During a long delay before opening statements were to begin, Fox News settled Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation case against it for a reported $787.5 million, about half of what the company had sought.

Yes, it’s a tremendous amount of money for Dominion and the company more than deserves it given the brazen lies that Fox told about it. It’s a tremendous amount of money for Fox News, too. The New York Times reports that Fox “had about $4.1 billion ‘of cash and cash equivalents’ on hand at the end of last year.” And there’s still Smartmatic’s similar defamation case for $2.7 billion.

But it’s beyond disappointing that a public apology and retraction do not seem to be part of Dominion’s settlement. CEO John Poulos all but said so in his statement following the settlement agreement: “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve. Nothing can ever make up for that," he said, thus suggesting no crow eating by Fox is on the menu. Then he suggested that Fox has already been held to account, saying, “Throughout this process, we have sought accountability and believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading lies.”

More to the point, Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford said about the settlement, “Money is accountability. And we got that today from Fox.”

Much as this case stood for larger issues and principles, the lawsuit was really only about the harm done to one company. That company is co-owned by a private equity firm which, in the end, obviously cares more about the bottom line than, sadly, stopping a right-wing propaganda machine from continuing to undermine our election. Fox will almost certainly continue with its democracy-sabotage by just being a bit more careful about whom and what it smears.