Reply to the Murdoch Filed: “Comment on ‘Following the Biden 2020 Presidential Campaign” by Fox News’ Bill Sammon
Murdoch suggested firing Bill Sammon, the head of the Washington bureau, despite Fox accurately calling the race for Biden. “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” which would “be a big message with Trump people” the filing said. Sammon was later “told the inevitable” that day on Nov. 20, 2020.
The internal messages show that many at Fox made fun of the election-fraud claims and at times were appalled by them. But they mostly kept their skepticism hidden from viewers. Having gotten the Fox audience totally aroused by — and addicted to — claims of election fraud, Fox News’s leaders were afraid to stop. Why? They thought they would lose viewers and ad revenue to Newsmax and OAN.
The judge’s ruling yesterday affirmed that the contracts should be given to Dominion.
The Fox News View of Murdoch’s Deposition on the Defamation of the Right-Wing Talk Network Against the Corrupt Report of the 2016 Presidential Election
In his deposition, Murdoch rejected that the right-wing talk network as an entity endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. But Murdoch conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted the falsehood about the presidential contest being stolen.
Keller differentiated between a host and a network executive who are sometimes pre-scripting material for the show, that is tethering to a specific channel’s telecast, and a producer who is not.
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 cited a document from Fox, which said that the daily editorial meeting that occurs includes almost all of these executives.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the network said, “as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims.”
The New York Times was found by the US Supreme Court to have acted with malice when it broadcasted false statements to the public.
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. One person inside Fox with direct knowledge of its election coverage told NPR the delay in calling the full White House win for Biden involved a technical glitch in a control room as one show transitioned to the next at the top of the hour.
Clark and Baier both told Jay Wallace, the network’s top news executive, that Bartiromo was spreading false claims of fraud on social media.
Murdoch said he urged the firing of Lou Dobbs because of his views but was still allowed to host a program until after the election. Dominion argues that’s because Dobbs was popular with Trump and his supporters and the network was fending off viewer defections to Newsmax.
In recent weeks, Dominion has argued that Fox host Jeanine Pirro is at the core of its case. NPR previously revealed the existence of an anguished email from a Fox News producer begging colleagues to keep Pirro off the air because she was circulating lies about election fraud from dark corners of the Internet.
The place in which Fox News is located is necessary for one to understand the phenomenon. It is more than a mere source of news. It’s the place where Red America goes to feel seen and heard. If there’s an important good news story in Red America, the first call is to Fox. If conservative Christians are threatened with their civil liberties, the first call would be to Fox. If you need to sell a book, the first place you should call is Fox.
► Murdoch said it was “wrong” for Tucker Carlson to host conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell after the election. When asked why he continued to allow the MyPillow CEO to continue appearing on Fox News, Murdoch signaled it was a business decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” he said. That’s a shocking admission from Murdoch about what actually guides coverage at Fox News.
Murdoch is accusing a smaller media outlet of defaming him. He has caused the site to pay out for highly critical commentary several times before and he plans to use that as a test case for recent changes in libel law in that country. In Australia, the media has less legal cover than it does in the U.S.
Fox News: Joe Biden’s “Mistrust” of the Broadcast Broadcast Media Landscape (Republican Mistrust in the Media Landscape)
President Joe Biden warned the nation from the Washington’s Union Station just days before the mid-term elections.
Biden said that all candidates running for office in America, for governor, Congress, attorney general, secretary of state, will not accept the results of the elections they are running in. This path leads to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. It is un-American.
The line in the speech that was broadcasted by cable news but snubbed by broadcast networks, is not a matter of opinion. It doesn’t include any political spin. It is a tragic fact.
The newsletter, “Reliable Sources”, has a version of this article. There is a daily digest of the evolving media landscape.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/media/republican-mistrust-reliable-sources/index.html
The Toxicity of Democracy: Tucker Carlson’s No-Go Theoretical Argument against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Elections
Only 41% of Republicans have confidence that US elections reflect the will of the people, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and published Wednesday found. A staggering 66% of Republicans continue to say that they do not believe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 elections.
It is impossible to understand how many Americans no longer trust US elections because of the information universe in which they reside. Bad-faith television hosts, radio personalities, podcasters, and websites that now unquestionably dominate the right-wing media landscape have poisoned the information well with lies and conspiracy theories about the elections process.
For example, take Tucker Carlson. After Biden’s speech, the right-wing talk show host not only gave permission for his massive audience to question election results, but actually egged them on to do so. “In a functioning democracy, you’re not simply allowed to raise questions about elections, you’re encouraged to,” Carlson ranted as the on-screen banner alerted viewers to the fact that he was reacting “to the mannequin’s angry speech.”
It’s easy to dismiss Carlson’s rhetoric as fringe. He does not reflect the larger right-wing media universe in which most Republicans get their news.
And it is understandable why some people choose to ignore it. It is difficult to understand how so many Americans are being radicalized by the right wing of the Republican Party.
But doing so would be to ignore the forces allowing a cancer to grow in our society. And for news organizations, ignoring the toxicity that defines the right-wing media universe leaves readers and viewers without a complete picture of what is happening in the country.
Murdoch, the mogul who controls many of the most powerful organs in conservative media, had made it clear that he would rather not see Donald Trump as the GOP’s leader.
“I think Governor DeSantis is the single biggest winner of the night,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on “Fox & Friends,” adding that he will “almost certainly become the rallying point for everybody in the Republican Party who wants to move beyond President Trump.”
The home page of Fox News featured a column by Liz Peek, who stated that Ron DeSantis was the new leader of the Republican Party. Fox News referred to it as a new era.
And The Wall Street Journal, the broadsheet owned by Murdoch, the newspaper’s conservative editorial board published a piece proclaiming the “DeSantis Florida tsunami.”
The editorial board stated there was little doubt that his Florida success would grab the attention of voters outside the state. “You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching—unhappily.”
Murdoch asked Fox news to have Sean Hannity say something supportive about Lindsey Graham, a Republican. Murdoch explained, “We cannot lose the Senate if at all possible.” Murdoch directed the talk network’s head to aid the GOP. Again, this type of directive from an executive would be a major scandal at an actual news network.
Maggie Haberman, a reporter at The New York Times and CNN political analyst, reported recently in her bestselling book that after the 2020 election Murdoch remarked of Trump, “We should throw this guy over.”
The most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News privately ridiculed claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel allowing lies about the presidential contest to be promoted on its air, damning messages contained in a Thursday court filing revealed.
Ingraham called Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell “a bit nuts.” Carlson, who was the first to demand evidence fro Powell on the air, used a foul language for women to describe her. A top network programming executive wrote privately that he did not believe the shows of Carlson, Hannity and Jeanine Pirro were credible sources of news.
The court document offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.
“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.
After the election, an incensed Trump had attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson told Hannity over text message. “Seriously … what the f**k? I was surprised that it needs to stop immediately. It’s measurably hurting the company.”
A person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that Heinrich was blindsided reading the details in the legal filing and was not aware of the efforts by top hosts behind the scenes to get her fired.
Neil Cavuto was attacked by colleagues for pulling his show away from a presentation by a White House official in which she made false claims of fraud again. Mc Enany is a host of Fox News.
Scott exchanged messages with Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chief executive, and outlined a plan to win viewers back. Scott said the right-wing talk channel would “highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch responded that the brand needed “rebuilding without any missteps.”
The Fox News Story: The Values of Truth, Justice and Clues to the Campaign against the Trump-Murdoch Conjecture
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 stars, producers and executives of the network expressed their disdain for the same conspiracies, calling them mind- blowingly nuts, ” totally off the rails” and ” completely bs”.
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.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” Bill Sammon wrote in a private letter to the Washington Managing Editor. The executives above him were upset over the hit to Fox News’ brand. 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 lawyers for the cable network say in a filing that the company’s controlling owner is behind the ten-figure request for damages.
Why did President Donald Trump call Fox News after attacking the US Capitol? An investigation of his alleged misconduct against the network and the House Select Committee
On the day of the presidential election, the network’s chief political anchor text a friend, saying there was no evidence of fraud. None. There are allegations and stories. There is a profile on the social media site, and it is called 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.
Donald Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol, but the network refused to show him, according to court papers.
A source with knowledge of the work of the House select committee said it was not aware that Trump had made the call.
The panel sought to reconstruct Trump’s actions and phone calls in a matter of minutes. 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 day after the Capitol came under attack, President Trump attempted to get a show on the air, according to their legal brief.
“But Fox executives vetoed that decision,” Dominion’s filing continued. Why? Not because of a lack of credibility. January 6 was important in a number of ways. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day.”
The lies were allowed to take hold because executives and hosts were afraid that they would be blamed if they told the truth.
Behind the scenes, Fox News executives and hosts were in panic. Newsmax was described by Jay Wallace, the Fox News president, as “troubling” and needed to be on war footing.
In one week following the election, Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham, that the brand had been destroyed by one debate and was now incalculable.
The hosts were angry when their colleague, White House correspondent, sent out a fact check on Trump’s election lies.
Scott was already spoken to by Fox News host Sean Hannity. He then proceeded to criticize two of his other colleagues, Fox News host Neil Cavuto and then-Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, both of whom were critical of Trump.
The legal filing mentioned that executives at Fox News worried about alienating him when he criticized them on Newsmax. The filing added that Scott sent a handwritten note and gift to him.
The very next day, Nov. 8, Bartiromo invited Powell on her show and encouraged her to present her claims of fraud anew. “We talked about the software on Sunday Morning Futures,” Bartiromo said to Powell. There were problems with the voting. Tell me about that.”
Last week, a 178-page legal brief was filed by the company that made public the existence of the memo and her role in Fox broadcasts. The election-tech company has sued Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation over the airing of false claims that it engaged in election fraud.
The woman, who is not named in the legal brief, wrote that she knew the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had been killed during a week-long human hunting expedition at an elite social club. (Scalia, a favorite of many Fox News hosts, died in 2016 of a heart attack, according to local officials in Texas, where he died.)
The late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and the Fox Corporation founder would huddle every day to make sure they portray Mr. Trump in a bad light. By the time the woman wrote her memo, Ailes had been dead for more than three years.
“Who am I? And how do I know all of this?… I’ve had the strangest dreams since I was a little girl,” the woman wrote in the email shared by Powell with Bartiromo and Dobbs. “I was internally decapitated, and yet, I live.”
Fox News Dispatch: Tucker Carlson Against Donald W.P. Bartiromo during the Post-election Era
“[T]hat whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” Hannity said in a deposition conducted nearly two years later by Dominion’s lawyers.
Bartiromo replied glowingly to Powell, saying she had endorsed the information in the memo during a conversation with one of Trump’s sons: “I just spoke to Eric & told him you gave very imp info.”
Even though senior executives were skeptical about Bartiromo, they did not cause them to block her program that day or rerun it hours later.
Bartiromo was not alone in possessing the memo; Dobbs received it too, and Bartiromo had shared that memo with a senior producer and top booker, Abby Grossberg.
Asked about it under oath by Dominion’s attorneys late last summer, Grossberg said the memo “isn’t something that I would use right now as reportable for air, no,” according to the legal filings. Senior producer and top booker for Tucker Carlson is Grossberg.
Two days after the fateful Bartiromo appearance, Powell turned up on Fox’s air once more, this time on Ingraham’s primetime Fox News show. Powell asserted, “We have demonstrable, statistical and mathematical and computer evidence of hundreds of thousands of votes being injected into the computer systems repeatedly.”
She didn’t. Republican and Democratic state and local officials disputed and disproved her claims. So did Trump administration election integrity officials – as did some Fox News journalists. No matter. Powell was a fixture on Fox News and the Fox Business Network, frequently implicating Dominion.
Tucker Carlson challenged Powell on the air during the post-election season, which was the only challenge of the main opinion stars. “We took her seriously,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020. She did not send us any evidence despite a lot of requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”
Carlson invited the founder of mypillow, a pro-life organization, to advertise on his show three weeks after the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to block congressional certification of Biden’s win.
Carlson gave him plenty of time to make wild claims. On Carlson’s show, Lindell dared Dominion to sue him, saying he had the evidence of voting fraud but “they don’t want to talk about that.”
Yup, Fox hosts and the Murdoch family were OK with discrediting the core engine of America’s democracy — our ability to peacefully and legitimately transfer power — if it would hold their audience and boost their stock.
A friend of mine: When I first met Haley, I was a UN ambassador and daughter of an Indian immigrant, and when I became a teacher, I went to work for Fox
I wouldn’t call Haley a friend, but I thought she had a good story to tell, the first UN ambassador and daughter of an Indian immigrant. 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 credits her father with earning a PhD from the University of British Columbia and teaching biology at Voorhees College for 29 years. They opened a clothing boutique on the side.
Fox takes those calls. In the past, I’d pitched stories to Fox producers in the green rooms. They were more interested in stories about religious liberty than mainstream media outlets. I knew they loved human-interest stories about virtuous veterans and cops. Sometimes this was good — we need more coverage of religion in America, for example — but over time Fox morphed into something well beyond a news network.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about the talk hosts’ on-air positions about the election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he added.
The Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, Rebecca Tushnet described the evidence as being a very strong one that lays out the difference between what Fox was saying publicly and what top people at Fox were privately admitting.
In her years of practice and teaching, Tushnet has never seen such incriminating evidence before a defamation suit.
Murdoch’s Response to the Trump Campaign: “Possibility of lying in the news media, not informing the audience”
In his deposition, Mr. Dinh, when asked if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, said: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”
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 a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public to Trump’s son-in-law, offering him a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public. At most news organizations, this type of action would result in an investigation and disciplinary measures.
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.