You worked at Fox for sixteen years.
What do you make of the fact
that Fox viewers
won't hear
a retraction or an apology outright?
I consider this a win for Fox.
I consider considered a win for Dominion.
As he just said,
they get a lot of money
and it helps their checkbook.
I don't know that
it helps their reputation
because if they
if Fox never has to make a correction
or a retraction,
how is it going to help their reputation?
When they were
disseminating disinformation
to Fox viewers?
So now they're not going
to make a correction on air to Fox News.
So I'm not sure how it's going to help
Dominion's reputation,
but I think that it's a win for Fox.
The fact that Fox doesn't have to take
he kept saying
they have to take accountability.
They're not doing that publicly on air.
This statement is most weak source.
I hope that they find
that there are certain claims
they don't have
Fox made the claim,
certain claims to be false.
They're not saying that they lied.
They're saying to be false.
Sometimes false statements are made
that that's not intentional.
There's a difference between false
and knowingly.
Right. Which is the standard. Exactly.
My colleague
Jim Rutenberg
at the Times reported earlier.
I'm just reading it here
that under the terms of the settlement,
Fox News will not have to apologize
or admit to spreading false claims
on network programing,
according to a person
familiar with the details.
So that gets exactly
what Alisyn is talking about.
I'm sure Fox sees
this as a win for Fox, too,
because the amount of money,
while painful, is far less
painful for Fox and for News Corp.
than it is for many other entities.
Certainly for spin, for Sidney Powell
or for Rudy Giuliani
or a lot of other people
who are facing suits.
And if, you know,
the lawyer's point was
if we wanted to go to trial,
we wanted to,
you know, sort of hold people accountable
if you're not demonstrating
that in open court
and you are making a deal
by which Fox does not have to
admit wrongdoing,
then I'm not really sure what they did
other than get a lot of money
and a lot of money is is is something.
But it's not every worth
noting that, too,
because the peddling of the lies
continues. Right.
I mean, you heard
that's that's my big question here.
I mean, Donald
Trump is the frontrunner
for the nomination again.
So what
what does this look like
for the next year? Exactly.
I was going to have them, though.
I mean,
there is what we quote
unquote, the court of public opinion
wants to hear
and the drawn out conclusions
and testimony of the top anchors.
And then there's
the goals of the actual litigants.
And I think there is a disconnect
between the two.
You see you saw Gretchen Carlson's tweet
where she was begging, don't settle.
Essentially, she wanted to have them
take the stand
because she wanted to see this play out
and have the very confirmation
of accountability in that format.
And have truth really be on trial
and in the best interest of dominion.
And so that disconnect thing
is what he's speaking to
as a litigator, essentially.
Look,
that may be the goal
of the court of public opinion
and this being really
the illustration of accountability
since the post-election lies.
But for them as lawyers,
they don't want to be in trial
handing over their case
to 12 members, which,
you know,
the lawyer in me is saying, I understand
our client said it was a failure.
She went to trial.
But then why then did Fox not settle
this earlier? Right.
This has been going on
for two and a half years. Right.
And I think that was another point
Gretchen Carlson made.
And they had to pay out all this money
and they did not have to do the
the on air apology,
according to the statement
for The New York Times reporting.
But they did release the statement
this week.
That statement, as Alisyn
rightly points out,
So why didn't they do this earlier?
Well, legal experts
I've been talking to say
they absolutely should have
because they would have avoided
so much embarrassment
leading up to the trial.
And all of these pretrial hearings
and in the discovery.
One other thing I want them to know,
I asked some of my sources,
in addition to an apology,
should they be required
to issue a retraction or any corrections
because it's one thing
to not want to apologize
for doing things wrong.
But as journalists,
when we get things wrong,
we have to issue a correction.
At least make people they're.
That's how,
you know, it's
a journalistic institution.
And so when they say
they're the highest journalistic,
they have the highest journalistic.
So that is not granted
that you would issue a retraction.
That is not part of the deal.
The lie,
in fact, with the statement
says is we acknowledge
the court found this,
which is literally, as is correct,
is the earliest lawyerly, very lawyerly,
actually precise
to what the judge did
and what the court did
without actually saying.
And we agree
and we recognize
there's no ownership of it.
So what do we do as we look forward?
Right.
What this means
and kind of going back
to what we were talking about,
if Trump is the nominee right now,
he is the frontrunner.
He's going to continue
to spew these lies
about the 20, 20 election. Right.
I mean, how does this play out?
There has been there
was, at least until recently,
a noticeable decline
in Trump's visibility on Fox.
And that had been going on for weeks
and months.
There had been this
clear interest
in Ron
DeSantis from the entire Rupert
Murdoch empire
that has shifted somewhat in recent weeks
as Ron
DeSantis has made some self
inflicted errors.
And you saw Trump
do a Sean Hannity interview.
You saw him do a Tucker
Carlson interview,
but he's not on
whenever he wants to be the way he was.
He's not phoning in
to every show the way he was.
Will that still happen?
If the audience demands it?
I don't see anything that has changed in
what their market planning is,
but I do think
that there is probably going to be
some internal edicts on don't
just let him say
whatever he wants on air.
And I think that Trump's own
advisers are impressing on him.
This is a loser for you.
So he continues to say
these things on true social,
which has a rather small following,
and he's not really doing it.
I'll see what can't happen, though.
I know, Alisyn,
you can speak this obviously
in this notion.
You can't have this juxtaposition
between look, if the edict is
you can't
just let the lies go unchallenged
and you put someone in
who's kind of a strong person to say
the opposite
of the devil's advocate,
that they're in a stage position
just to say, see,
we presented an alternate argument here
because the audience itself
does not seem to have the appetite
to even have covered this trial.
It's not as if they're
going out of their way
to cover the Dominion trial right now.
They're going to try
to spin it in any way.
And so the question will be going forward
for journalists.
Will it be enough when you are aware or
have some basis to know that what is
being said is false?
Is it not just present a prop scarecrow
who says something like,
you're bringing that up
because I don't think
they're going to Fact-Check Trump.
I don't think they're going to
oh, I don't lies.
I don't think they're going to fact
check him.
I also don't think
they're going to give him open mic night.
That's all the reason that I think
they may still give him open mic night.
Is because here there was a clear victim.
So Dominion
was the victim of the lies
when Donald Trump just spews his lies.
And if he's not going after,
say, Dominion or Smartmatic,
there is no victim
other than democracy to the point.
And, you know, truth, right?
Defamation against democracy.
But where is the victim?
You're so right.
And I'm so glad you made that point.
Thank you all.
Really appreciate the conversation.