A Legal Earthquake for Fox News: Murdoch Shells Out $787 Million in Defamation Settlement

Fox News just paid the price for pushing lies and conspiracy theories—literally. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was forced to shell out a record-breaking $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems. This staggering amount isn’t just a financial hit—it’s a historic reckoning for the network’s role in amplifying false claims about the 2020 election.

For months, Fox News hosts, including Sean Hannity, peddled baseless election fraud allegations, fueling a narrative that the election was rigged against Donald Trump. But when the legal system came knocking, reality struck hard. Under oath, Hannity admitted that he never actually believed the fraud claims he relentlessly pushed on air. That’s right—the same man who spent months telling millions of viewers that Dominion’s machines were part of a grand conspiracy confessed in court that he knew it was all nonsense.

The consequences? A nearly billion-dollar payout that cements this as one of the most expensive defamation settlements in history. To put it into perspective, $787 million is more than some countries’ entire GDP and more than most Hollywood blockbusters make in their global theatrical run. Fox News essentially handed Dominion the world’s most expensive “oops, our bad”—without issuing a single on-air retraction or apology.

But Fox wasn’t about to let a minor detail like accountability interfere with business as usual. Instead of acknowledging wrongdoing or reforming its journalistic standards, the network treated the settlement as just another cost of doing business. Hannity, despite his legally toxic rhetoric, remains on air, still collecting his multi-million dollar salary. Meanwhile, Fox fired Tucker Carlson—likely as a convenient distraction from the financial fallout.

And the trouble isn’t over yet. Another voting technology company, Smartmatic, is suing Fox News for a whopping $2.7 billion—three times what Dominion received. If Smartmatic prevails, Fox News might have to start charging its viewers a “defamation settlement fee” just to stay afloat.

At the end of the day, this case exposes an undeniable truth: Fox News operates in a world where reality is optional, accountability is non-existent, and the only thing that truly matters is keeping the outrage machine running at full speed. And as long as that remains profitable, the network won’t change—no matter how many millions they have to pay to make their lies go away.