Fox News insisted its Seth Rich lawsuit settlement be revealed after the election -- and paid so much that it didn't have to apologize

The New York Times

The cable news network's settlement with the Rich family over its role in repeatedly hyping the false claim that the late Democratic National Committee staffer was responsible for leaking DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign was revealed on Nov. 24, but was agreed to on Oct. 12, reports The New York Times' Ben Smith. "Fox’s decision to settle with the Rich family came just before its marquee hosts, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, were set to be questioned under oath in the case, a potentially embarrassing moment," reports Smith. "And Fox paid so much that the network didn’t have to apologize for the May 2017 story on FoxNews.com. But there was one curious provision that Fox insisted on: The settlement had to be kept secret for a month — until after the Nov. 3 election. The exhausted plaintiffs agreed. Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement secret for the final month of the Trump re-election campaign? Why was it important to the company, which calls itself a news organization, that one of the biggest lies of the Trump era remain unresolved for that period? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was wrong would incite the president’s wrath? Did network executives fear backlash from their increasingly radicalized audience, which has been gravitating to other conservative outlets? Fox News and its lawyer, Joe Terry, declined to answer that question when I asked last week. And two people close to the case, who shared details of the settlement with me, were puzzled by that provision, too. The unusual arrangement underscores how deeply entwined Fox has become in the Trump camp’s disinformation efforts and the dangerous paranoia they set off, culminating in the fatal attack on the Capitol 11 days ago. The network parroted lies from Trump and his more sinister allies for years, ultimately amplifying the president’s enormous deceptions about the election’s outcome, further radicalizing many of Mr. Trump’s supporters."