Fox News on Tuesday sidestepped one of the most high-profile defamation lawsuits in history by settling with Dominion Voting Systems, the company that accused the conservative broadcaster of smearing its reputation in the weeks following the 2020 election.

The trial began Tuesday

a

Supreme Court of Delaware

after a day

. The two sides reached a deal after a 12-member jury and 12 alternate jurors were selected.

The jury would have determined whether Fox News acted maliciously by deliberately venting false statements about the Denver-based voting machine maker. Dominion sought $1.6 billion in damages.

Fox News has agreed to pay Dominion $

TC

million and will apologize to the company in its programs.

Details of the cash settlement were not disclosed, although the amount could appear in the financial filings of publicly traded parent company Fox Corp.

Many legal analysts were surprised that the closely watched case had not been settled before trial, given the potential legal and reputational damage to Fox News.

The resolution

settlement

means Fox News

want to

avoids one

media

spectacle at the Leonard Williams Justice Center in Wilmington,

NL

Del. More than 50 working press have gathered for the trial with TV outlets stationed under tents outside the courthouse.

The conservative network’s biggest stars, including Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo, and top executives like the 92-year-old Fox Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan would be called to the witness stand.

Fox News fell behind in the lawsuit. Delaware Supreme Court Justice Eric Davis ruled on March 31 that on-air statements about Dominion

created by network hosts and their guests were fake.

Davis also debunked Fox’s claim that the reporting was based on false allegations

what is justified

because they are made by former president

Donald

Trump and were therefore newsworthy.

Just because someone is newsworthy doesn’t mean you can defame someone, Davis said at a pretrial hearing on April 11.

Court records in the case provided a glimpse into the inner workings of Fox News, with emails and texts showing how

executives and hosts

tried to balance their own disbelief about Trump’s accusations with the

ir

perceived need to appease his supporters, who usually watch the network.

Statements depicted a highly decentralized operation with management often doing little to monitor what his on-air talent said on-air.

dominion

accused

Fox news

of strengthening

false accusations from Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph

W

Giuliani that the company’s machines manipulated votes to help elect President Biden.

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud or wrongdoing by Dominion.

C

is

On the contrary

were fact-checked by some Fox News journalists and the network’s own investigative arm,

known as the ‘brain chamber’.

Dominion said Fox News acted out of fear that the MAGA faithful would drop out and move to the conservative network Newsmax, which was gaining popularity

viewership

at the time.

While media coverage of Dominion’s case was voluminous and largely negative for Fox News, it did little to detract from the network’s reputation with its audience. It remains the most-watched cable news network, well ahead of CNN and MSNBC, according to Nielsen data.

However, the reputation of the network in journalistic circles has been tarnished by the scandal. The media industry will be watching to see if Murdoch makes significant changes to For News’ management or its on-air talent lineup in response to the public humiliation his company has experienced.

Such moves may take while Fox News management is averse to the public perception that

Murdochhe

responds to outside pressure.

Fox News is no stranger to paying out settlements as a means of making legal troubles and scandals go away.

The company paid $20 million in 2017 to former host Gretchen Carlson, whose sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News founder Roger Ailes was one of the most high-profile in the #MeToo movement.

The network then paid millions in settlements to other women who brought forward allegations of harassment.

A $15 million payout went to former Fox News personality Melissa Francis in 2022 after she filed a gender-based pay disparity claim against the company.

Fox News also paid

several million millions

to the family of Seth Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic National Committee operative,

who was killed

after the network’s website published unsubstantiated stories that his 2016 murder was linked to the leaking of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Fox has enough cash reserves to pay the Dominion settlement with $4 billion in cash, according to the company’s recent securities filings.

Fox News also faces a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, the voting software company that

former president

Trump’s lawyers are falsely accused of rigging the vote in the 2020 presidential election. The company has accused Fox News and three of its on-air hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro of presenting disinformation on their programs .

Fox referenced the Dominion and Smartmatic litigation in its latest quarterly report, noting that the company would vigorously defend the defamation claims, including through appeals.

Since that filing, Fox has lost a string of lawsuits. But the company noted that it had the financial strength to weather the storm.

“The Company does not currently expect the eventual resolution of such pending matters to have a material adverse effect on its business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.