The right-wing juggernaut dominates cable ratings across numerous different shows and timeslots. Fox News’ ratings prowess has never been in question but now it faces what might be an existential problem.

Fox is being sued in two major defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA for casting false assertions after the 2020 presidential election. Fox had reported that both companies engaged in voting fraud that tipped the scales in Joe Biden’s favor.

How much damage could those lawsuits actually do?

[The damage could be significant — *if* DVS can establish actual malice. The filings this week suggest that they’re in target range, but that is still a very high bar to clear — and that assumes that the DVS filing is the whole story. Fox likely has a lot of material that could contextualize those quotes in their favor. It’s so difficult to establish that I’d bet against it until shown otherwise at trial. — Ed]

Update: Fox News sent us this statement:

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan. Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”