Reuters World News - Fox digs deep to avoid court and Tesla’s China challenge

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

A pricey, 11th hour settlement saves Rupert Murdoch from taking the stand but is it the end of Fox News’ troubles? As the Shanghai auto show gets underway we look at why Tesla has ended up in the slow lane in China. Plus, the messy battle between Ron DeSantis and Disney is set to get…messier. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices.  You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt-out of targeted advertising *This podcast was republished to remove an incorrect company name. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The truth matters. Lies have consequences. $787,500,000. That's what airing false claims of vote rigging in the 2020 election is now costing Fox News. But it's also bought the network out of a potentially bruising courtroom fight. We're in the Delaware courthouse for the latest on this 11th hour twist. And as the Shanghai Auto Show gets underway, we look at what Tesla's tailgating Chinese rivals mean for the once elite automaker.

It's Wednesday, April 19th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. And I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. We begin in Delaware and an abrupt ending to the defamation case between Fox News and Dominion voting systems. Our very own Lila de Kretzer was in the courtroom and is here to explain. what the settlement means. Hey, Leela, tell us what happened. We had expected opening statements to start

after lunch. There wasn't an empty seat. And then we got in the room and suddenly the judge took both parties back into his chambers. Then the judge came out and said the parties had agreed and dismissed the jury. So later, we learned that the settlement was actually for $787.85 million. Just to put this in context, defamation cases don't usually go anywhere near that number. So is this a clear-cut win for Dominion, for Fox, for either party? It's hard to say, you know, on Fox's side, they don't have to put Rupert Murdoch on the stand or their talent. They also have not yet had to issue a formal apology in any form. We did hear from host Neil Cavito on Fox.

He read out a statement. The settlement then avoids a trial on allegations. Fox hoax and gas amplified claims around the voting technology behind the 2020 election. It is a done deal. It is a settlement. And it for at least Fox appears to be over. There's a couple of big winners here.

And one of them is Staples Street Capital. Stable Street bought its 76% stake of Dominion for $38 million in 2000. And obviously this figure is more than 20 times that. On the other side, Fox has plenty of cash on hand. They've got about $4 billion on hand after their first quarter earnings. The issue, though, is they have other cases. Whether this sets the standard is going to be interesting, and we have to see how that plays out. So does this settlement change anything about the way media companies might cover the 2024 election? Well, it's not clear. Just remember, Fox hasn't apologised for what they did, and they've always defended how they covered the election and what their commentators said as being protected under the First Amendment. But what this means in terms of how Fox presents politics remains to be saying. Thanks so much, Leela. Thanks, Chris.

Now for the other stories making headlines around the world. Hopes of a 24-hour ceasefire between warring factions in Sudan have been shattered. Instead, fighting continued, with the sound of heavy gunfire and warplanes in the skies above Khartoum. The regular army and the rival paramilitary, the rapid support forces, issued statements accusing each other of failing to respect the truce. A fire at a Beijing hospital has killed 29 people, most of them patients. The blaze tore through a wing for critically ill people. Initial checks showed the fire was caused by inflammable painting material, left an award under renovation.

Videos on social media show people using tied bed sheets to lower themselves to safety. South Korea's president says the country could extend its support for Ukraine if it comes under a large-scale civilian attack. Yunso Kyole signaled the shift in his stance against arming Ukraine in an interview with Reuters. South Korea's only supplied Ukraine with humanitarian and economic aid so far. You can read more on their interview at Reuters.com. One person is dead and five more are injured after a parking garage collapse in New York City.

The structural collapse in Manhattan's financial district left crumpled cars stacked on top of each other. The man who shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in Kansas City has surrendered to perverse. lease. 84-year-old Andrew Lester is being held on a $200,000 bond. Yarl was shot twice by Lester after the black teen mistakenly knocked on his door. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is once again trying to out-maneuver Disney. His newly installed oversight board is meeting today to try and take back control of the Mouse House. DeSantis has been fuming over a last-minute maneuver from Disney that would essentially render the new board toothless. Well, that's not going to work. That's not going to fly.

This battle between the state's top elected official and one of its biggest employers has become quite messy. So we asked entertainment correspondent Don Chimalusky to help us untangle it. The new board, the state-appointed board, discovered that the previous board had effectively tied its hands and that it committed it to sort of following the development plan that had been put in place and also to provide infrastructure improvements to support the expansion of the park. It won't be an understatement to call that another explosive moment in Disney's relationship with Ron DeSantis in the Florida legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. Ron DeSantis appeared Monday at a press conference to announce that legislation would be introduced

in Tallahassee to unwind this developer agreement. And this morning, the Oversight Board meets to consider further measures. It has been both a tense moment for a company that is among the largest employers in Florida. They have 75,000 people working for the Walt Disney Company in Central Florida. But it is also a moment of political ambition for Ron DeSantis, who has discovered that his campaign against woke Disney has won him praise among some of the conservative voters who will vote in the Republican presidential primary. Thanks, Don. Oh, you're welcome. Disney isn't the only company with a lot going on.

It's a busy week for corporate earnings. Carmel Crimmons is here to tell us what's going on in the markets. That's right, Kim. Investors have been bracing for a gloomy earnings season, and it's definitely kicked off on a downbeat note. Johnson and Johnson fell after a reported a cautious outlook for this year, and Goldman Sachs also fell after it missed out on a bond trading bananas on Wall Street. Netflix has a warning for US viewers who share passwords. They're going to come for you this quarter, and they're going to be looking for money.

the streaming giant is also ending its mail-order DVD service that launched its business 25 years ago. It's going to ship the last discs in those little red envelopes in September. We've got more results today with Tesla, IBM and Morgan Stanley reporting. Hear that? That's the sound of an electric car starting up. But with Tesla's Q1 earnings expected later today, will they wish for a few more revs to stay in the fast lane? And with shiny new models being unveiled by rivals at the. this week's Shanghai Motor Show, do they need to step on the gas? Let's speak to global auto

correspondent Joe White. Hi, Joe. Hi, Kim. How much of a squeeze is being put on Tesla right now in terms of its pricing? Can it keep up? Well, that's the question. They've had a premium pricing because they had the best electric vehicles anywhere by far. That has started to change, especially in the Chinese market where you have companies like BYD, X-Pong, Neo, Gili's Zeker brand. These companies have come on very strong to the point where BYD is now the number one electric vehicle in China by a good margin. And so Tesla is really starting to feel the heat, especially in China, somewhat in Europe and in the United States, because again, you've got more competitors, more models, more choice. What is this going to do to the brand? Because Tesla has always positioned itself

as the elite electric car. Is it shifting away from that? I think that is a very central question, because automakers typically like to set prices and forget them. Tesla is engaged in this sort of dynamic pricing. That's a different way of selling the vehicle, but it also puts pressure on the company because someone who bought a Tesla Model Y for $55,000 bucks six months ago, now the new one is $45,000 or $48,000, and their car isn't worth what it was before.

What about Tesla's big claim of going entirely driverless? Is that ever going to eventuate? Well, ever is a long time. time, but it's not going to happen in the next 12 months. Tesla's full self-driving or FSD system is under investigation in the United States because of a number of accidents that have been linked to drivers misusing this system. Now, in China, Tesla is trying to get permission to enable FSD this driving assistance system, but it has not gotten permission from the Chinese government to do that. Meanwhile, Chinese companies have gotten permission to start rolling out their

system and start hoovering up the data about what the roads are like and what's going on with traffic that you need to make those systems work. A couple three years ago, you would have said Tesla had a lead in this sort of advanced driver assistance technology. I would not say that right now. I'd say if anything in some level, Tesla is running behind. All right, Joe White. Thanks so much. Thank you. Any time. That's it for Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow. Remember, you can follow us on your favorite podcast platform or download the Reuters app.