Fox News has avoided a lengthy and potentially damaging defamation trial with US voting machine company Dominion through a last-minute US$787.5 million (AU$1.19 billion) deal. 

Dominion had alleged that Fox had damaged its business by spreading false claims that its machines had helped rig the 2020 election in favour of Joe Biden. 

While Fox swiftly declared the settlement a victory, it was also forced to acknowledge that “certain claims” it made about Dominion were false, potentially putting it at odds with former President Donald Trump and vast swathes of its audience ahead of the upcoming 2024 election. 

Fox also faces a second similar lawsuit from another voting technology firm, Smartmatic, seeking a larger sum of $2.7 billion. 

While Fox has been saved from a public trial, it has already been harmed by court documents that revealed the inner workings of the network, according to Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University who specialises in media, conservatism and electoral politics. 

Coming up to the 2024 election, she said she still expects misinformation to feature in the channel's political coverage.
“It's pretty hard to prove defamation in the US,” she says. 

“All Fox has to do is continue to spread election lies, conspiracies and falsehoods without naming a particular company or person, and there's no risk of lawsuits in the future.

“So much of what we saw behind the scenes... were the kinds of political pressures that made it impossible for Fox News to report accurately on the election.

“And those pressures aren't going away.”

Meanwhile, Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corporation, has withdrawn his defamation lawsuit against an Australian publisher, Private Media, the company that owns news website Crikey. 

This came two days after Fox Corporation settled a high-profile libel case against Dominion.

The defamation lawsuit was filed by Murdoch in August 2021 over an opinion piece published by Crikey that linked the Murdoch family to the January 6th riot at the US Capitol. 

The article claimed that the Murdochs and “poisonous” Fox News commentators were responsible for the insurrection, without naming Mr Murdoch specifically. 

The trial was expected to take place in Sydney this year.

Murdoch's Australian lawyer, John Churchill, said that the defence case had recently added thousands of pages of evidence made public in the recent lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox. 

In a statement, Churchill said that Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favour. 

However, he did not wish to “further enable Crikey's use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits”.

Will Hayward, the CEO of Private Media, and Eric Beecher, the Chairman, issued a statement saying that Murdoch's decision to withdraw the lawsuit was “a substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism”. 

They stated that they stand by their position that Lachlan Murdoch was responsible for promoting lies about the 2020 election result.

Australia's libel laws make it easier for public figures to sue media organisations than in the United States. 

In the US, the First Amendment offers broad protections for the press. However, these protections were limited in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox. 

Fox faced a series of setbacks while trying to defend itself in the Dominion matter, including pretrial rulings that all of the statements about Dominion were false, and that Fox could not argue to a jury that it broadcast voter fraud claims on the basis that they were newsworthy. 

The case was settled as lawyers prepared to give their opening statements before a jury. 

The settlement amount is one of the highest-ever payouts in a defamation case.