Media Matters for America, the watchdog nonprofit that monitors and corrects right-wing misinformation, issued a “warning” in the wake of Dominion Voting Systems agreement Tuesday afternoon to settle its defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
“A warning: Fox is about to burn brighter and hotter,” Angelo Carusone, Media Matters’ president and CEO said on his social media account, which Media Matters retweeted.
“They’ll take this license to lie they just purchased and pivot to rebuilding audience bond,” he added. “Fox will feed viewers [the] rarest of meat, work audience into frenzy and leverage that for political power and for cable carriage increases.”
Cable carriage, also known as a cable subscriber fee, is the money cable channels or networks are paid by cable companies, money that comes from subscribers. (Anyone who pays for cable TV effectively pays Fox News every month, whether or not they watch the channel.)
Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle the defamation case the voting systems company brought against the right wing network.
Media Matters’ news director John Whitehouse also spoke to cable subscriber fees after the Dominion/Fox News settlement agreement.
“For some context,” Whitehouse says, “Fox News made roughly $1.9 billion from cable subscriber fees alone in 2022 (that is, fees that everyone with Fox News on their cable system pays, even if they never watch). And most of that is from people who never even watch the channel.”
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that cable companies make virtually all Americans subsidize this shit channel,” Whitehouse added. “Anyway, if you’re wondering who is paying for this settlement, the answer is you, if you have a cable subscription and get Fox.”