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| Carlson -- Wasington Examiner |
Some of the news reports on the Fox News/Dominion “settlement” border on the absurd. The “settlement” between the two contending parties settles little, for obvious reasons. It certainly does not settle the chief claim both parties brought before the court: Did or did not Fox defame Dominion?
A jury trial, or a trial before a judge, might have
clarified important issues in the case. Defamation suits are hard to prove in
American courts, largely owing to the First Amendment, which gives political
broadcasters in particular a wide birth of freedom. Defamation in Great Britain
is, by comparison, far less constricted. In U.S. courts, those claiming
defamation must show that plaintiffs had knowingly lied -- to lie is knowingly
to say the thing that is not -- and the lie must be rooted in malice.
This writer’s problem with the Fox News/Dominion so called settlement
begins with the word “settle.” If the claims before the court were not settled
by the settlement – and they were not – the question arises, what was settled?
The Fox/Dominion monetary settlement is nothing more than an
agreement NOT to settle issues before the court. Fox has agreed to pay Dominion
more than $787 million, and Dominion has agreed to accept the payment in return
for not pressing the legal issue before the court which, following an
anticipated and costly string of appeals, might definitively be settled at some
distant point in the future by a Supreme Court finding, usually the last stop
on the way to a judicial train wreck.
Plea bargaining and the inconclusive resolutions of claims
of this sort are all too common in American jurisprudence. The deal making is
usually preceded by charges inflated by prosecutors that are “reduced” upon an
agreement for a sometimes inconclusive admission of wrongdoing. Prisoners are
carted off to jail convinced of their innocence. Their victims shake their
heads in disbelief that justice has been denied them. Lawyers and prosecutors then
have lunch over the case, certain that justice has been done. And, if the case
is even remotely political, reporters and columnists find themselves in
business for the next few issues of their costly papers. Lady Justice, whose
eyes are wrapped in a settlement sleep mask, rests in peace until the next political/judicial
kerfuffle.
To put it briefly, the Fox News/Dominion settlement is a
settlement that settles none of the issues that brought the two parties to
court. And that is why talking heads will be talking about the settlement for
the next week or two, until some other consideration of great moment pushes the
issue out of public notice.
Within days of the settlement that settled nothing, Tucker
Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was let go by Fox. Are the two
incidents connected? No one knows. And if tomorrow Fox CEO Lachlan Murdock – not at all a chip
off his old man’s block – were to swear on a stack of Bibles that the two were
connected, few would believe him. Is Carlson inescapably wedded to Trump, the
yellow monster? The anti-MAGA folk on the left think so, but then the left in
the United States lives half its life in a fantasy that would have astonished
the Brothers Grimm and the other half in a utopian political Eden in which men,
cosmetically changed, are women and the world administered by an invisible and
unaccountable President Biden is a wonder of efficiency, non-partisan
brotherhood and forward looking progress.
The 80 year old Biden has now thrown his hat in the
presidential ring. ABC News reported following the
announcement, “Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults said they didn't want
to see Biden renominated, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found in February. And seven in 10 Americans, and
51% of Democrats, said in the NBC News poll this month that they did not want
him to seek a second term, with half of them citing age as a ‘major’ factor.”
Shortly after Biden announced he was running again as
President, Democrat political troops fell into line. Governor Ned Lamont was
fulsome in his praise of Biden: “I think when you’re president you have a
record, you have a record of accomplishment. I know it’s all about the future
and let’s talk about where we’re going to be, [but] this is a guy who’s
delivered the goods and gotten the job done.”
Among the goods delivered by Biden was Bagram Air Force Base
in Afghanistan to -- China. And, some critics claim, he also had facilitated
the delivery of fentanyl, the chemical components of which are “made in China,”
across a “Made in Washington D.C.” porous southern U.S.-Mexico border teeming
with illegal aliens.
But the election is still more than a half year in the
future -- plenty of time to boost the figures cited by ABC News, but not if
Biden chooses to flee from his record in office by secluding himself in his
White House bunker, allowing intermediaries like the eupeptic Lamont to answer
for a press shy president.
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