Arthur Cyr: Dominion-FOX settlement is a big win for everyone
As the formal trial in the enormous defamation suit of Dominion Voting Systems against FOX News was about to begin, plaintiff Dominion agreed to end their suit for $787.5 million, about half the total amount the voting machines company was seeking.
Settlements in civil lawsuits are common, but the scale of money and the principle involved make this case especially newsworthy and important. The total amount may well be the largest ever awarded in such a case.
Why should we care? Conceivably, the result of a trial might have resulted in a verdict that set a precedent limiting the firm freedom of speech protections of our Constitution, especially in the First Amendment. That provides the key cornerstone of our political system.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis deserves great credit. He subtly facilitated settlement, and the judge also criticized Fox News over delay in providing important evidence that showed company executives knew accusations of vote fraud were erroneous. Nonetheless, they knowingly decided to air these false accusations.
Judge Davis highlighted facts that removed the case from being a straightforward matter of protecting freedom of speech of FOX News.
Decades ago, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, my employer, experienced pressure to cancel an event featuring a Palestine Liberation Organization official. We did not. Council Chairman John D. Gray, head of Hart, Schaffner & Marx, provided crucial support.
Over time, we faced various efforts to suppress speakers. A telephoned bomb threat disrupted a lecture by Congressman Paul Findley, critic of Israel. We continued in a stairwell. Followers of extremist Lyndon LaRouche tried to break up a meeting. They were removed.
Winston Churchill evolved into a genius at collecting information, and people. One of the most pivotal of the latter was Frederick Lindemann, a brilliant Oxford don in physics and philosophy. Despite his academic success, he remained a social outcast. No doubt, anti-Semitism was one factor in 1930s Britain.
However, Lindemann was his own worst problem, a know-it-all and generally obnoxious. Churchill’s granddaughter Celia Sandys politely described him as “anti-social.”
Even Churchill’s patient wife Clementine resisted having the Oxford don as a guest, but Winston insisted. He clearly regarded his friend as possessing special talent.
When Churchill returned to government as head of the Admiralty at the start of World War II in Europe, he immediately recruited Lindemann and gave him freedom in selecting his staff and generally in choosing his myriad projects. The scholar, who was particularly talented at statistical analysis, had one mission: to undermine the conventional wisdom of the Navy and related government projects.
Churchill became Prime Minister with the fall of France, and Lindemann’s role expanded, but his basic mission remained continuous. He was to analyze and criticize proposals by the officials of the government: admirals and generals, civil servants and politicians, and members of the Cabinet — especially the Prime Minister.
Lindemann was not always right. In fact, some of his ideas and criticisms were bizarre. However, he was a great catalyst for open debate, thorough analysis, and reconsideration of conventional wisdom.
That was the point.
Churchill possessed a sizable ego, but also enough long hard experience to be well aware of his own fallibility. He assumed Lindemann would enjoy his role but also expected him to excel, and he did.
Imagination and innovation were crucial to Allied success; so was reliability of information. Lindemann helped drive these dimensions.
Storms pass. Our Constitution continues, even in our acrimonious time.
— Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War” (Palgrave/Macmillan and NYU Press). Contact acyr@carthage.edu.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Arthur Cyr: Dominion-FOX settlement is a big win for everyone