![]() With its reputation-and money-on the line, what is next for Fox News and the Murdoch family’s hold on the company? And what could the various pending defamation cases portend for libel law in the United States? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Fox News is being sued by Smartmatic for $2.7 billion in damages for defaming the voting-technology company in its coverage of the 2020 election, and a former producer has filed a pair of lawsuits against the company alleging a hostile work environment and claiming that the network’s lawyers pushed her to give misleading testimony in the Dominion case. Even as Fox was able to resolve its suit with Dominion just hours after jury selection, the network still faces other legal challenges. Although the court found that Fox aired falsehoods about Dominion, apologizing or retracting those falsehoods on air was reportedly not part of the settlement deal. that it’s justice that’s going to prevail.”Īt the eleventh hour, Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems resolved a defamation suit over the network’s coverage of the 2020 election, evading weeks of trial that would have brought the network’s biggest names, including Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, to the witness stand. “People have to believe when they go in front of a court-and in particular the Supreme Court-that they’re getting a fair shake . . . “The glue that holds us together is the rule of law in this country,” she says. ![]() A deepening public distrust in the integrity of the Supreme Court, Mayer thinks, is dangerous for democracy. She notes that other Justices, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have accepted large gifts from politically connected donors. ![]() “And I think it stretches common sense to think that a judge could be independent when he takes that much money from one person.” Mayer co-wrote the book “Strange Justice,” about Clarence Thomas, almost thirty years ago, and last year reported on Ginni Thomas’s influence in Washington. Judges “are supposed to be honest, they’re supposed to be independent,” Jane Mayer tells David Remnick. ![]() But a cascade of revelations published by ProPublica concerning Justice Clarence Thomas-island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron, undisclosed real-estate transactions-raises questions about his proximity to power and money. In theory, the Justices of the Supreme Court are immune to influence, with no campaigns to finance and no higher positions to angle for. ![]()
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