$787.5 Million and No Apology
On April 18, 2023, Fox News settled the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million, the largest known media defamation settlement in U.S. history. The settlement came moments before opening statements were to begin.
$787.5 million paid. Zero on-air corrections. Zero retractions. Zero apologies. 63% of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen.
Fox issued one statement acknowledging “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” The settlement did not require Fox to apologize, issue an on-air retraction, or correct the record on any broadcast. No Fox host mentioned the settlement on air. Fox’s media reporter Howard Kurtz refused to state the dollar amount during his broadcast.
They Knew the Claims Were False
Court filings revealed that Fox hosts and executives privately dismissed the election fraud claims they were broadcasting to millions of Americans.
Tucker Carlson, text message, November 18, 2020: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” On the Dominion software conspiracy: “The software s—t is absurd.” About their own audience: “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
Laura Ingraham, responding to Carlson about Sidney Powell: “Sidney is a complete nut.”
Sean Hannity: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second.” About Rudy Giuliani: “Rudy is acting like an insane person.”
Rupert Murdoch, under oath, asked if some commentators endorsed false election claims: “Yes. They endorsed.” Asked if he could have stopped Giuliani from appearing on Fox: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
Internal communications showed the business logic plainly. Hosts and executives feared that telling the truth would push viewers to Newsmax and OAN, threatening ratings and advertising revenue. They chose profit over truth. The texts prove it.
$894 Million in Total Settlements
Fox was not alone.
| Defendant | Plaintiff | Settlement | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fox News | Dominion | $787.5 million | April 2023 |
| Newsmax | Dominion | $67 million | August 2025 |
| Newsmax | Smartmatic | $40 million | September 2024 |
That is $894.5 million paid for broadcasting claims the people broadcasting them knew were false. The Smartmatic lawsuit against Fox, seeking $2.7 billion, is still advancing in Manhattan. Twenty-eight of the fact witnesses in that case admitted they have no evidence to support any of the allegations made about Smartmatic on air.
The Lies Stuck
Despite $894 million in settlements, a judge ruling that the claims were false as a matter of law, and internal evidence that the broadcasters knew they were lying, the false claims held.
In 2021, 66% of Republicans believed the 2020 election was stolen. By 2024, 63% still believed it. Among Americans who most trust far-right TV news, 92% believe it. Roughly 30% of all Americans consistently told pollsters that Biden’s win was illegitimate.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Republican confidence in election integrity surged from 24% to 64%. The concern about election fraud was never principled. It was instrumental. The machinery cared about fraud only when it lost.
No Regulatory Consequence
The FCC regulates broadcast television stations but has no jurisdiction over cable channels. Fox News is a cable channel. There is no federal agency with the authority to sanction a cable network for broadcasting information it knows to be false.
A challenge to Fox Corporation’s Philadelphia broadcast license (WTXF) was rejected by the FCC in January 2025 because the election conspiracies aired on the cable channel, not on the local broadcast affiliate. The regulatory gap is structural. Cable news operates in a space where the only accountability for deliberate misinformation is defamation lawsuits filed by the companies and people harmed.
Fox averaged 2.63 million weekday primetime viewers in Q2 2025, up 56% from its post-Carlson trough. A Variety/Harris poll found 21% of Fox viewers trusted the network less after the internal texts were revealed. The other 79% did not change.
The Pattern
This is the same dynamic that drives false news spreading 6 times faster than accurate information and the collapse of local news that could provide a corrective. The business model rewards misinformation. The legal system can extract money after the damage is done, but it cannot undo the belief. $787.5 million changed nothing about what 63% of Republicans think happened in 2020.
Read more on the Rule of Law hub and the press freedom analysis.