On the surface, Fox News got pummeled.Rupert Murdoch, its founder, agreed to a massive settlement of $787.5 million, roughly two-thirds of the Fox Corporation’s net annual income. Fox News was embarrassed by revelations that its anchors privately despised former President Donald J. Trump. And Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology firm derided on Fox airwaves, declared victory Tuesday on the courthouse steps.Yet for some Murdoch critics, the outcome of this landmark libel case fell short of something to celebrate.“Rupert Wins Again,” declared the Politico press critic Jack Shafer, who noted Mr. Murdoch’s long history of paying tens of millions of dollars to settle claims of phone hacking, workplace harassment and other ignominies.“Country lost, democracy lost,” the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus wrote in an email, predicting that Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo would be feted by conservatives as “heroes” who “stood up against the liberal world.”Others lamented what they perceived to be a lost opportunity for a legal reckoning for the misinformation that has poisoned many Americans’ trust in the democratic process.“G …
