Why the Fox News reaction to its Dominion settlement made CNN's Jake Tapper laugh out loud

You don’t often hear news anchors laugh out loud when reading statements about a breaking news stories.

And yet, that’s exactly what CNN’s Jake Tapper did Tuesday afternoon. Fox News had just agreed to an 11th-hour settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million in a defamation case soon after the jury had been seated.

Fox News issued a statement that said, in part, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

That in itself that is stunning enough (“stunning” was a word thrown around Tuesday like an election lie at a Rudy Giuliani press conference), even if it was just stating the obvious. But that wasn’t what cracked Tapper up.

“I’m sorry, this is going to be difficult to say with a straight face,” he said. “‘This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitments to the highest journalist standards.’”

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Fox settles with Dominion, which sought $1.6 billion for defamation

Standards? We don’t need no stinkin’ standards.

That was the implication, certainly, not just in the statement, but more obviously in the long lead-up to the trial, in which internal messages and emails revealed that some of Fox News’ most-popular personalities, panicked about losing ratings, pushed absurd conspiracy theories that claimed Donald Trump had won the 2020 election when they knew he hadn’t.

Some of those theories involved Dominion, which sued Fox News for $1.6 billion in damage, and more in punitive damages.

The settlement Tuesday didn’t catch networks off-guard, exactly, but it was surprising. And, to be honest, disappointing in some regard. The idea of Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson on the stand under oath is pretty intriguing, you have to admit.

Or at least Andrew Weissmann, a legal analyst on MSBNC, did. Weissmann said it was disappointing that Fox News executives and stars wouldn’t have to acknowledge in person that they knowingly pushed lies, and wouldn't have to apologize for them.

“I think all of us are feeling sort of schadenfreude, wanted to have it repeated and have them feel the pain of having to say it from their own mouths,” he said. “Like a child, you want to hear them say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

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Loyal Fox News fans likely won't care about the settlement, and they wouldn't have cared about a verdict

There’s a lot of truth in that. Part of the Tucker Carlson-Sean Hannity-Laura Ingraham way of doing business is to maximize smugness, like they’re the ones who really know what’s what and anyone who disagrees is a dolt. To see and hear them squirm would have been satisfying, no doubt. (Not that we would have seen them — the judge wouldn’t allow cameras in the courtroom.)

The settlement is obviously bad for Fox News, though not as bad as it could have been financially. The acknowledgment is worse. Whatever might have happened in the courtroom had the case played out, the damage to the reputation of Fox News is done.

And it won’t matter a bit.

Not to the loyal Fox News viewers who get their information from the network and nowhere else. (Fox News reported the settlement, briefly, while CNN and MSNBC went all out with coverage.)

Many of them believe the election lies, the conspiracy theories and whatnot. They aren’t looking to the network to learn what is happening in the world. They’re looking to have their biases and preexisting ideas confirmed. Which is exactly what the cynical bunch at Fox News worked to do in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

It started with Arizona, naturally, when Fox News correctly called the state for Joe Biden on election night before anyone else. This enraged Trump (add it to the list), and in the ensuing days and weeks even-farther-right networks like One America News Network and Newsmax began gaining some ratings traction. Fox News ratings, meanwhile, dipped.

The messages and emails show that the network panicked. There was talk that in the future Fox News shouldn’t just consider numbers when making projections. What about the feelings of their viewers?

What about them?

Part of reporting the truth is having people mad at you. It’s called journalism.

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Facts are bad for business at Fox News

A Fox News reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, dared to fact-check a Trump tweet and said there was no evidence of fraud on Dominion’s part.

“Please get her fired,” Carlson texted to Hannity and Ingraham. Also: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

It gets worse. When former Fox News reporter Kristin Fisher fact-checked a press conference by Giuliani and fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott complained in an email that “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories.”

Fisher now works for CNN.

These are the most-damaging revelations. Fox News has for years tried to prop up the often-irresponsible claims and misrepresentations of its prime-time hosts by pointing to its news division. But what good is having one if your most-popular hosts and even your CEO are acting like this?

The settlement doesn’t mean Fox News is in the clear. There are other defendants, and Smartmatic, another election technology company, has filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against the network.

But the settlement did end this chapter, one that Tapper correctly described as “one of the ugliest and most embarrassing moments in the history of journalism.”

Now that is accuracy.

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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Facebook @GoodyOnFilm and on Twitter @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fox News settlement made CNN's Jake Tapper laugh, an 'embarrassment'