Irish Examiner view: Lawsuit over US election a threat to rightist media

The ruling is no guarantee that Fox Corp or any of the other defendants will be found guilty but legal and media experts in the US believe Fox could be in trouble

President Joe Biden: In the aftermath of his election, the American right-wing media turned into something an ostensibly lawless place where baseless conspiracy theories  were fed to viewers daily. Picture: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A lawsuit in the US, taken by the manufacturer of vote-counting machines that were later alleged to have rigged the 2020 election in favour of Joe Biden, looks set to have a dramatic impact on some of America’s right-wing news media.

Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states during the election, was last month given the go-ahead by a judge in Delaware to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could directly draw owners Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch into the spotlight.