It was the Big Story on Fox News for several weeks after the 2020 election: that the machines of Dominion Voting Systems were rigged and helped steal the election away from former president Donald Trump. These outlandish and patently-false claims led Dominion to slap Fox with a $1.6 billion defamation suit. But a recent attempt by the cable news network to dismiss the lawsuit has been rejected by a Superior Court Judge in Delaware.

• Judge Eric M. Davis denied Fox News's motion as it was “reasonably conceivable that Dominion has a claim for defamation," reports the New York Times. Davis added that Fox had “a high degree of awareness” that its claims about Dominion were false.

• Fox tried to defend its coverage stating that it was protected under the First Amendment and freedom of the press, says the AP. The news network added that it was simply presenting both sides of a story central to American Democracy.

Correcting The Record

Dominion had repeatedly tried to correct Fox News about its voting machines. In fact, Judge Davis noted that “when Fox guests spread or reiterated disinformation about Dominion, Fox did not use the information Dominion provided to correct its guests or to reorient its viewers,” cites the ABA Journal. The voting machine firm is suing Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer for Trump, over similar claims of defamation. 

The Verdict

Should Fox News face no accountability for the baseless claims it peddled to millions of viewers for weeks, it would set a rather problematic precedent for media organizations covering future elections.