The Fox News split screen: breaking the First Amendment by publishing lies on the show – a brief response to a high-profile lawyer challenge

There was a split screen. Fox became the last network to project Biden’s win of the presidency despite being the first to make the Arizona call that proved accurate. And while its reporters often unraveled election fraud allegations, many of Fox’s biggest stars tolerated, amplified and even embraced them, Dominion’s lawyers noted.

The Fox statement called Dominion’s stance “extreme,” citing free speech concerns, and characterized the voting-tech company’s legal position as “a blatant violation of the First Amendment” that would “prevent journalists from basic reporting.”

In a ruling yesterday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis affirmed that Dominion should receive the contracts – the point of contention in Tuesday’s hearing.

Nelson said at the hearing that senior Fox News executives tried to prevent the Trump campaign lawyers from repeating lies on their shows. Trump’s supporters hosted the accusations in the late 2020s.

In his exchanges with the judge, Keller drew a line distinguishing between a host or producer “who are sometimes pre-scripting material for the show, that is going to be tethered to a specific channel’s telecast” and a network executive.

Murdoch’s Deputation of the Fox News White House: Defaming the 2020 Election as a Crime against Dominion

There are a lot of things to support the notion that Scott is going to be sacrificed. Murdoch sought to distance himself from decision making at Fox News. I appointedMs. Scott to the job, and I delegate everything to her, he said. In doing so, Murdoch made the case that Scott is in charge of the network — and if there was wrongdoing, it rests on her shoulders. Of course, astute media observers know that Murdoch is the person actually calling the shots. But it’s not hard to see how the company could advance this narrative.

Nelson, the Dominion attorney, retorted by citing a document obtained from Fox that “talks about the daily editorial meeting that occurs, including almost all of these executives that we’re looking at right now.”

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems released portions of unflattering messages and depositions in court filings as part of their $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for broadcasting conspiracy theories about Dominion’s role in the 2020 presidential election.

Lawyers for Fox argued that its broadcasts after the election did not amount to defamation because they were protected by the First Amendment. In court filings, Fox says its reporting and commentary is the kind of work any journalistic outfit would do if it were doing that type of work.

No one at Fox would directly comment on Baker and Glasser’s assertions, other than Baier, who released a statement taking some issue with how his objections were framed. A person with direct knowledge of the election coverage said a technical glitch prevented the full White House win for Biden from being called.

Asked by a Dominion attorney whether “Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” Murdoch demurred, saying, “Not Fox, no. Not Fox. Maybe Lou Dobbs could be a commentator.

In December 2020, the pundit stated that Trump’s opponents within the government had committed treason, and he then suggested that a Republican officeholder might have been guilty of Criminal Conspiracy for supporting Biden. His departure from the network was hastily announced the day after another election software company, Smartmatic, filed its own $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox for defamation surrounding similarly false accusations of fraud. That case is not as far along in the process.

Dominion’s legal team asked the court to compel additional testimony from Pirro late last month, arguing that after Fox invoked a reporter’s privilege to shield her from some questions during her deposition. The decision on whether to question Pirro again has been left out of the public eye.

The latest example is Fox News, a network which exposed opinion formers to the fury they helped to cause. … The new details underscored how key players on the right feel they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.”

Murdoch followed the lead of the network’s senior executives and sidestepped the truth for the pro-Trump audience when confronted with the facts.

In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. He has forced the site to pay out for highly critical commentary several times previously; Crikey says it intends to use the suit as a test case for recent changes in libel law in that country. Media outlets have less legal cover in Australia than they do here in the U.S.

Any of these actions are considered a scandal at an actual news organization. Disciplinary measures would be likely and there would be investigations. But at Fox News, that’s not the case. That’s almost certainly because the leadership does not view the channel in the same way that it is marketed to viewers and advertisers.

The messages were contained in a stunning legal filing made public on Thursday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, showing the network’s executives and talk hosts privately trashing lies pushed by former President Donald Trump’s camp and his supporters asserting the 2020 election was rigged.

But, despite privately acknowledging the realiity of the situation, the network allowed the lies to take hold on its air, in large part because executives and hosts were terrified that telling its sizable audience the truth would prompt them to tune out.

Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham that after the election, a brand that took 25 years to build was destroyed in a single week.

The hosts were so alarmed by Newsmax’s rise, they were enraged when their colleague, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, tweeted a mere fact check of Trump’s election lies.

Carlson told Hannity that he wanted to get her fired. “Seriously What the f**k? I am surprised. Tonight, it needs to stop immediately. It is measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke, that’s for sure.

► Murdoch responded to one email from Ryan by telling him that Sean Hannity had “been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.” For fear of his audience rebelling against him, he wasn’t being up front with his loyal audience.

When Lindell appeared on Newsmax and criticized Fox News, executives at Fox News “exchanged worried emails about alienating him,” the legal filing said. Scott sent him a note with a gift, according to the filing.

Haley Murdoch: A successful South Carolina governor and the first U.N. ambassador to South Carolina and Trump’s son-in-law

“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,” the network said.

The core engine of America’s democracy, our ability to peacefully and legitimate transfer power, would be destroyed if the Murdoch family was able to keep their audience and boost their stock.

I’ve never met Haley, but from afar it seemed that she had a reasonably good story to tell — a successful South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, Trump’s first U.N. ambassador and the daughter of Indian immigrants. Raj became a public-school teacher in South Carolina after earning a master’s degree in education and studying law at the University of New Delhi. Her father, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and then taught as a biology professor at Voorhees College for 29 years. On the side, they even opened a clothing boutique.

When asked if he thought Fox executives should stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, he said yes.

But that would be rational, and I believe that some of our most important relationships with media are anything but rational. They are visceral and often rooted in profound psychological and emotional needs, as anthropologist John L. Caughey chronicled in his groundbreaking book, “Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach.”

Murdoch wrote in an email that Trump was pushing deceptive election lies and that it was detrimental to the country.

Murdoch gave Trump’s son- in-law a preview of Joe Biden’s ads before they were public, according to the filing. The type of action taken is usually followed by an investigation at most news organizations.

The documents lay bare that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but rather on feeding them content — even dangerous conspiracy theories — that keeps viewers happy and watching.

Asked whether he could have told Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. Murdoch said he could have. “But I didn’t.”

Fox Corp.’s founder and the company’s top advisers have been called into the filings to counter that defense.

Taken as a whole, the statements show that Murdoch apparently views Fox News more like an extension of the GOP than a credible news organization with a mission of informing viewers and allowing them to arrive at their own decisions.

Emails and other communications introduced into the case show that Murdochs and other Fox Corp. senior figures were heavily involved in the network’s editorial path.

Each Murdoch speaks roughly daily to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, she testified. (While Lachlan Murdoch confirmed his daily chat with Scott, Rupert Murdoch said it was only once or twice a week.)

Murdoch, who is just two weeks away from his 92nd birthday, said “I’m a journalist at heart.” “I like to be involved in these things.”

On election night in 2020, he was steadfast in defending Fox’s call of Arizona to Joe Biden. Murdoch testified that he could hear Trump yelling at someone in the background as his son-in-law told him it was terrible.

Scott forwarded his recommendation to the top executive. Along with another executive, she canceled Pirro’s show that weekend over fears that the “guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will be just a token,” according to the filings.

By Nov. 13, Raj Shah, a senior vice president at Fox Corp., was advising Lachlan Murdoch, Scott and Dinh of the “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.” After Election Day, positive impressions among Fox News viewers dropped to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.

The next day, Lachlan Murdoch warned Scott that a Fox News anchor’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally was “[s]mug and obnoxious”; Scott responded that she was “calling now” to remedy. Leland Vittert left Fox in January of 2021, but he is still an anchor for the cable news outlet NewsNation.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, an anti-Trump Republican, sits on Fox Corp.’s board of directors. He told Murdoch that Fox News should not be promoting conspiracy theories. And he testified that he advised them that the post-election period represented an inflection point in which Fox could pivot away from its prior support for Trump.

“Just let her know about it,” said Lachlan. Fox News, which called the election correctly, is pivoting as fast as possible. We have to lead our viewers, which is not easy at all.

On Jan. 26, Tucker Carlson had Lindell on his show. Rupert Murdoch told Dominion’s attorneys he could stop taking money for MyPillow ads, “[B]ut I’m not about to.”

Fox News Sentiment. Is Ron DeSantis Really Trying to Tell Us What Happens to Ukraine? Why Do We Need It, and How Does It Happen?

The painful truth about email and text messages, which every TV anchor and media executive should learn, is that you never know which message will be publicly released when your company is sued.

It’s especially painful if, as is the case for Fox News anchors and executives, the messages appear to show you are knowingly allowing false information on the air.

“Because there isn’t a bigger platform than this in America,” Ryan said. “So I think the conservative movement is going through a lot of churn and a lot of turmoil and I don’t like where it is right now.”

Fox would have been a major supporter of military aid for Ukraine, if Russia had invaded the country a year ago. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.

But its top stars, like Carlson, are mimicking Trump and questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia’s authoritarianism and invasion of Ukraine.

It was noted that Ron DeSantis wanted to send weapons toUkraine when he was a congressman.

Trump will appear this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, long a major stop for potential Republican presidential candidates. The other major announced candidate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, will also attend.

But DeSantis, who is soft launching a nascent campaign, is skipping the event as he prepares promote his new book. He will go on a private retreat for the anti-tax Club for Growth in Palm Beach, Florida, so he can connect with donors.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/fox-news-republicans-what-matters/index.html

Murdoch’s Legacy: Celebrating the Most Hardcore Candidates, Freedom Caucus and Semafor Editor-in-Chiral Ben Smith

Lawmakers that CNN spoke to, including hardcore Trump supporters, people who were part of the Freedom Caucus and people who were his most defenders during the four years he was in office, were the ones the network described as the most hardcore.

“The overriding concern among Republicans: They are concerned about Trump’s viability as a candidate,” Raju said. “After he underperformed in the last three election cycles, they’re worried that he could give Joe Biden another four years in the White House.”

Multiple members of the Freedom Caucus actually traveled to Florida not to meet with Trump, but instead to talk to DeSantis, according to Raju. They were impressed by what they saw.

The Murdochs “are certainly setting Suzanne Scott up to take the fall for this,” Ben Smith, the Semafor editor-in-chief who writes a Sunday night media column, said Wednesday.

Murdoch has said that firings could be coming. When asked in his deposition whether Fox News executives who knowingly allowed “lies to be broadcast” should face consequences, Murdoch responded in the affirmative: “They should be reprimanded,” he said. “They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.”

In each case, Murdoch made the decision to sever ties with top personnel. As one source who once worked in Murdoch-world said Wednesday, “His pattern has been to throw some money overboard and offer a head or two in the process to make it go away.” If Murdoch wanted to get rid of someone his age at one of the world’s biggest media empires, he could easily do that by cutting ties with Scott.

Folkenflik said Murdoch and the companies have often paid early and quietly to make things go away, or ignore them thinking they are so large they can ride things out. When things start to come to a head, they try to reduce the wound at the lowest level possible.

“If he threw [Scott] over, he would only do it because he thought he needed to cauterize the wound before it goes higher,” Folkenflik added. That is his record. That is what he does. It can be a field of work. It can be executives. It can be stars. He is not throwing himself over the side.

“Everyone who takes a senior executive position under Rupert Murdoch knows that is the case, that is the ultimate fall position,” Folkenflik explained. They know that is part of the job. You are paid very well. It can be a somewhat glamorous life. If you fall out of favor with the sun king, or it is to his benefit, that’s part of the equation.”

We will see what Scott looks like in the end. For now, Fox is not offering any public statement of support for her. When I reached out to Fox spokespeople on Wednesday asking for comment, the company declined.

Not every Fox alumnus agrees. Former primetime star Bill O’Reilly says the rest of the media makes too much of the story. The network will keep its core audience of older conservative viewers,” he wrote recently. “They will stand by their men and women, having nowhere else to go.”

The media team that helped put Richard Nixon in the White House saw it as a way to amplify a conservative viewpoint and was led by Ailes. It was about propaganda from the beginning. It was created as a counterbalance to what Ailes saw as a liberal bias in network TV, public radio and the top newspapers in the country. He cleverly referred to the channel as news, but it was always about politics and ideology first.

Now, it’s all about right-wing politics (the hotter and nastier, the better) and money. And not necessarily in that order, as Murdoch suggested in his description of why he allowed Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, to espouse unfounded election conspiracies on Fox:

It has become more and more culturally deeper. Fox News is a world view, a lifestyle, a way of seeing the world, a 24/7 warm bath of false nostalgia and aggrievement primarily for older adults – some of whom are likely feeling left behind or threatened by the changes in American life. Fox tells them that if they are struggling, it is not their fault. The Democrats in Washington have been giving away the country to immigrants and minorities in order to get more money out of the viewers.

If you look rationally at the potential effect of Murdoch’s admission, you might think some audience members would be so angry they might tune out the channel forever.

As shocking and even disgusting as some of us in the mainstream media find Murdoch’s deposition, my relatives won’t be changing their viewing habits because of it. I suspect most other viewers who have watched Fox News won’t be either.

Following Trump’s loss, Murdoch told Scott to “concentrate on Georgia” when the state was holding a high-stakes special election that would decide the balance of power in the US Senate, instructing her to be “helping any way we can.”

Murdoch told Jay Wallace and Scott that anything during the day was helpful when Trump was appealing for help against Don Blankenship. but Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] dumping on him hard might save the day.”

“There’s no one thing that shocked me or made me cringe”, said Julie Roginsky, former Fox commentator. I’ve read everything in those filings.

Right after Trump won the White HouseNominations, Ailes made an intense discipline disappear at Fox. Many journalists left Fox over the course of the Trump years.

“There was a time when the journalists had some control,” Cameron says now. That appears to have eroded. It’s not really important when that started. The organization has a serious legal problem. “

Each of them point in some ways to the 2016 departure of the late Roger Ailes — the celebrated, reviled and ultimately disgraced former Fox News chief.

When Fox News Collided: How the Fox News Loses Its Public Mana for the Good of the American People and for the U.S. Capitol

“The people who stayed — by the very nature of being allowed to stay — had to accept the notion that they were going to be led by the mob and the mob was being led by Donald Trump,” Roginsky says.

Stirewalt and Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon argued that the network needed to level with their viewers. Many of the executives at Fox were aware that the claims of fraud they were making were not true and decided to broadcast them, in order to woo back the Trump voters it had lost.

“What you read in those filings are people losing their heads because of ratings numbers,” Stirewalt says. “And one of the emails that was released was from Bill to me, where he talked about how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things. And that’s a fact.”

“It was particularly sad for an organization that had used to call itself ‘the most powerful name in news’ that it was such a fear-driven, such an anxious thing.” Stirewalt says. “We are willing to suffer the short-term cost for the long term good and, if I can be especially charming, the good of the Republic,” he says.

Fox fired a number of journalists before Biden took office. (A top Fox News PR executive said “Chris Stirewalt’s quest for relevancy knows no bounds.” He is now the political director for the new cable station News Nation.)

Executives turned over popular time slots that used to be reserved for news coverage to opinion shows at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. In late 2021, Fox political commentators Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg and Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace all left the network. Tucker Carlson’s programs promote conspiracy theories about the siege of the U.S Capitol in January of 2021.