaries of press freedom. Fox News has said if it loses, the lawsuit will stifle free press as it will expose other news outlets to litigation risks. In a statement, the network’s spokesperson said, “A free-flowing, robust American discourse depends on First Amendment protections for the press’ news gathering and reporting”. But not everyone agrees with this argument. Many analysts, including First Amendment experts, say the New York Times v Sullivan judgement has given too much leeway to news outlets, which should face harsher consequences for propagating misinformation. It isn’t the first time that calls to reconsider the high standards for proving defamation have surfaced in the US — Conservatives have been demanding this for decades now. But in recent years, even those who see such defamation suits as a tactic of the powerful to silence their critics want to weaken the precedent, especially with the prevalence of misinformation. “Fox’s actions in covering the 2020 election were so egregious, the argument goes, that any legal standard that protected them would be no standard at all: For First Amendment protections to endure, news organisations need to be held accountable for knowingly spreading false and damaging information,” NYT said in a report.
