Media
Will Fox settlement alter conservative media? Apparently not
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NEW YORK (AP) — Days after Fox News agreed to pay nearly $800 million to settle a lawsuit over its airing of 2020 election lies, you’d be hard-pressed to notice anything had changed there.
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham led their shows Thursday talking about Hunter Biden, the president’s son. Ingraham’s show warned, “The left wants the government to be your only family.” Hannity targeted familiar villains — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Vice President Kamala Harris. Carlson mocked a speech on racial equity, saying it meant “that straight white men are bad.”
Experts doubt the settlement will lead to much of a course correction in conservative media, save for a little less specificity to avoid future lawsuits.
So far, that’s been the chief result of a Connecticut jury’s verdict last year that Alex Jones must pay $965 million to parents of Sandy Hook school shooting victims, after claiming the 2012 massacre was a hoax and that grieving parents were actors. Now Jones is more likely to keep names out of it, said Nicole Hemmer, a Vanderbilt University professor and author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.”
“It hasn’t changed his conspiracy theories,” Hemmer said. “He’s just a little more careful about not saying legally actionable things.”
Heading into the 2024 election, radio host Erick Erickson predicted more hesitancy in conservative media to embrace claims by former President Donald Trump or anybody in politics preaching election denialism. Fox’s response will be most watched.
If anything, Fox is just as dominant among conservatives today as it was in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the period addressed by the Dominion lawsuit. That’s when Fox aired false claims that Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the election against Trump, despite many at the network knowing the allegations were bogus.
Documents in the case exposed the fear within Fox that it would lose viewers if the network didn’t tell Trump fans what they wanted to hear.
A former Fox personality, Bill O’Reilly, wrote after the settlement: “This is what happens when money becomes more important than honest information.” His own experience, though, shows there was reason to be afraid. O’Reilly said he lost more than 1,000 premium subscribers to his website after telling them the election results wouldn’t be overturned.
Fox’s followers, it seems, were more upset with the election reporting than with revelations in the lawsuit about those at the network who didn’t believe the fraud charges and expressed private disdain for Trump.
There’s been little noticeable change in Fox’s television ratings in the past few months, certainly none attributable to the lawsuit. In March, Fox’s website had 88.7 million unique visitors, marking its fourth straight month of double-digit gains, said Howard Polskin, whose website The Righting monitors conservative media.
Most conservative websites either ignored the Dominion lawsuit or gave it cursory coverage, he said.
“The coverage on the right would not support at all that some landmark settlement had been reached,” Polskin said. “It was completely misaligned with the magnitude of the news event itself.”
While Fox acknowledged in the settlement the judge’s conclusion that the network had spread false material about Dominion, Fox offered no apology. That likely would have meant more to Fox’s critics than its fans, anyway, said Megan Duncan, a Virginia Tech communications professor who studies news audiences.
To Fox’s followers, criticism of the network wouldn’t matter much unless it was made by someone who shared their ideology. For the bulk of Fox’s audience, the settlement will be quickly forgotten — if it was followed at all, she said.
For Fox, that’s all an argument for the importance of keeping its audience happy.
That audience is what has made Fox the leading cable television network for several years, so profitable that it is able to absorb the $787 million Dominion settlement as a cost of doing business.
Fox still has legal challenges, with a pending defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic, another elections technology company. But Dominion also has a case against Newsmax, Fox’s chief television rival for a conservative audience. Newsmax insists its case is different and that it has better protections against defamation than Fox did.
But as a smaller company, if Newsmax is wrong, a financial judgment could cripple or kill it, to Fox’s benefit, Hemmer said.
“Fox would absolutely go after that audience,” she said.
Fox soon faces crucial negotiations with three large cable companies — Comcast, Spectrum and Cox — over carriage fees, the amount they will pay to Fox for the right to offer the network on their systems, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog group.
Ever since an advertiser boycott against former Fox personality Glenn Beck, largely orchestrated by Media Matters, Fox has concentrated on boosting carriage fees. It has succeeded to the point where Fox would have a 35% profit margin even if it had no advertising revenue, he said.
That makes it important for Fox to illustrate to these companies that it has a large, valuable audience that can be counted on to be loyal at a time people are cutting cable service.
Fox could use the conclusion of the lawsuit to build up its news operation, which has lost personalities such as Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith in recent years, said Chris Stirewalt, an executive fired by Fox after the quick, although ultimately correct, decision on election night 2020 to call Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential race.
Fox said that it is doing just that, saying this past week that it has increased its investment in journalism by more than 50%.
“Being a news organization is expensive and dangerous,” said Stirewalt, now political editor at NewsNation. “Not just expensive because you have to pay to get news but also, expensive because you can lose your audience because sometimes you have to tell them what they don’t want to hear.”
It could be easier, and good business, to double down on programming that appeals to the attitudes and emotions of viewers, he said. Fox wouldn’t be alone in following that direction.
“I don’t envy their choices,” he said.
Erickson, the radio host, said he would expect to see greater management control of Fox’s personalities, although this wouldn’t necessarily be something that viewers would notice. That would revert back to the days of the late Fox leader Roger Ailes, drummed out of the network in a sexual misconduct scandal in 2016.
“Whether you liked Roger Ailes or not, he did understand that you should not lie to your audience,” Erickson said.
The ovations delivered on Thursday night by an audience crowded into Hannity’s studio — for him and for Carlson and Ingraham at the beginning and end of their shows — illustrated an enduring point.
Fox has several solid journalists on its payroll but its stars, the chief reason viewers tune in, are those that offer tough talk and opinion.
“I think they’ve backed themselves into a corner, and that corner is full of Trump supporters,” said Hemmer, the Vanderbilt professor. “That is the business model.”
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The British Columbia government is putting its proposed online harms legislation on hold after reaching an agreement with some of the largest social media platforms to increase safety online.
Premier David Eby says in a joint statement with representatives of the firms Meta, TikTok, X and Snapchat that they will form an online safety action table, where they’ll discuss “tangible steps” toward protecting people from online harms.
Eby added the proposed legislation remains, and the province will reactivate it into law if necessary.
“The agreement that we’ve struck with these companies is that we’re going to move quickly and effectively, and that we need meaningful results before the end of the term of this government, so that if it’s necessary for us to bring the bill back then we will,” Eby said Tuesday.
The province says the social media companies have agreed to work collaboratively with the province on preventing harm, while Meta will also commit to working with B.C.’s emergency management officials to help amplify official information during natural disasters and other events.
The announcement to put the Bill 12, also known as the Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act, on hold is a sharp turn for the government, after Eby announced in March that social media companies were among the “wrongdoers” that would pay for health-related costs linked to their platforms.
At the time, Eby compared social media harms to those caused by tobacco and opioids, saying the legislation was similar to previous laws that allowed the province to sue companies selling those products.
Eby said one of the key drivers for legislation targeting online harm was the death of Carson Cleland, the 12-year-old Prince George, B.C., boy who died by suicide last October after falling victim to online sextortion.
“In the real world we would never allow a company to set up a space for kids where grown adults could be invited in to contact them, encourage them to share photographs and then threaten to distribute those photographs to their family and friends,” Eby said when announcing the legislation.
The premier said previously that companies would be shut down and their owners would face jail terms if their products were connected to harms to young people.
In announcing the pause, the province says that bringing social media companies to the table for discussion achieves the same purpose of protecting youth from online harm.
“Our commitment to every parent is that we will do everything we can to keep their families safe online and in our communities,” said Eby.
Ryan Cleland, Carson’s father, said in a statement on Tuesday that he “has faith” in Eby and the decision to suspend the legislation.
“I don’t think he is looking at it from a political standpoint as much as he is looking at it as a dad,” he said of Eby. “I think getting the social media giants together to come up with a solution is a step in the right direction.”
Business groups were opposed
On Monday, the opposition B.C. United called for a pause to Bill 12, citing potential “serious legal and economic consequences for local businesses.”
Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon said in a statement that his party pushed Eby’s government to change course, noting the legislation’s vague language on who the province can sue “would have had severe unintended consequences” for local businesses and the economy.
“The government’s latest retreat is not only a win for the business community but for every British Columbian who values fairness and clarity in the law,” Falcon said.
The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade said they are pleased to see the legislation put on hold, given the “potential ramifications” of the proposal’s “expansive interpretation.”
“We hope that the government chooses not to pursue Bill 12 in the future,” said board president and CEO Bridgitte Anderson in a statement. “Instead, we would welcome the opportunity to work with the government to develop measures that are well-targeted and effective, ensuring they protect British Columbians without causing unintended consequences.”
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Donald Trump is set to secure on Tuesday a stock bonus worth US$1.3-billion from the company that operates his social media app Truth Social (DJT-Q), equivalent to about half the majority stake he already owns in it, thanks to the wild rally in its shares.
The award will take the former U.S. president’s overall stake in the company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), to US$4.1-billion.
While Mr. Trump has agreed not to sell any of his TMTG shares before September, the windfall represents a significant boost to his wealth, which Forbes pegs at US$4.7-billion.
Unlike much of his real estate empire, shares are easy to divest in the stock market and could come in handy as Mr. Trump’s legal fees and fines pile up, including a US$454.2-million judgment in his New York civil fraud case he is appealing.
The bonus also reflects the exuberant trading in TMTG’s shares, which have been on a roller coaster ride since the company listed on Nasdaq last month through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and was snapped up by Trump supporters and speculators.
Mr. Trump will be entitled to the stock bonus under the terms of the SPAC deal once TMTG’s shares stay above US$17.50 for 20 trading days after the company’s March 26 listing. They ended trading on Monday at US$35.50, and they would have to lose more than half their value on Tuesday for Mr. Trump to miss out.
TMTG’s current valuation of approximately US$5-billion is equivalent to about 1,220 times the loss-making company’s revenue in 2023 of US$4.1-million.
No other U.S. company of similar market capitalization has such a high valuation multiple, LSEG data shows. This is despite TMTG warning investors in regulatory filings that its operational losses raise “substantial doubt” about its ability to remain in business.
A TMTG spokesperson declined to comment on the stock award to Mr. Trump. “With more than $200 million in the bank and zero debt, Trump Media is fulfilling all its obligations related to the merger and rapidly moving forward with its business plan,” the spokesperson said.
While Mr. Trump’s windfall is rich for a small, loss-making company like TMTG, the earnout structure that allows it is common. According to a report from law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, stock earnouts for management were seen in more than half the SPAC mergers completed in 2022.
However, few executives clinch these earnout bonuses because many SPAC deals end up performing poorly in the stock market, said Freshfields securities lawyer Michael Levitt. TMTG’s case is rare because its shares are trading decoupled from its business prospects.
“Many earnouts in SPACs are never satisfied because many SPAC prices fall significantly after the merger is completed,” Mr. Levitt said.
To be sure, TMTG made it easier for Mr. Trump to meet the earnout threshold. When TMTG agreed to merge with the SPAC in October, 2021, the deal envisioned that TMTG shares had to trade above US$30 for Mr. Trump to get the full earnout bonus. The two sides amended the deal in August, 2023 to lower that threshold to US$17.50, regulatory filings show.
Had that not happened, Mr. Trump would not have yet earned the full bonus because TMTG’s shares traded below US$30 last week. The terms of the deal, however, give Mr. Trump three years from the listing to win the full earnout, so he could have still earned it if the shares traded above the threshold for 20 days in any 30-day period during this time.
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The B.C. government is putting its proposed online harms legislation on hold after reaching an agreement with some of the largest social media platforms to make people safer online.
Premier David Eby says in a joint statement with representatives of the firms Meta, TikTok, X and Snap that they will form an online safety action table, where they’ll discuss “tangible steps” towards protecting people from online harms.
Eby says the social media companies have “agreed to work collaboratively” with the province on preventing harm, while Meta will also commit to working with B.C’s emergency management officials to help amplify official information during natural disasters and other events.
“We have had assurance from Facebook on a couple of things. First, that they will work with us to deliver emergency information to British Columbia in this wildfire season that (people) can rely on, they can find easily, and that will link into official government channels to distribute information quickly and effectively,” Eby said at a Tuesday press conference.
“This is a major step and I’m very appreciative that we are in this place now.”
3:56
B.C. takes steps to protect people from online harms
The announcement to put the bill on hold is a sharp turn for the government, after Eby announced in March that social media companies were among the “wrongdoers” that would pay for health-related costs linked to their platforms.
At the time, Eby compared social media harms to those caused by tobacco and opioids, saying the legislation was similar to previous laws that allowed the province to sue companies selling those products.
5:46
Carol Todd on taking action against online harms
Last August, Eby criticized Meta over its continued blackout of Canadian news outlets as wildfires forced thousands from their homes. Eby said it was “unacceptable” for the tech giant to cut off access to news on its platforms at a time when people needed timely, potentially life-saving information.
“I think it’s fair to say that I was very skeptical, following the initial contact (with Meta),” Eby said Tuesday.
Eby said one of the key drivers for legislation targetting online harm was the death of Carson Cleland, the 12-year-old Prince George, B.C., boy who died by suicide last October after falling victim to online sextortion.
The premier says in announcing the pause that bringing social media companies to the table for discussion achieves the same purpose of protecting youth from online harm.
“Our commitment to every parent is that we will do everything we can to keep their families safe online and in our communities,” the premier said in his statement.
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