Fox paid seven figures to settle lawsuit over bogus Seth Rich conspiracy story
Source: Yahoo News
WASHINGTON Just as star anchor Sean Hannity and other high-profile Fox News figures were due to be deposed about their promotion of a bogus conspiracy theory about the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, the cable network last month threw in the towel and moved to settle a lawsuit brought by Richs parents that threatened to expose a wealth of new details about one of its most embarrassing screw-ups in recent years.
The settlement between Fox News and Richs parents, Joel and Mary Rich, was publicly disclosed Tuesday, but with no details about the terms. But legal sources tell Yahoo News that the settlement includes a lucrative seven figure payment to the Rich family consistent with the size of payouts Fox News and related corporate entities have made in other cases that have brought them negative publicity.
The hastily arranged settlement also had the benefit of sparing Hannity and other Fox News figures including network president Jay Wallace and contributor Newt Gingrich the ordeal of being grilled under oath about claims in a series of broadcasts in May 2017 that blamed the leak of DNC emails to WikiLeaks on Rich. At the time, Hannity called a Fox News story attributing the DNC leak to Rich an explosive development that might expose the single biggest fraud, lies, perpetrated on the American people by the media and the Democrats in our history.
In fact, Fox News retracted the story after eight days and special counsel Robert Muellers investigation declared the claims about Rich were false, concluding along with the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI that it was Russian military intelligence agents who had hacked the DNC and passed the partys emails to WikiLeaks through an online persona called Guccifer 2.0.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-paid-seven-figures-to-settle-lawsuit-over-bogus-seth-rich-conspiracy-story/ar-BB1bkaaz?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP
Roy Rolling
(6,908 posts)Id pay the family *more* just to expose the details of the corruption. That would go much farther than the damage to the family.
This is when we miss a functioning tabloid media who could pay them more than Fox News paid to keep quiet.😂
Best_man23
(4,897 posts)I would not have settled, I would have taken as long as necessary to ensure these charlatans were deposed and exposed in open court. Settlements like this just get written off by the corporation and the actors are free to do it again to someone else.
marble falls
(57,010 posts)... to lie under oath.
But I understand their need to try and get this behind them.
bucolic_frolic
(43,044 posts)Just once I'd like to hear that the plaintiff was offered hundreds of millions of dollars but refused all offers because they wanted to make the information public.
Jimvanhise
(300 posts)Didn't Hannity dredge up the Seth Rich story again a few months later and was told to knock it off? Wasn't Julian Assange the source of the Seth Rich story until his lie protecting the Russains was called out by the NSA and the FBI?
certainot
(9,090 posts)and in related story, limbaugh sues lord conrad black, jerome corsi, and breitbart/bannon for feeding him seth rich story to help make sure hillary cllinton never gets to white house to do something about global warming and cutting trillions from russian oil and gas interests
JohnnyRingo
(18,618 posts)He brainwashed his audience to believe Hillary had Seth Rich murdered, even possibly by her own hand, and they will never be convinced otherwise. His audience knows nothing of this settlement and Hannity sure isn't going to mention it.
Had the suit gone forward, Hannity would have had to testify in a high profile case that would bring with it the truth, something Sean Hannity never wants his audience to hear. The settlement should have included a verbal retraction and an apology on his show. On a weekday. When everybody is watching.
BumRushDaShow
(128,452 posts)BOTH of those two need to go down. And go down HARD.
The current state of hyper-partisanship that we see today was initiated by Newt Get-rich and the chaos was magnified by the GOP megaphones on Faux.
maxsolomon
(33,244 posts)8 is more appropriate. Lis Wiehl got 32 million from them for O'Reilly.
DeminPennswoods
(15,265 posts)salary.