I mean, there's not many other reasons to knowingly lie in such a blatant way except malice.
To be clear, "actual malice" in the context of defamation law is
not "malice" in the normal sense of the word. A statement made with actual malice, as defined in the landmark case
New York Times v. Sullivan, is "made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false." It has nothing to do with how you feel about the target of the statements. That's good, because I don't think (and it would be hard to show) most people at Fox bore Dominion any particular ill will: they just wanted to make money and were happy to lie (and harm others) to do it.
Dominion's briefs on this point seem to show that there were many people in senior positions at Fox who knew the statements being made about Dominion were false as these statements were going on the air (or were so skeptical of where these theories were coming from that they were reckless to put them on the air). What Fox argued in its briefs was that, with the hosts, the evidence isn't enough to say they
knew the statements were false and/or they expressed sufficient skepticism on the air to not be considered to have made those statements, and with the executives, that there isn't enough evidence to show that those higher up the chain directed the content of the Fox broadcasts where the defamation occurred. The judge was reluctant to make a firm finding of fact on the mindset of those at Fox, so the trial will be almost entirely on that point.
This is very unusual. A big part of defamation is whether the statements made were true (or whether they were opinion), and so to have a court find, as a matter of law, that it was "
CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true" (emphasis in the original) is a big step. It also closes off a lot of other defamation defenses that Fox would otherwise be able to use. They're in a very difficult position now.
