During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fox News, which alleged election fraud and mentioned the possibility of counting machine manipulation, agreed to compensate the company for a large amount of over 1 trillion won. The amount of damages is the largest amount in U.S. history in a defamation lawsuit against a media company.
Although the terms of the out-of-court agreement are not always disclosed, the agreement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems, a voting and counting machine company, is receiving intense media attention.
Fox agreed to pay 787.5 million dollars (approximately 1.39 trillion won) to Dominion Voting Systems, a voting and counting machine company.
Fox repeated its allegation that Dominion abused technology related to the counting machine to swap votes for President Trump for Democratic candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election. Dominion filed a lawsuit against Fox in January 2021, claiming that it had defamed them with “fake news.” Prior to this agreement, the legal dispute continued for two years.
The record for the highest award in a defamation lawsuit came last year in a court ruling against American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Far-right commentator Alex Jones, who has claimed that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was false, was ordered by the court to pay 1.5 billion dollars (about 2 trillion won) to the bereaved families in a lawsuit for damages.
Previously, the US meat processing company ‘Beef Product’ sued ABC News for defamation in 2017, saying that the ABC News report about ‘pink slime (a food additive made by mixing ammonia water with beef by-products) was not true. ABC’s owner, The Walt Disney Company, said it paid $107 million in settlement costs.
Twenty years ago, a jury in Texas awarded 222 million dollars in damages against Dow Johnson & Company, the parent company of the WSJ, claiming that the securities company suffered enormous damage due to the false content of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article. However, the amount of compensation was dismissed in a subsequent lawsuit.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.