Dominion’s suit against Fox News after the election: Why do Fox News executives failed to apologize for their actions? A case study in Delaware Superior Court
The victory of Biden caused a lot of Fox News people to stop talking on the air. Off the air, a sense of crisis pervaded the private conversations of the network’s executives and stars. Viewers who supported then-President Donald Trump abandoned Fox in droves after its Election Night team became the first in the nation to project that Biden would win the pivotal state of Arizona.
For its part, Fox’s attorneys call Dominion’s suit an attempt to punish the news network for reporting on “one of the biggest stories of the day.” The network says it would be hard for journalists to report allegations that are convenient to the company.
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.
According to Nelson’s remarks, senior Fox News executives tried to stop Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo from having Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on their shows to repeat lies for Trump. In late 2020, Dobbs and Bartiromo hosted Trump’s advocates to make those accusations.
Keller drew a line between a host and a producer who are pre-scripting material for the show that is going to be tethered to a specific channel’s telecast and a network executive.
Scott, the network chief executive, made an overture to MyPillow’s CEO as Fox executives worried about their audience protesting the channel.
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.”
The network’s executives knowingly allowed false conspiracies to be aired on their programs to boost their viewers, because their pro-Trump viewers abandoned them after theArizona call, according to a widely held belief by the network.
News organizations and entertainment companies are granted wide berth under the First Amendment for defamation, since it is hard to prove in the United States. Fox has repeatedly stressed that airing the fraud claims was newsworthy and protected under the Constitution.
The court filing 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 channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.
Bartiromo is a veteran financial journalist with previous jobs at CNN and CNBC. She joined Fox a decade ago to help bolster the Fox Business brand. She hosts 17 hours across Fox Business and Fox News each week.
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 the past few months, a group of people, including a former district attorney and a New York state judge, has argued in favor of the company’s case. NPR revealed that a Fox News producer begged colleagues to refrain from broadcasting Pirro because of lies she had spread on the internet about election fraud.
Fox News has repeatedly defended its conduct by invoking the importance of American free speech principles bound up in the First Amendment, saying the Smartmatic and Dominion cases are attempts to chill independent reporting and commentary.
Murdoch is in the headlines again, this time over a lawsuit over Fox News’ election coverage. This isn’t the first time Murdoch’s media empire has come under scrutiny. In fact, it’s not even the only legal battle happening right now.
In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. He has been able to force the site to pay out for critical commentary before, and it hopes to use the suit as a testing ground for the recent changes in the country’s libel law. Legal cover is less in Australia than in the U.S.
In each case, Murdoch made the decision to sever ties with top personnel. According to one source who used to work in Murdoch-World, his pattern has been to throw some money into the air and then offer a head or two in the process to make it go away. And cutting ties with Scott would appear to be one of the easier ousters for Murdoch to execute over the course of his decades at the helm of one of the world’s biggest media empires.
How News Editors Cover Politics: Why CNN and MSNBC Get Closer to the Candidates, Candidates, and Electoral Candidates? A New Insight from Murdoch
How Times reporters cover politics. Our journalists are independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
In comparison to her predecessor, Roger Ailes, who was a whisperer to Republican presidents, Ms. Scott is more discreet and has a more private image than he did.
She lived in Northern New Jersey as a child with her husband and daughter. She was the assistant to a top deputy to Mr. Ailes. Her first big promotion was to a senior producer position on Greta Van Susteren’s show. She would go on to oversee talent and programming.
Colleagues say she pays careful attention to what’s on Fox, often watching from her office with the sound off and occasionally offering advice to producers and hosts on how sets could look better, outfits sharper and guests could be more compelling.
Under her direction, Fox News has maintained not only one of the biggest audiences in cable but in all of television, occasionally drawing more viewers than traditional broadcast networks like ABC. And Fox News collects far higher ad rates than its competitors — an average of almost $9,000 for a 30-second commercial in prime time, compared with about $6,200 for CNN and $5,300 for MSNBC, according to the Standard Media Index, an independent research firm. Jeremy W. Peters is a contributor to MSNBC.
► 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.” In other words, Hannity, who always claims to say the same things on camera as when he’s off camera, was not being up front with his loyal audience for fear they’d rebel against him.
The coverage from Murdoch’s media outlets does not mean that they will completely turn on Trump. Murdoch might use his influence to help the Republicans in the Republican primary if he sees a match-up with Ron DeSantis.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, said on ” Fox & Friends” that he thinks there will be a movement within the Republican Party to get out of the way of President Trump.
The home page of Fox News also prominently featured a column by conservative commentator Liz Peek that declared DeSantis “the new leader of the Republican Party.” Fox News said that it was 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 believes his success in Florida will get the attention of voters outside the state. “You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching—unhappily.”
“It is not an accident,” a person familiar with how Murdoch runs the companies told CNN Wednesday morning when asked about the fact that the billionaire’s media outlets were focusing attention on DeSantis as the future of the Republican Party.
Murdoch commented on Donald Trump after the 2020 election in a book by The New York Times and CNN political analyst, according to a reporter at the newspaper.
In totality, the documents continue to underscore that at its core, Fox News is not a news network. News networks work hard to deliver the truth to their viewers. The documents show that Fox News executives and hosts knew the truth and peddled election lies to the audience. And when the handful of hosts and correspondents who have integrity at the channel tried to be honest with viewers, the highest levels of Fox News worked against them.
Ingraham called Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell “a bit nuts.” Carlson, who demanded evidence from Powell, used a profanity to describe her. In a private letter, an executive of the network wrote that he did not believe the shows were credible sources of news.
The legal filing underscores how worried Fox News executives and hosts were about losing their audience to Newsmax in the wake of the election.
“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.
Why? There are the obvious reasons: Money. The power of it. Fame. These are the things that every human has temptations of their own. The answer goes further. Fox News became a juggernaut not simply by being “Republican,” or “conservative,” but by offering its audience something it craved even more deeply: representation. journalism that focuses on representation is not journalism at all.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson told Hannity over text message. What the hell is going on? I’m actually shocked … It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It is hurting the company.
A person with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN that top hosts were scheming to get her fired and that she wasn’t aware of it.
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.
Scott wrote to Murdoch that Fox had to keep the audience who loved and trusted them. [W]e need to make sure they know we aren[‘]t abandoning them.” And she wrote to Lachlan Murdoch that the network would “highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”
GETTER, CNN and the Cable Network: The case against Murdoch’s alleged “mind-bs” conspiracies
Slaven Vlasic/GETTER Images; Carolyn Kaster/ AP; Alex Brandon/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images.
The network’s stars, producers and executives contemptuously described the conspiracies as “mind-blowingly nuts” and ” completely bs”, and often in far earthier terms.
The network’s top primetime stars – Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity – texted contemptuously of the claims in group chats, but also denounced colleagues pointing that out publicly or on television.
“[Rupert Murdoch] is responsible for Fox News. Fox News has a large part to play in the amplification of political hatred. I would challenge anyone … to nominate which individual alive today has done more to undermine American democracy than Rupert Murdoch.”
TheCable Network’s lawyers said that the ten figure request for damages is designed to “generate headlines and enrich the company’s controlling owner” in a separate filing.
The rise and fall of the Fox News network after the January 6, 2020, Capitol attacks revealed that President Donald Trump had a veto on Fox News
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. None. There are allegations and stories. There are more than 30,000 people that have joined the micro-blogging site, 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.
Former President Donald Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but the network refused to put him on air, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against the company.
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.
According to the legal brief, after the Capitol was attacked, then-president Trump tried to get a radio show on the air.
The decision was vetoed by Fox executives, the filing continued. Why? Not because there isn’t enough newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day.”
Executives and hosts at the network were afraid that telling the truth to its large audience would get them to tune out and cause the lie to take hold on the air.
Behind the scenes, Fox News executives and hosts were in panic. Jay Wallace, the president of Fox News, called Newsmax’s surge a troubling development and said that the network needed to be on war footing.
A week after the election had been called, Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”
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.
The deposition was done by the chief legal officer of Fox. After Mr. Hannity told his audience on Nov. 5, 2020, that it would be “impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results,” Mr. Dinh said, he remarked to Lachlan Murdoch; the chief executive of Fox News Media, Suzanne Scott; and Fox’s top communications officer, Irena Briganti: “Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight.”
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 a handwritten note and gift to him according to the filing.
On Nov. 7, just four days after Election Day, Powell sent Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and Bartiromo the memo. Powell appeared on Dobbs’ show to promote discredited conspiracy theories about the CIA. That night, Fox News followed other networks in projecting that Biden had won the presidential election.
The existence of the memo and her role in Fox’s broadcasts was revealed in a legal brief that was filed by Dominion Voting Systems and made public last week. 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 wrote about Scalia, was not named in the legal brief but said that she knew he had been killed. (Scalia, a favorite of many Fox News hosts, died in 2016 of a heart attack, according to local officials in Texas, where he died.)
And the woman asserted that the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and Fox Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch “secretly huddle most days to determine how best to portray Mr. Trump as badly as possible.” 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 live despite being internally decapitated.
Tucker Carlson and Senator Eric Bartiromo confronted: I didn’t stop contacting her after she gave very imp info
I did not believe the narrative Sidney was pushing, for one second, according to a deposition conducted nearly two years later.
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.”
As Dominion’s lawyers noted, however, such skepticism about Bartiromo from senior executives did not inspire them to block her program that day or from rebroadcasting 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. The top booker for Tucker Carlson is Grossberg.
Powell appeared on the Fox News show again two days after his Bartiromo appearance. 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. Democratic and Republican state and local officials disagreed with her claims. The Trump administration election integrity officials also worked for Fox News. No matter. Powell showed up on Fox News and the Fox Business Network airwaves again and again – with Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Hannity, often explicitly implicating Dominion.
Of Fox’s main opinion stars, only Tucker Carlson directly challenged Powell on the air during the post-election season. Carlson told viewers that they took her seriously. Despite several requests and polite requests, she never sent us any evidence. Not a page. She told us to stop contacting her after we kept pressing.
On Jan. 26, 2021, three weeks after the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to block congressional certification of Biden’s win, Carlson invited on one of his main advertisers: Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a chief proponent of pro-Trump claims of election fraud.
Carlson gave them a lot of time to make crazy things about media and the internet. “They don’t want to discuss that, even though I have evidence that voting was fraudulent,” Lindell said on Carlson’s show.
The core engine of America’s democracy–our ability to peacefully and faithfully transfer power– was trashed by the Murdochs if they could increase their audience and stock price.
Dominion had no choice but to condemn the Fox news: A personal story about South Carolina governor Raj Raj Raj, first Indian ambassador to the United Nations, and a former law professor in New Delhi
I haven’t met Haley yet, but I thought she had a good story to tell, having been a successful South Carolina governor and the first Indian American ambassador to the UN. 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. After receiving a PhD from the University of British Columbia, her father was a biology professor for 29 years at Voorhees College. They opened a clothing boutique on the side.
Fox takes those calls. I used to pitch stories to Fox producers in the time before Donald Trump. I knew they were interested in religious liberty stories more than mainstream media outlets. I knew they liked stories about cops and veterans. Sometimes, it was good that we need more religious coverage in America but over time the network became more than a news network.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about the hosts’ on-air positions about the election. He wanted us to be stronger in condemning it.
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” filing that “clearly lays out the difference between what Fox was saying publicly and what top people at Fox were privately admitting.”
Tushnet said that in her years of practicing and teaching law, she had never seen such damning evidence collected in the pre-trial phase of a defamation suit.
The Murdochs, Kushners, and Fox Corp.: Feeding Your Audience lies isn’t a Thing
Mr. Dinh said that Fox executives have an obligation to prevent hosts of shows from broadcasting lies.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
► Murdoch wrote in an email to the New York Post that the lies that Donald Trump was pushing werebulls**t.
► Murdoch gave Jared Kushner “confidential information” about then-candidate Joe Biden’s ads “along with debate strategy” in 2020, the filing said, offering 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 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.
Murdoch said he could not tell Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Giuliani. “I could have,” Murdoch said. “But I didn’t.”
Fox Corp. argues that the parent company and its executives are wrongly being held responsible for reporting baseless assertions of a president and his advisers.
Emails and other communications introduced into the case by Dominion 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 being involved in these things.
He had been adamant about standing up for the call of Fox News to cover Joe Biden’s election night appearance. Murdoch testified that he could hear Trump shouting in the background as the then-president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, told him the situation was “terrible.”
Scott forwarded his recommendation to the top executive. According to the documents, she and another executive canceled the show over fears that the guests were going to say the election is being stolen and that they would be just a token.
By Nov. 13, Raj Shah was advising Murdoch, Scott and Dinh of the “strong conservative and viewer backlash” to Fox that they were working to mitigate. He said that positive impressions among Fox News viewers “dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.”
Darcy notes that Ryan was grilled by a conservative commentator last week over his decision to remain on the board of directors of Fox News’ parent company.
“Just tell her…,” was the advice given by Rupert. 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.”
A legal expert said that even one as lucrative as Fox could be threatened by a large amount of damages.
Norm Eisen said that this deposition was 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 conceded that certain people promoted false information about the presidential election being stolen.
Who is he? Murdoch is also a media magnate and Fox News Channel’s controlling owner, as well as the inspiration for the character in Succession.
Fox News Republicans What Matters: Ron DeSantis’s 2019 Florida Presidential Campaign is Turning Back Towards a Better America
When your company is sued, it is never a good idea to send email or text messages since you never know which one will be released.
It is particularly difficult if the messages appear to show you are letting false information on the air.
Ryan said there isn’t a larger platform in America. “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.”
During the George W. Bush administration, Fox would have been a major backer of military aid for Ukraine if Russia had invaded as it did a year ago. Many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid on the network.
Carlson is mimicking Trump and questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia.
CNN.com notes that the evolution in the policy positions of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows that he will compete for the White House in the 2024 election.
A major stop for potential Republican presidential candidates will be the Conservative Political Action Conference, where Trump will appear this weekend. The other major announced candidate is the former governor of South Carolina.
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
The Freedom Caucus: Who is the most loyal of his defenders? A conversation with Murdoch with DeSantis and Manu
Two dozen or so people from the Freedom Caucus, along with core Trump supporters, were interviewed by Melanie and Manu, who describe them as the most loyal of his defenders.
“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 Freedom Caucus traveled to Florida to talk to DeSantis, instead of meeting with Trump. They were impressed.
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semafor, said the Murdochs are trying to set Suzanne Scott up to take the fall.
Murdoch and the companies tend to try to pay early and quietly to make things go away or ignore them, Folkenflik said. “And then when things really come to a head, they try to cauterize the wound at the lowest level possible.”
He would only throw Scott over if he thought he needed to cauche the wound before it went higher. “That’s his record. That’s what he does. It can be editors. It can be a person in a leadership position. It can be stars. He is not throwing himself over the side.
Murdoch has sacrificed lieutenants in the past but only in the most extreme of circumstances. “We know that he hates doing it. We know that he tends to try to fight for his loyalists, even for Ailes, certainly for O’Reilly. He will do it when it is necessary to overcome a real threat to his business.
We’ll see what Scott’s fate ultimately looks like. Fox is not giving a public statement of support for her. When I reached out to Fox spokespeople on Wednesday asking for comment, the company declined.
What is Fox News? Why are Fox and MyPillow viewers angry about Ailes’s decision to leave the White House and the Conservatives?
Ailes helped put Richard Nixon in the White House and thought that it could be used to amplify the conservative viewpoint. 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 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 much deeper within the culture. 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 think about it, some audience members may be so angry that they will no longer tune out the channel.
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. And I suspect most other viewers who have let Fox News that far into their lives won’t be either.