'More suffering is likely to come' as Fox reels from Dominion lawsuit

As lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems prepare for their day in court as they pursue a whopping $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, the network and its executives are facing an uncertain future.

According to a report from the Guardian's Adam Gabbatt, beyond the financial hit the conservative network would take, there is the loss of viewership, reputational harm as a news source and a growing divide with the Republican party that the network has been working with hand-in-hand for years.

As Gabbatt put it, "more suffering is likely to come" for Fox "on multiple fronts."

Writing that "Fox News’s legendary hold over the Republican party is on the wane, and even speculation that the Murdoch family’s position atop the Fox conglomerate could be at risk," the report notes that the threat of shareholder lawsuits is a very real thing that could set off a power struggle.

Add to that, there is the possibility the reeling media corporation will take an additional hit when it comes to negotiating new contracts with the cable companies, with the report stating, "Cable companies in the US pay individual channels, like Fox News, for the right to include them in their cable packages. Fox News is currently the second most expensive channel, behind ESPN."

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According to one analyst, Nicole Hemmer, author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics," revelations that some of the network's top stars knew they were lying to their viewers -- and expressing contempt for them -- will come back to haunt them as that viewership moves to alternative sources for their news.

“Because first of all media consumers have so many more options now than they used to. They have Fox News, of course, but they can maybe tab over to Fox News to watch Tucker Carlson and then they can move over to Newsmax to watch their offerings. There are all sorts of online streaming outlets, podcasts, all kinds of things,” Hemmer explained before adding, "And there will be other conservative media outlets that will continuously remind their audiences that Fox News hosts have said this about them, and [allege] that Fox News is just another part of the corporate elite media that doesn’t like you.”

Hemmer continued on to say the network's influence with the GOP is on the wane.

“One of the big things that we’ve learned about Fox News is that the tension that it has embodied from its very earliest days of both wanting to be respected as a news organization, and also serving the conservative movement in the United States, that tension has more or less been resolved in favor of serving the conservative movement,” she elaborated. “It’s not going to have that same agenda-setting power, because it’s just not going to be treated as a serious news outlet by other news organizations.”

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