The Devastating Loss of a Magnificent Possibility
Dominion Could Have Shut Down Fox News Forever. Instead, It Took the Money.
The bottom line—pun intended—is that Dominion was in it for two things principally:
(1) Clearing its name of a hideous onslaught of lies fabricated by Fox News to the unending glee of Donald Trump and the Radical Right, and
(2) Laughing and crying all the way to the bank. The agony Fox caused Dominion and its employees and its owners and the states who used Dominion voting systems is incalculable and a trauma that will stay with all these people forever.
The bottom line is that Dominion got both. And Fox got away with journalistic incitement to riot and accessory to murder—and I say that because without the lies Fox told, lies that enflamed and engorged the “Stop the Steal” lie told by Donald Trump—the people who died on January 6th would still be alive. They were murdered, and Fox was an accessory to if not the primary driver of these murders and an attempted insurrection that saw the Capitol of the United States of America besieged and its Senators and Congressional Representatives hiding under their desks while Donald Trump cheered in his office and refused to call in the law enforcement that could have stopped the attack—and even prevented it to begin with.
For Dominion, there were two possibilities here:
(1) Settle. Which is what they did.
(2) Go to trial and end forever any viability New Corp and Fox News have with the American public.
The Magnificent Possibility
What might have happened in this trial would have put Dominion Voting Systems in every American history book published from this moment until the sun burns out.
Dominion could have shut down the most infamously and maliciously corrupt, deceitful, false, greedy, hostile, and overtly politically manipulative “news” outlet in history. Dominion did not.
Dominion could have sucked the energy out of the Dark Side of the Force with the purest voice of truth uttered from the mouths of Fox’s very own stunningly evil Gang of Five: Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Maria Bartiromo—any one of which is to newscasting what the corrupt Clarence Thomas is to the Supreme Court. Dominion did not.
By exposing the corruption of Fox News in way that would have been undeniably and indelibly anchored into the bedrock of the American psyche, Dominion could have begun a healing completely unparalleled in American history. Dominion did not.
Had it gone the distance, Dominion may well have ensured Democratic victory in the next presidential, Senate and House races. Dominion did not.
And had it stayed the course, despite an opportunity to reap the largest defamation settlement in history, Dominion could have set a new bar for corporate responsibility and dedication to the public good that would have been unparalleled in the annals of commerce. Dominion did not.
Why?
Katy Tur of MSNBC may have nailed Dominion’s problem going to trial in one sentence: it was haunted by the possibility that among the jurors there was at least one liar—someone who had claimed a lack of prejudice in the case but whose intent was to craft a jury nullification not unlike the one that flipped the O. J. Simpson murder verdict. Fox’s advantage in settling was obvious: they avoided publicly exposing their sleaze—and, in addition, they got out of it without even having to make a public—and publicized—apology.
And dominion got the money—and, in the final analysis, taking the money and running was easier and more profitable than going to trial.
So Dominion got the money. And we got nothing.
The Blowback
It’s possible that Dominion’s stock will rise for a while now. But it’s also possible that in every state where Republicans control the mechanics of elections, Dominion will lose every franchise it ever had. That may, in the end, turn out to be as much money lost as the money it just gained.
Message to Dominion
Money isn’t everything.
I know you don’t believe me, but it isn’t.
I grieve for what you might have been.
—Morgaan Sinclair for PolitiSage