Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems in the latter’s defamation lawsuit on the day the trial was set to begin, and the $787.5 million payout — the largest known media defamation settlement in history — will reverberate throughout the media for a long time.

Dominion sued in early 2021 over the way Fox had covered Donald Trump’s — or, more specifically, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani’s — claims of a stolen election via changed votes on counting machines. Giuliani and especially Powell argued that votes for Trump were changed to votes for Joe Biden by voting machines in what was the mother of all stolen elections.

We’re oversimplifying the story, but Dominion didn’t sue because people complained about mail-in ballots.

As we wrote last month:

Newly released findings in the Dominion trial reveal that most Fox News personalities either did not believe or seriously doubted those allegations even while reporting them or featuring guests like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani who espoused them.

The plaintiffs aim to prove that Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and others knew better but chose ratings and profit over the truth.

We noted many of the inconvenient internal communications between Fox personalities that helped Dominion’s case. Even so, defamation lawsuits are notoriously hard to win, especially against First Amendment-protected media companies. Ask Sarah Palin, who sued The New York Times for falsely accusing her of inciting mass murder. The Times got away with it.

That said, both sides in the present case had good reason to settle. Fox probably would not have lost at trial, but neither would it have come out looking good. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had already ruled that Fox aired false claims about Dominion. Beyond that, numerous hosts and executives, including Rupert Murdoch, would have had to testify under oath. That could lead to discoveries beyond the damning material that has already been made public, and Fox clearly preferred that each of those revelations not be grist for competitors on an hourly basis for weeks on end. Fox also did not have to issue a public apology.

As for Dominion, the reason is far more simple and obvious: A company that, according to Fox’s court filings, was worth roughly $80 million in 2018 will get a windfall 10 times that much, all without having to prove a darn thing in court. Actual damages couldn’t possibly be as high as the company claimed or received. Yet the company believes it’s proved all it needs to in the court of public opinion. “Lies have consequences,” gloated the company’s attorney.

Fox avoided the worst but still came out looking pretty bad. For Trump’s supporters who believe in their bones that he and Powell and Giuliani were telling the truth, Fox lost credibility for backing down. For Americans who think clandestinely changing votes from one candidate to another is a bridge too far, Fox lost credibility for airing it all in the first place. Either way, Fox’s brand suffered some damage.

Fox isn’t out of the woods yet, either. A similar but bigger lawsuit brought by Smartmatic is still in the wings. That too is likely to be settled, but for how many more hundreds of millions? Dominion’s settlement only helps Smartmatic. Neither are other media outlets out of the woods. If they made the same allegations about voting machines, they may face legal action and settlements. (Fortunately, The Patriot Post was not among those repeating such claims.)

As we’ve said before, though, Fox’s competitors should stop gloating. They’re the ones who spent years, not a couple of weeks, peddling absurdly false allegations of a stolen election in 2016. They spent four years torpedoing Trump’s presidency at every opportunity, and they did it by propagating mendacious lies. They’ll never pay a dime for it.

Worse, they’ve suppressed anyone who talks about serious election problems in 2020 as an “election denier” pushing “the big lie,” all thanks to the overreaching claims at issue in this case.

As for what’s next, Mark Alexander notes: “Trump started the ‘stolen election’ claims referencing those 'horrible Dominion [voting] systems,’ and his legal tag-team Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell propagated those claims, despite having no evidence. Thus, they, and other conservative media outlets which repeated those claims, will be next in line for mega liability lawsuits.”

Alexander adds: “Moreover, after all of Trump’s ‘rigged and stolen’ election rants, now that Trump is preparing his 2024 run he insists "Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can.” In other words, he now asserts that Republicans should adopt the Democrats’ corrupt ballot fraud strategies he repeatedly condemned.“

The truth matters.

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