Tangle - The Fox News settlement.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Dominion settlement. Yesterday, Fox News and Dominion settled their lawsuit in a rather stunning turn of events. It happened late yesterday afternoon, and today we are going to jump in. Before we do, though, I want to give a quick correction. Yesterday, we erroneously referred to Matt Walsh as a reporter at the Daily Caller. In fact, Walsh works for the Daily Wire. No big secret about how this happened. Both are conservative

Starting point is 00:01:58 digital publications with a similar ethos and similar names, and I just had a brain flub and my editors missed it, so shame on them, really. This is our 80th correction in Tangle's 194-week history and our first correction since March 13th. I track corrections and place them at the top of the podcast in an effort to maximize transparency with our readers. All right, with that correction out of the way, we're going to jump in today with our quick hits. First up, a Russian court denied an appeal by Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who remains detained on charges of spying. Number two, more than 185 people have been killed in Sudan after the fourth consecutive day of fighting over its capital between opposition groups and the military. A previously announced 24-hour ceasefire has also

Starting point is 00:02:51 failed. Number three, an 84-year-old Kansas City man who shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarrell in the head turned himself into police. He was released on bond. Yarrell, who is Black, is recovering in the hospital. Number four, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, began a round of layoffs today with a focus on technical employees. The layoffs were first reported in March. Number five, the FDA updated its Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine authorization and will now use a one-shot bivalent vaccine for all doses. An astonishing settlement reached between the legal teams of Fox News and Dominion voting systems. $787.5 million ballots, one of the

Starting point is 00:03:47 largest payouts in history. Dominion was asking for 1.6 billion, but this is still a substantial figure. It's a massive number, and this was a foregone conclusion. This case was always going to settle. When Rupert Murdoch's lawyer arrived at court, it was with a poker face. No hint from veteran attorney Dan Webb that behind the scenes, settlement talks were running to the wire. On Tuesday, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle their defamation lawsuit and avoid a trial, marking the largest ever defamation settlement in U.S. history. The voting machine company had sued Fox News for $1.6 billion,

Starting point is 00:04:32 arguing that Fox damaged its reputation by airing libelous theories that its equipment had switched votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden during the 2020 election. While defamation cases rarely go to trial, the settlement was still dramatic, coming just hours before opening arguments were set to begin. Dominion's lawsuit sought to prove that Fox acted with malice in airing the allegations it knew to be false and would have required Dominion to meet the high standards necessary to win a defamation lawsuit in the United States. Fox News has already claimed that it was simply covering newsworthy claims from associates of former President Donald Trump, but Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had

Starting point is 00:05:10 already concluded that Fox aired false claims about Dominion. In court filings, Dominion released volumes of internal emails and text messages between high-ranking Fox executives and some of its most visible on-air personalities. Those messages showed executives and hosts expressing fear that they were losing audience members by not giving air time the claims the election was stolen, despite their belief that the claims were not true. The internal communication set off months of critical media coverage of the network, including here at Tangle. There are links to our previous coverage of this in today's episode description. Many free speech and defamation experts believed Dominion had a strong case,

Starting point is 00:05:54 but were skeptical that they could prove to a jury Fox executives were making explicit decisions about airing libel. A trial could have forced the network's founder, Rupert Murdoch, and hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity to testify. The truth matters. Lies have consequences, Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said to reporters. Fox said the settlement showed its continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably instead of through the acrimony of a divisive trial allows the country to move forward from these issues. As of Wednesday morning, it is still unclear what other conditions are included in the $787 million settlement, such as whether Fox would concede amounts of wrongdoing. The Wall Street Journal, which has the same owners as Fox, reported it will not have to make an on-air apology.

Starting point is 00:06:38 While Fox acknowledged in a statement the court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false, they did not apologize. The settlement amounts to just over one quarter of Fox's $2.96 billion of revenue reported last year. Separately, Fox still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic USA, another voting machine company which was the subject of similar on-air claims. A judge in that case recently allowed the suit to move forward. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions to the settlement from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying.

Starting point is 00:07:34 Many on the left say Fox settled because it was guilty, and many are disappointed that the case didn't go to trial and force further internal disclosures. Some question whether Fox learned its lesson and wonder how it will act going forward. Others argue Fox lost this battle but has won the war. In Slate, Justin Peters speculated on why Fox settled and what we can take away from this. However it came to be, the settlement was a real shock to reporters who expected a long and probably comical trial to expose Fox broadcast blatant lies alleging Dominion had somehow manipulated the 2020 election. The settlement doesn't destroy the alternative universe Fox was in,

Starting point is 00:08:09 it just makes it a little bit more expensive for Fox News to live on its farthest out edges, Peter said. While the network may now think twice about letting the absolute biggest loons come on air to tell the absolute stupidest lies, it would be foolhardy to presume that this settlement will catalyze any meaningful crisis of conscience at Fox HQ. With the 2024 presidential election in sight, it's a safe bet that Fox will still spend the next 19 months doing what it does best, building multi-day episode arcs out of isolated anecdotes and unwarranted inference, demonizing liberals in the left while pretending that the right is under constant siege, and working its viewers into crisis states over minor cultural controversies. Fox News might now

Starting point is 00:08:50 think twice about definitively crossing the line into actionable defamation, but that's an outcome the network can learn to live with. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg said Fox had to settle. The settlement is deeply disappointing, but not surprising, because Fox had no viable defense, Goldberg said. Part of Fox's sinister on-air brilliance is the way it encases its audience in comprehensive alternative reality, Goldberg wrote. Now, for once, the network would be forced to account for itself outside the right-wing bubble. How it would possibly do so was a matter of great suspense. The judge had already ruled it was crystal clear Fox had lied about Dominion. Judge Eric Davis also prohibited

Starting point is 00:09:31 Fox from arguing that the network was merely reporting on allegations made by Donald Trump and his lawyers, which Fox contended were newsworthy whether or not they were true. This meant the case would turn not on whether Fox had aired defamatory falsehoods, which Davis determined it had, but on whether in airing defamatory falsehoods, Fox had displayed actual malice, essentially reckless disregard for the truth. Dominion presented overwhelming evidence for that reckless disregard during discovery. In The Atlantic, David A. Graham said Fox lost the battle but won the war. It isn't often that winning $787.5 million is an underwhelming result. But then again, the defamation case of the century doesn't come around often, Graham said. The result is costly but bearable for Fox, whose primacy within right-wing

Starting point is 00:10:18 media has been restored while its competitors have faded since the 2020 election. Dominguez's choice to settle comes at a great disappointment to many critics of Fox, though it is probably a smart financial decision. For the critics, this case was about democracy and disinformation and provided an opportunity to hold Fox accountable for years of broadcasting hogwash. For Dominion, it was primarily about business, Graham said. No matter how lofty the language its spokespeople used, the company didn't sue to fix the American media landscape. Still, Dominion did the public a service by showing the public Tucker Carlson hated Donald

Starting point is 00:10:54 Trump and knew lawyer Sidney Powell was lying, while even Rupert Murdoch deemed Trump's lies about the election being stolen crazy stuff. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right are happy about the settlement and criticize coverage of it. Some say the settlement is a win-win for everyone, avoiding any infringement on press freedom but holding Fox responsible. Others call out networks criticizing Fox News who have also misled their viewers. In the Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier said the Fox News settlement is the best result for everybody. A bad precedent could have been set if the case had reached a verdict for either side. Without a settlement, there was almost no possible outcome that would have avoided great mischief down the line, Hillier wrote.

Starting point is 00:11:49 Fox was wrong in how it presented Trump's lies that the 2020 election was stolen. If they had escaped the trial without punishment, then unscrupulous media outlets far and wide would have taken the result as a green light for pernicious behavior. Yet, a decision against Fox would have narrowed First Amendment protections in ways antithetical to freedom, Hillier said. If the Supreme Court ruled a news outlet liable for defamation for material presented as an opinion rather than as a hard fact, by guests rather than by the actual personnel of the outlet, when the guests literally represented the President of the United States, arguing that the very workings of constitutional republicanism were at stake, and without any evidence of the news team's actual animus against the allegedly defamed subject, then press freedoms would have been far more parlous than for decades

Starting point is 00:12:34 they had been assumed to be. In red state, the blogger Banshee mocked CNN for being furious that Fox News was able to settle. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

Starting point is 00:13:02 and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six

Starting point is 00:13:29 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. You'd think nearly a billion dollars in damages would be enough to satiate, but CNN is really, really upset that this ended up not going to trial. Oliver Darcy and Alison Camerota took to the airways in the aftermath and rhetorically shook their fists at the sky, Banshee said. It feels pretty weird to be dunking on CNN, given that Fox News did actually take a massive blow here. $787.5 million is a ton of money, even for a large national news outlet. Yet the hosts over on the liberal network are just

Starting point is 00:14:12 so absurd that they always manage to outpace reality. CNN's Darcy actually says that going to trial would have been a trial balloon for democracy. What does that even mean, Banshee asked. This is the United States of America. Even when free speech turns into defamation, it's not a threat to democracy. To assert that is outright delusional. In the end, this was not about settling a dispute for CNN. It was about trying to destroy Fox News, the network that constantly dominates CNN in the ratings. Here's an idea for them. Instead of constantly trying to get ahead by silencing other networks, how about the executives over at CNN grow a backbone and start firing the overpaid, unpopular hosts that populate the lineup? The spectator Stephen Miller said Fox

Starting point is 00:14:57 misled their audience, but they are far from the only network with an integrity problem. Take the last honest newsman, Jake Tapper, who fell oddly silent when it was revealed his former boss at CNN was working side by side with former New York governor Andrew Cuomo during his much-heralded COVID press conference, Miller said. At MSNBC, they are still trying to find Joy Reid's bigoted time-traveling hackers, and Rachel Maddow still hasn't come up with the Trump tax return she promised. Nicole Wallace is yet to answer for promoting the bogus Russia narratives fed to her by Hamilton 68. There are even fresh allegations of plagiarism against Mehdi Hassan. Maybe former Biden press secretary and now MSNBC talking head Jen Psaki can restore some gravitas, Miller quipped.

Starting point is 00:15:41 So while other networks will no doubt take a victory lap over Fox's sloppiness, perhaps they can start by cleaning their own houses out. It would be a good start and a benefit to everyone in their audience. are saying, which brings us to my take. So if you had told me a few months ago that Fox was going to settle, I wouldn't have been surprised at all. The revelations from Discovery alone were a huge hit for the network's reputation, and a trial featuring Murdoch or top personalities getting grilled by Dominion's lawyers would have been incredibly embarrassing and a media circus. But now, after waiting long enough for its reputation to be damaged by exposed texts and emails, now Fox settles? Given the timing, it was a little surprising. On the outcome, Hillier's argument under what

Starting point is 00:16:45 the right is saying resonated with me in a lot of ways. We avoided any potential ruling that could have limited press freedom, which is obviously something I'm happy about. Yet we also saw a real punishment for Fox News for knowingly lying to its audience, along with real damage to the reputations of its hosts, whose texts and emails were leaked in a way that exposes their lack of credibility. There is an angle here where this really is a win-win. As for Fox, I'm of two minds about what this means going forward. On the one hand, you might expect this to be a lesson for the network on how to handle egregiously false stories like Dominion voting machines flipping votes. Obviously, there were real consequences, and Smartmatic's trial is just

Starting point is 00:17:25 getting going, so more could be coming. On the other hand, their audience seems to have totally rebounded, and they are still the top dogs. As for the cash, Murdoch is said to have paid $1.7 billion to his second wife when they divorced in 1999, which puts the $787 million settlement into better perspective. Is this really that big of a deal for him? In the end, maybe Fox decided to cut bait when reality started to settle in. As Slate's Justin Peters noted under what the left is saying, Fox faced a majority non-white jury that their lawyers probably suspected would be hard to overcome. That, paired with the sense that Murdoch, Hannity, Carlson, or any other top dog at Fox would have had to overcome. That, paired with the sense that Murdoch, Hannity, Carlson, or any other

Starting point is 00:18:05 top dog at Fox would have had to testify imminently, was probably cause for some sleepless nights. If you're Dominion, it's hard to see this as anything but a win. Not only did you get a massive payday, but you got a judge to put in writing that it was, in all capital letters, crystal clear that none of the statements by Fox relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true. You got all of the texts and emails in the public record, and although short of an apology, you got Fox's lawyers to publicly acknowledge the network had lied about Dominion on the air. Of course, it's hard to know what this does for actual Fox viewers. I watch the network for purposes of producing this newsletter, but I've never been a fan of Fox or any other cable news channel. Many Fox viewers will find comfort, as Stephen Miller did

Starting point is 00:18:49 under what the right is saying, in opining that the primetime hosts from other networks are just as corrupt. It's obviously true that news media has reliability issues, so you won't get much of an argument from me. Along with writing about those issues regularly, I started Tangle for that very reason. More to the point, though, is whether any diehard Fox viewers will actually see or hear any of this news. What Fox did was egregiously wrong, and the network has steadfastly avoided any mention of the lawsuit on air. It's not required to apologize, and I'm sure it has plenty of fans who seldom leave the comfort of its channel or website. In the end, I think Fox got what it deserved. It aired some of the most egregious lies in network television,

Starting point is 00:19:31 did it knowingly, and for the cynical reason of trying to keep its audience from abandoning ship. It got sued, looked as if it would lose, and settled for a lot of money. Along the way, we had it reaffirmed again that the 2020 voting machines weren't corrupted. That's a win for anyone interested in a responsible press and in fair elections. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to today's reader question. Today's question is from Debra in Detroit, Michigan. Debra said, Why do you think it is appropriate for you, who, as far as I know, is a straight cisgender white dude, to be writing about attacks on trans

Starting point is 00:20:10 people? Okay, Debra, I'll be honest. I find this line of questioning very frustrating. I get this from readers, often liberals, basically any time I write about any difficult or controversial issue. I've been told not to write about abortion because I'm not a woman, not to write about race because I'm not black, and even not to write about Biden's age because I have no idea what being a senior is like. I was called ageist for writing a piece about whether Biden was okay or not. Conservatives do it too. Just yesterday, a conservative wrote that I can't possibly understand the threat of transgender ideology because I don't have kids in grade school. Previously, conservatives have implored me not to write about the military because I'm not a veteran. You start to realize how many things you are not when you write about politics.

Starting point is 00:20:58 If I only ever wrote about issues that directly related to my demographic, my lane would be writing about white male millennial Jews from Philadelphia who play ultimate frisbee. I think that framework is counterproductive and silly. It'd be one thing to take this line of argument if we did pieces on abortion without quoting women or pieces on trans issues without quoting trans people or pieces on race without quoting black people, but we never do that. That's the beauty of Tangle. You get views from across the political and demographic spectrum when you read our newsletter. More to the point, this also can't coexist with another popular dictate from the left,

Starting point is 00:21:36 which is that silence is violence and being an ally means speaking up. So which is it? Am I supposed to step into the ring on these issues so trans people don't have to do it themselves, or am I supposed to sit out? Am I only allowed to share my opinion when my views align neatly with the left, or is staying quiet always an act of violence? These issues obviously affect people to different degrees, and that should always be acknowledged. Laws on how doctors can treat trans people have a much bigger impact on trans people than on me, clearly. But on some level, they impact all of us. And I don't think anyone, not me or anyone else, should be excluded from the conversation based on their gender, their race, their sexuality, or any other immutable characteristics.

Starting point is 00:22:23 Alright, that is it for Your Questions Answered, which brings us to our Blind Spot report. A quick reminder, once a week we present the Blind Spot report from our partners at Ground News, an app that tells you the bias of news coverage and what stories people on each side are missing. Last week, the left missed a story about the latest Senate GOP report, which raises the possibility of two lab leaks that triggered COVID-19. The right missed a story about the Missouri House Republicans who are moving to defund all public libraries. All right, next up is our under the radar section. In the latest revelations from the leak of intelligence documents on Discord, the Washington Post is reporting the existence of a high-altitude spy drone that China's military is planning to deploy. The drone travels at three times the speed of sound, according to the

Starting point is 00:23:14 assessment, which would dramatically enhance China's ability to conduct surveillance operations. The secret document describing the drone has not yet been reported and shows the Chinese military is making technological advances that could help it target American warships around Taiwan and military bases in the region. The Washington Post has a story. There's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of defamatory statements Dominion accused Fox of airing on its network was 20. The amount of revenue the company reported earning last year before interest rates depreciation and amortization was $2.96 billion. The judgment

Starting point is 00:23:56 issued last year against InfoWars' Alex Jones for spreading lies and conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting was $965 million. The damages sought by Smartmatic, another voting machine company, in its upcoming lawsuit against Fox News is $2.7 billion. The number of consecutive years Fox News has been the most watched cable television station in America is seven, and the average number of viewers who tune into Fox during weekly primetime slots is 2.3 million. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. MRI brain images just got 64 million times sharper thanks to new technology developed in a Duke-led effort to show the mouse brain in the highest resolution possible. While MRI technology is good enough to spot a brain tumor,

Starting point is 00:24:46 it has to be a lot sharper to reveal the brain's organization. Duke Center for In Vivo Microscopy has been working for decades to improve MRI resolution, and they say they have just captured the sharpest image ever of a mouse brain. The researchers say this new capability will allow better understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and how the brain responds to diet. You can see the incredible images with a link to a YouTube video in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to retangle.com and consider becoming a member.

Starting point is 00:25:20 We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. We'll be right back here, same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady.

Starting point is 00:25:40 The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll be right back. begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Starting point is 00:26:59 Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Tangle - The Fox News settlement.

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