The Dominion settlement is not the end of the legal circus for Fox News

In the end the curtain was pulled down on the circus of what would have been one of the most explosive media trials in US legal history.

Just before opening arguments had been due ahead of a six week public battle, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $785m (?631m) over claims made on the conservative US network about the 2020 presidential election which saw Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump. Trump would go on to claim it had been “stolen” without a shred of evidence.

Fox News Media issued a terse statement in response in which the key line was this: “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”

However, there was no apology, a small win for Fox and perhaps a modest disappointment for the Dominion side.

So why now? Deadlines drive deals and the deadline was the beginning of a case which would have seen Murdoch and a number of high profile Fox News personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity potentially taking the stand.

It would have kept the case at the top of the news agenda for weeks, at least with outlets not named Fox News, which has barely covered the case on its own airwaves.

Dominion would have had to demonstrate ‘malice’, in this case a legal standard not an emotion, namely that Fox had known claims about Dominion were demonstrably false and went ahead anyway.

Fortifying its case was the judge’s ruling referred to in Fox News’s statement and a trove of internal communications, along with the depositions of some Fox News’s top people.

Hundreds of pages of documents were released into the public domain, which included statements from Murdoch rejecting conspiracy theories about Dominion that the network aired. They also showed staff privately dismissed them.

The terms look very much like the two sides split the difference when it comes to the monetary value, which is roughly half the $1.6bn Dominion had sought.

Legal experts had said it had a strong case, and it won some important rulings along the way, but there is no such things as a slam dunk.

Even were it to secure a victory , the case would have spent years being litigated. Appeals were inevitable. Given Fox News’s repeated citing of the first amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, it could have ended up before the US Supreme Court, which contains a majority of conservative judges.

As it is the settlement is huge and media outlets will likely treat Dominion with a degree of care from hereon out.

Those enjoying Fox News’s discomfiture can take solace not only from its size but also from the fact that this is far from over. Dominion still has open claims against a pair of smaller right-wing networks, Newsmax and One America News, along with individuals including several allies of Trump, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

Fox News also faces an even bigger $2.7bn defamation claim from Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London. The televsion network has firmly denied the allegations. That case potentially promised more revelations after the Dominion settlement. Smartmatic is also suing some of the network’s on air personalities.

The matinee might be over. But the circus hasn’t yet moved on.