Dominion filed a lawsuit against Fox News during the 2020 presidential election: Why the talk network didn’t endorse the election of Donald Trump

Besieged by angry viewers, denounced by then-President Trump, questioned by some of its own stars, Fox News found itself in a near-impossible spot on Election Night 2020 after its election analysis team announced before any other network that Joe Biden would win the pivotal swing state of Arizona.

Dominion filed its mammoth lawsuit against Fox News in March 2021, alleging that during the 2020 presidential election the talk network “recklessly disregarded the truth” and pushed various pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories about the election technology company because “the lies were good for Fox’s business.”

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

Murdoch said in his deposition that the right-wing talk network did not endorse the election of Donald Trump. Murdoch admitted that some of his show’s hosts promoted a story about the presidential contest being stolen.

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.

Meanwhile, fixated on the erosion of viewers to smaller right-wing rivals, Fox News executives purged senior journalists who were fixated on reflecting the facts. In a note to the network’s top publicity executive, Fox News CEO Scott denounced Sammon, the former Washington managing editor. Scott wrote Sammon did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance” in projecting Arizona for Biden, saying it was Sammon’s job “to protect the brand.”

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.”

Grossberg told CNN that he has covered many stories there. “Dominion is just a small portion. I have watched it from the very beginning until my last day of work last week.

Fox has to prove actual malice in order to be victorious in a defamation case. That means either knowingly broadcasting false and damaging information, or doing so with reckless disregard for the truth.

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 Fox employee told NPR that a technical glitch in a control room delayed the announcement of the full White House win for Biden.

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. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators.”

Dobbs’ show on Fox Business – in which he routinely promoted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election – was canceled a few weeks after the January 6 insurrection.

In recent weeks, the organization has argued that a host of Donald Trump’s friends and associates are at the center of its case. An email from a Fox News producer begging colleagues to keep the host off the air was revealed by NPR.

According to Fox, news organizations must be able to convey allegations by public figures to their audiences in order to survive. Chen says that the claims being presented in its programs aren’t worth the time and attention they’re getting.

Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch didn’t mind the politics of putting the conspiracy theory-pushing MyPillow CEO on Fox News, he said in a deposition, according to court records.

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.

At its core, Fox News is not a news network according to the documents. News networks work very hard to give their viewers accurate information. The documents show that Fox News hosts peddled lies to the audience, even though they knew the truth. When the few hosts and correspondents who had integrity at Fox News tried to be honest with their viewers, the highest levels of the channel worked against them.

The Trump campaign attorney is a bit nuts according to Ingraham. Carlson privately used a vulgar term for the women to describe her. The top network programming executive wrote that he didn’t think the shows were credible sources of news.

The legal filing also underscored how worried Fox News executives and hosts were in the immediate aftermath of the election of losing its viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.

It’s not a good idea to conduct a large inquiry into newsroom decisions, including ownership, according to James Goodale, the New York Times general counsel who advised the paper to publish the Pentagon Papers. “Newsroom decisions, including ownership decisions as to news judgment, should be protected by the First Amendment.”

The Fox News Network Threat to the Party of 2020: When Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levinson cried out against Donald Trump

The audience started to erode severely that fall, starting on Election Night itself. Fox executives and stars equally obsessed over the threat posed by the smaller right-wing network Newsmax. Hannity texted Carlson and Ingraham that Fox’s Arizona call “destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.” Carlson said that it was “vandalism”. Dana Perino, as well as others, were equally shocked.

Tucker Carlson tried to get a White House correspondent at Fox News fired for fact-checking a Donald Trump claim of election fraud.

A person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that he was not aware of the efforts by top hosts behind the scenes to get her fired, but that she was reading the details in the legal filing.

A team led by then-Fox Corp senior vice president Raj Shah, formerly a White House aide to Trump, warned other top corporate leaders of a “Brand Threat” after Cavuto’s refusal to air McEnany’s White House press briefing on baseless claims of voter fraud.

► Murdoch asked Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to have Hannity say “something supportive” about Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham ahead of the 2020 election. Murdoch stated, “We cannot lose the Senate if it’s possible.” In other words, Murdoch was directing the head of his talk network to help the GOP. Again, this type of directive from an executive would be a major scandal at an actual news network.

Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Jason Koerner/Getty Images; Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images; Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

The network’s stars, producers and executives expressed contempt for those same conspiracy theories, calling them ” mind-blowingly nuts,” and ” completely bs” – often in far earthier terms.

The messages showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked lies being pushed by Trump’s camp asserting that the election had been rigged.

In December, 2020, the network’s Washington Managing Editor wrote a piece about how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things. The executives of the network criticized the hit to Fox News’ brand among its viewers. Yet there was little apparent concern, other than some inquiries from Fox Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, over the journalistic values of fairness and accuracy.

The attorneys for the cable network said in a separate filing that the damages request was intended to enrich the private equity fund that owns the company.

The Murdoch family did not act on January 6: revealing Donald Trump’s call to Fox News on the day of the January 6 attack

On Nov. 5, 2020, just days after the election, Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor texted a friend: “[T]here is NO evidence of fraud. There were no Allegations – stories. Twitter. Bulls.

His departure two months later was termed a retirement by Fox News; through an intermediary, Sammon has declined to comment on that, citing the terms of his departure.

In a defamation case against the company, documents show that Donald Trump tried to get into Fox News in January 2021, but was refused on air.

The House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack did not know that Trump had made this call, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work.

The panel sought to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements, actions and phone calls on that day. His newly revealed call to Fox News shows some of the gaps in the record that still exist, due to roadblocks the committee faced.

The afternoon of January 6th, after the Capitol came under attack, then-president Trump called into Lou Dobbs show trying to get on the air.

There was a decision that was vetoed by Fox executives. “Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event by any measure. He was the key figure on the day, and he was the sitting President.

If America’s democracy were to be damaged by the Murdoch family’s actions, they would still be OK with that because their audience and stock would increase.

What happened to Haley: A successful South Carolina governor, an Indian immigrant, a successful attorney, and the case against Fox News on First Amendment grounds

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. Her mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi, and after immigrating to South Carolina, earned a master’s degree in education and became a local public-school teacher. She’s the daughter of a University of British Columbia graduate who taught at Voorhees College for 29 years. On the side, they even opened a clothing boutique.

Floyd Abrams said that the motion for a summary judgment was a big blow to Fox’s defense of the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

“It’s a major blow,” attorney Floyd Abrams of Pentagon Papers fame said, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put Fox in a more precarious situation” in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

But that would be rational, and I believe that some of our most important relationships with media are anything but rational. John L. Caughey wrote a book called “Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach.”

The evidence in the case against Fox was not only large, but also very dense, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor and media law scholar at the University of Utah.

Tushnet said that in all of her years practicing and teaching law, she had never seen such damning evidence collected in the pre-trial phase of a defamation suit. Tushnet didn’t recall anything comparable to this. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.”

David Korzenik, an attorney who teaches First Amendment law and represents a lot of media organizations, said the filing showed the case against Fox News has serious teeth.

“This is a pretty staggering brief,” Jones said. “Dominion’s filing here is unique not just as to the volume of the evidence but also as to the directness of the evidence and the timeline of the evidence.”

The Murdochs, Scott and Dinh: Running the Fox News Channel to Protect a Key State of Arizona Against the 2020 Presidential Election

Murdoch said some commentators were supporting it, when asked about the hosts position on the election. He said that he would have liked the condemnation of it to be stronger.

A deposition by Fox’s chief legal officer was included in the Monday filing. Mr. Dinh asked if it was possible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results, after Mr. Hannity told his audience.

► In the wake of the election, Murdoch wrote in an email to the New York Post’s Col Allan, describing election lies that Trump was pushing as “bulls**t and damaging.”

Murdoch gave Trump’s son-in-law a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public. At most news organizations, this type of action would result in an investigation.

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. “I could have,” Murdoch said. “But I didn’t.”

Emails and other communications introduced into the case reflect deep involvement by the Murdochs and other Fox Corp. senior figures in the network’s editorial path.

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

He had been resolute about defending Fox News’ call of the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — Nov. 3, 2020. Murdoch said that he could hear Trump shouting in the background as Kushner told him the situation was bad.

Scott forwarded his advice to the executive in charge of programming. She canceled the show because she feared that guests would say that the election was stolen and that she would push back, 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.” He said that after the election, the positive impressions of Fox News viewers plummeted to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, an anti-Trump Republican, sits on Fox Corp.’s board of directors. He said he told the Murdochs “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” He told them that the post election period would be an appropriate time for Fox to pivot away from its prior support for Trump.

“Just tell her,” suggested Lachlan, who was advised by Murdoch. Fox News, which called the election correctly, is pivoting as fast as possible. We have to lead our viewers which is [] not as easy as it might seem.”

On Jan. 26, Tucker Carlson had Lindell on his show. Murdoch told the attorneys he wouldn’t be taking money for MyPillow ads.

Norm Eisen said Monday that the depositions were one of the most devastating he had ever seen. “When you go beyond reporting and your chairman admits there was endorsement, then that opens you up to liability under the actual malice standard.”

“The evidence that’s been put into the public sphere so far looks like strong evidence that Fox knew the truth and decided to go with an alternate narrative,” Lidsky says.

Murdoch, meanwhile, conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted falsehoods about the presidential contest being stolen.

Fox News Sensitivities to Ukraine and their Implications for Republican Presidential Campaigns: Ron DeSantis and the 2020 Presidential Election

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 is especially bad if the messages show you allowing false information on the air as is the case for Fox News anchor and executives.

“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.”

Had Russia invaded, Fox would have been a big backer of military aid for the country. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.

Even though Carlson mimics Trump, he still questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s current chief rival as they look ahead to the 2024 presidential race, represents the evolution in his own policy positions, as CNN’s KFile notes: “DeSantis wanted to send weapons to Ukraine when he was a congressman – as a presidential hopeful he questions US involvement.”

The Conservative Political Action Conference is a major stop for Republican presidential candidates and Trump will be there this weekend. Haley, the other major declared candidate, will also attend.

But DeSantis, who is soft launching a nascent campaign, is skipping the event as he prepares promote his new book. He’ll also pop into a private retreat for the anti-tax Club for Growth in Palm Beach, Florida, where he can hobnob with donors, according to Politico.

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

What the Fox News Channel is all about: The stories of Donald J. Murdoch and the hardcore conservatives whose opinions affect Fox News

The hardcore Trump supporters, the people who were his closest defenders during his four years in office, were the ones that CNN talked to.

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

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.

It was an outlet that was used to promulgate and amplify a conservative viewpoint, that was what Roger Ailes believed it to be. From day one, it was about propaganda – not information. 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 referred to the channel as news, but it was always about politics and ideology.

It all has to do with right-wing politics and money. Murdoch suggested in his description that the CEO of MyPillow was allowed to promote election conspiracy theories on Fox.

Today, Fox is further away from the news part of its name than ever. It still presents itself as a news channel in name using the tropes of anchor desks, correspondents and panels of guests.

But it’s become so much deeper culturally. 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 told them that it wasn’t their fault if they were struggling. The Democrats in Washington are giving the country away to immigrants and minorities – and the money is coming out of the viewers’ pockets, as illogical and false as that is.

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 others who have watched Fox News will be the same.

“How often do you get ‘smoking gun’ emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?” says Rutgers University law professor Ronald Chen, an authority on Constitutional and media law.

Top executives, including Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, told one another they could not bluntly confront their viewers with the facts because that could alienate them further.

Even with that record, set out with voluminous documentation, some media lawyers say Fox’s attorneys may be right in predicting that a loss would constrict the media’s freedoms.

Jane Kirtley, a media law professor at the University of Minnesota, says that she’s more concerned about the longer term than she is about the alleged misdeeds of Fox.

Brennan also argued Americans should have latitude to get some things wrong in talking about public officials and politics, in order to ensure free and robust debate.

Defamation Cases in the Fox News: Elena Kagan, The New York Times and the University of Virginia Between Elections’

Two current Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, have indicated they would be open to making it easier for plaintiffs to prevail in defamation suits. Elena Kagan was one of the people who published her musings years before she joined the court.

Murphy says it is important that the people involved with the broadcasts be proven to know the statements they aired were wrong. Murdoch’s statements that he dismissed the claims of election fraud as bogus and that his star hosts had endorsed them publicly does not have any legal weight.

“Anybody would have to acknowledge that what the president and his lawyers were doing was newsworthy in and of itself, regardless of whether the allegations were ultimately going to be anything they could prove,” Murphy says. She told the audience what other people were saying just like a neutral reporting would.

Baier and MacCallum were concerned with the loss of viewers, and they were worried about how to win them back, despite the fact that there was evidence to the contrary.

When news outlets do lose defamation cases, they often result in retractions or apologies and settlements while they’re still on appeal. The two most prominent defamation cases have different outcomes.

In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine settled separate cases filed by a University of Virginia dean and a campus fraternity after a collapse of standards in reporting on what turned out to be a source’s fabricated account of campus rape.

A year ago, The New York Times prevailed against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin after an editorial wrongly linked her advertisements from her political action committee to a mass shooting months later.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media

The Dominion Case: Fox News Media’s Attorney-Client Preferred Information in a Discrimination and Retaliation Litigation

“The Dominion case is such a strange case it provides an exception to the general rule,” Goodale says. “Let us hope we don’t see such a bizarre case as this one again.”

“Ms. Grossberg has threatened to disclose FOX News Media’s attorney-client privileged information and we have filed a temporary restraining order to protect our rights,” the network said in a statement.

Fox’s lawsuit says that the senior producer in charge of booking guests for Tucker Carlson told the network last month that she intended to file a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit.

In its lawsuit against Grossberg, Fox’s legal team said it informed her attorney that information included in her draft complaint against the network was privileged earlier this month. The law firm of Grossberg shared the drafts of the lawsuits on Monday.

The memo Powell delivered detailed allegations of fraud without providing evidence. It was written by a woman named Marlene Bourne, who admitted her claims were “pretty wackadoodle.”

The lawsuits were filed in two different places: the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the Delaware Superior Court.

In her lawsuits, Grossberg also made a number of eye-popping allegations about the workplace environment at Fox News, accusing the network of rampant sexism.

Fox does not care, says Grossberg. Everything is summarized perfectly. They do not care about their employees or their viewers.

Grossberg, who indicated she was passed over for a top job on Bartiromo’s show because the network preferred it be filled by a male, said Fox News executives referred to the “Sunday Mornings Futures” host as a “crazy b**ch” and “menopausal.”

When she began work on Carlson’s show, Grossberg said the environment was horrific. She said she was shocked on her first day to learn that the show had a decorated workspace with large photos of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The lawsuit continued to describe a culture at Carlson’s program in which women were subjected to crude terms and in which jokes about Jewish people were made out in the open. Carlson was named along with members of his staff in the lawsuit.

Defending False News Stories with a High-Energy Fox News Judge and a First-Principles Hearing

She said that it was constant. The shows, the network and the hosts depend on ratings. It is a business that drives coverage.

The parties appeared in Delaware Superior Court for a second day of arguments relating to summary judgment after a long hearing on Tuesday. Both sides essentially want Judge Eric Davis to decide the case in their favor now, averting a jury trial that is scheduled to begin next month. A written ruling is most likely to be issued by the judge in the future.

Nelson said they made the decision to allow it to happen, referring to the baseless claims about the voting company.

Lawyers for the right-wing network stated in a Monday filing that live testimony at trial would add nothing to the interest of the media. This is a trial and not a public relations campaign.

The judge from Delaware had tough questions for the lawyers from Fox News on Tuesday. He challenged some of the legal theories, but warned watchers not to predict his ruling by the rigor of his questioning.

One of Fox’s arguments seems to be intellectually honest according to him. He questioned how Fox News could argue that former host Lou Dobbs had engaged in legally protected neutral reporting when he signed many of his posts with the campaign slogan “#Make America Great Again”.

“It could have been a bigger story that a President who lost an election was making all these unsubstantiated false allegations” about widespread fraud, Davis mused from the bench.

A New Judge: The Case for Ray Epps, the FBI’s Secret Agent in the January 6 Capitol Insurrection, Revisited

The judge previously rejected Fox’s requests to throw out the lawsuit, and allowed Dominion to add Fox’s parent company as a defendant, ramping up the legal exposure for the Murdochs.

Instead, “all we ever did was provide viewers with the true fact that those allegations were being leveled by the siting President and his lawyers, all throughout the country,” she told the judge.

In previous court filings, the company has said that its calculation is correct. The company hired experts to evaluate its books and lost business opportunities, and that’s how they reached the $1.6 billion figure.

An attorney for Ray Epps, the Arizona man that January 6 conspiracy theorists falsely claim led an FBI plot to orchestrate the insurrection, demanded an on-air retraction Thursday from Fox News and its right-wing talk host Tucker Carlson, and claimed they made “false and defamatory statements” about him.

Conspiracy theorists baselessly believed that the January 6 assault on the US Capitol was a staged attempt to make Donald Trump’s supporters look bad.

As part of that conspiracy theory, some right-wing figures baselessly claimed Epps was part of a secret FBI plot to orchestrate the attack. Carlson has repeatedly breathed life into those conspiracies by giving them attention on his highly rated program. Carlson often plays footage from the Capitol on his show, and specifically mentioned Epps on many occasions.

In a private deposition with the House committee that investigated January 6, Epps denied that he ever worked for the FBI or for federal law enforcement, according to a transcript of his interview. He testified that he supported Trump in 2020 and attended the protest in DC because he was concerned about voter fraud.

Teter, the Epps attorney, described the conspiracy theories about his client as “nonsensical fantasies” that have been “disproven by videos and accounts by those attending the January 6th events.”

This isn’t Teter’s first foray into the legal fallout from January 6. He is pushing for professional accountability against lawyers who spread election lies. He is the managing director of the 65 Project, a group that is trying to take disciplinary action against Trump-aligned attorneys who pushed bogus falsehoods about the election.