This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 19th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown.

Fox News has settled with Dominion Voting Systems

after the news network knowingly presented baseless claims about the company

to its audience, all in the wake of the 2020 election.

The settlement of more than three quarters of a billion dollars, according to Cato's Walter

Olson, should take the wind out of the

sales of those who want to make it easier to sue media companies. We spoke today.

Fox News engaged in a seemingly continuous stream of discussions about Dominion voting systems,

the company that built in so many voting machines in the United States

suggesting that in fact the election had been stolen,

that there had been enough voter fraud,

there had been enough voter fraud, there had been enough questions raised about vote

totals that Fox felt comfortable going on air regularly for quite a while talking about Dominion as kind of a bad guy.

Indeed, claiming not only that Dominion was somehow negligent in allowing others to

rig the election but that its machines were themselves purposely rigged in order to

change votes. These were very specific allegations and when the discovery came out in which Fox executives

and hosts had been put under oath and depositions, it came to show that Dominion had a tremendously strong case, really an ideal sort of

of case to bring if you were going to try to win damages for defamation because it had a wide range of false statements and the

judge ruled that an earlier stage that the false that he had been established to the point

where Fox could no longer deny in a later trial that they were false.

They were uttered not only by guests and people often have a somewhat uneasy feeling, you know,

...