Rupert Murdoch: Will he be damaged by the Fox News and Dominion case?

Rupert Murdoch agreed a last-minute settlement, which avoided a trial in the defamation case

The 19 July 2011 was the "most humble day" of Rupert Murdoch's life.

Until now, at least.

On that day in 2011, the world's most powerful media mogul was called before Parliament's culture and media committee as the phone hacking scandal engulfed his UK newspaper operations.

The final straw had been the revelation that the News of the World had listened in to the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

The horror of it still resonates (and the story of phone hacking is far from over).

Back then, Murdoch's damage limitation exercise was swift. He shut down the 168-year-old newspaper and apologised privately to the Dowler family.

The man who has had such a hold over Britain's media since he arrived in London in the late 1960s to buy the News of the World was forced into that humiliating one-liner.

"This is the most humble day of my life," he told MPs (with the theatre of the event heightened by his then wife Wendi Deng later launching herself at a protester who attacked her husband with a custard pie).

Now Murdoch has been forced into another humiliating climbdown, this time in relation to his US operations.

• Fox settles Dominion defamation case for $787.5m

• Can Fox News afford the $787.5m Dominion payout?

Yet again, it's the Murdoch empire's approach to truth that is in the spotlight.

Fox News argued it was fighting a court case against voting machine company Dominion in the interests of free speech, a US First Amendment right.

Instead, it appeared that the network relegated fact-based journalism for fiction in the wake of America's 2020 presidential election.

Some of Fox News' most prominent personalities had been expected to testify in the Dominion lawsuit trial

We already know, from Fox News emails and messages published in February as part of the legal case, that many Fox executives and presenters didn't believe claims of voter fraud - but broadcast them anyway.

The network carried on giving a platform to people endorsing the views of Donald Trump and his supporters that the election had been stolen - in part, it seems, because it didn't want to upset its viewers.

Former president Donald Trump, pictured at the NRA annual meeting last week, repeatedly claimed the 2020 election was stolen

Suzanne Scott, the Fox News Media chief executive, told Murdoch just before rioters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 that the channel needed to be careful about "pissing off the viewers".

With 7,000 documents now in the public domain, there has already been a lot of damaging material to chew over. Huge questions remain over the impact Fox News and its broadcasts had over the divisions apparently tearing the US apart. Truth took a back seat and the impact is still being felt.

Perhaps, for Murdoch, the final straw was the prospect of facing another public humiliation, this time in court. Fox's lawyers had failed to persuade the judge that he shouldn't be called to the stand.

Along with his son Lachlan, Fox Corporation's executive chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch would have had to give evidence.

Rupert Murdoch and and his son Lachlan were both expected to give evidence in the trial

And it's clear Dominion's lawyers would not have settled for a one-liner from the media mogul.

"The most humble day of my life" simply wouldn't have cut it. It would have been hugely embarrassing.

So Rupert Murdoch agreed a last-minute settlement, meaning Fox will pay Dominion $787.5m (£634m).

Although the case never reached trial and the Murdochs never took the stand, reputationally the damage surely equals that of the hacking scandal.

So where does this leave the man who has been integral to the fabric of the media landscape in the UK, the US and Australia for so long?

Ruthlessness and risk-taking built the Murdoch empire, whether that was his victory over the print unions in the early days of his ownership of the Times and Sunday Times, or his determination to create the right-wing Fox News, credited with helping get Trump elected in 2016.

Rupert Murdoch pictured with Donald Trump in 2016, before the US election that saw Trump become president

His critics will be crowing over the Dominion settlement.

On CNN, presenter Jake Tapper (who said it was difficult to report the outcome "with a straight face") called it "one of the ugliest and most embarrassing moments in the history of journalism".

And this isn't the end of the matter. Another voting software company, Smartmatic, is also suing Fox over its broadcasts about voter fraud. It could be even more costly. Smartmatic wants more than Dominion - $2.7bn (£2.2bn) in defamation damages.

In the UK, the Murdoch empire has already paid out many millions in damages to people who accused it of phone hacking.

Prince Harry is trying to take Murdoch's News Group Newspapers to court over alleged phone hacking

Prince Harry is part of a group of claimants trying to take Murdoch's News Group Newspapers, which includes the Sun, to court over alleged phone hacking.

How damaging will all this be?

The $787.5m payout to Dominion is a huge amount. But Fox's revenue in the last quarter of 2022, for example, was $4.6bn (£3.7bn) - and the share price has barely moved in light of the settlement.

Perhaps there's a lesson to learn from 2011. At the time, the horrific story of the News of the World's exploitation of Millie Dowler's murder felt to many like a watershed.

The News of the World newspaper printed its final edition in 2011

It cost the empire dearly in the short term - but, while the phone hacking fallout and financial outlay are ongoing, Murdoch's influence has only spread since then.

He's older now, at 92. He has also suffered a more personal embarrassment recently. Having announced a new engagement and his plans to spend the "second half of our lives together", just a few weeks later the marriage plans were off.

But if we've learned one thing over the past half a century, it's that you underestimate Rupert Murdoch at your peril.