After the 2020 election, the Fox News CEO warned against ‘crazies’
Fox Corp. Accused of No Evidence that Biden’s Win Was Proposed by the Voting Systems of President-Elect Donald J. Fox
What ensued involved a split screen. Despite being first to make an Arizona call, Fox did not project Biden’s win as the president-elect. 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.
“After obtaining millions of documents and taking dozens of depositions— including depositions of Fox Corporation’s CEO, Fox Corporation’s Chairman, Fox News’s CEO, Fox News’s President, and dozens of producers, on-air talent, and executives—Dominion has produced zero evidentiary support for its dubious theory,” Fox Corp.’s filing claims.
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.
Fox invited Powell, a Trump ally and attorney, on its programs to claim that the voting systems had switched votes between Trump and Biden. Yet Fox hosts and executives privately dismissed her as unreliable and unhinged. Powell had shared her allegations in a memo with the hosts. The claims were called “wackadoodle” by the author.
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 Deposition at Fox News: Blame the First Amendment for a Delaying-Electoral-Circumventing Presidential Candidate
There is no shortage of credible evidence to support the idea that Scott is about to be killed. Most notably, during his deposition, Murdoch sought to distance himself from decision making at Fox News. He said that he appointed Scott to the job and delegate everything to her. 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 cited a document from Fox that said that “most of these executives that we’re looking at right now” were at the daily editorial meeting.
In answering questions from Dominion’s attorneys under oath, former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said he had never “seen any verifiable, tangible support” that Dominion was owned by a second voting-tech company Smartmatic. Yet that claim was repeatedly said on air by Fox hosts and guests. According to the legal documents, Dobbs was aware of no evidence that the election was rigged.
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the network added.
Baier released a statement that questioned how his objections were framed, and no one at Fox would comment on that. 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.
In the post- election interview Bartiromo echoed Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, saying, “This is disgusting, and we cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted.” In mid-December she told viewers that an intel source said that Trump had won the election. Bartiromo never went back to explain what grounds the source made that statement. She was seen by Fox as an opinion host rather than an anchor, since she was in the news side of the network.
A show hosted by Lou Dobbs was canceled a few weeks after the January 6 insurrection, which he promoted as a baseless conspiracy about the 2020 election.
The Cool Hand Luke: Defamation of Smartmatic and Dominion with the Delaware Superior Court in Correspondence to Korzenik
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. A ruling on whether Pirro must return for questioning has not been made public.
Korzenik stressed that while the law allows for bias and ratings-seeking behavior by media outlets, it does not allow for the publication of material one knows to be false. The filing puts Fox in real danger, according to Korzenik.
Instead, Murdoch, the network’s controlling owner, followed the lead of the network’s senior executives in sidestepping the truth for a pro-Trump audience angered when confronted by the facts.
In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. In the past he has required the site to pay out for critical commentary, but now he wants to use the suit as a reference point for changes to the country’s libel law. Media outlets have less legal cover in Australia than they do here in the U.S.
The fate of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News is currently being handled by a plainspoken judge.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, a 12-year veteran of the state’s bench and former corporate attorney, has often sought to temper emotions in the contentious proceedings between the broadcasting giant and Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-technology company. Each side repeatedly has accused the other of acting in bad faith.
The criminal defense attorney who has argued before Davis but has not been involved in the case says he would be known as ” Cool Hand Luke”. “He does not show emotion in court, and that’s a good thing.”
Newsmax wanted to throw out Smartmatic’s defamation claim. Newsmax airing of stolen election claims was reckless enough to meet the high legal bar required for defamation according to a ruling by Davis.
Like Dominion, Smartmatic was the subject of false claims that its software had switched Trump votes to Joe Biden. Newsmax and Fox News broadcasted those claims.
“Newsmax either knew its statements regarding Smartmatic’s role in the election-fraud narrative were false, or at least it had a high degree of awareness that they were probably false,” the judge stated.
“It seems clear to me that the judge didn’t have any of the Newsmax arguments at all,” says John Culhane, a professor at Delaware Law School.
While Culhane, an authority on defamation law, cautions against drawing too strong a conclusion from the Newsmax ruling, he says Davis “is very clear and he’s very step-by-step when it comes to the law.”
In its defense against Dominion, Fox News’ legal team argues the network simply relayed stark claims about national elections, either as “questions to a newsmaker on newsworthy subjects” or by “accurately report[ing] on pending allegations.” As the sitting U.S. president, Trump was among the most newsworthy people imaginable, Fox and Newsmax attorneys each argue.
Smartmatic also has sued Fox for $2.7 billion, but that suit is not as far along as Dominion’s. On Tuesday, a New York state appellate court rejected Fox News’ motion to have the Smartmatic case against the network and several of its stars dismissed. The ruling dismissed claims against parent company Fox Corp, saying no cause was stated.
Connolly said he would file an amended complaint that details the involvement of Murdochs.
Newsmax’s attorneys cite a legal privilege, known as neutral reportage, which allows it to present “unprecedented allegations without adopting them as true, so that the public could draw its own conclusions.”
While he notes the First Amendment protects reporters in order to guarantee a “robust and unintimidated press,” he also states the “First Amendment is not unlimited.” He said the neutral reportage principle doesn’t protect a publisher who distorts statements to launch a personal attack on a public figure.
The stakes could hardly be greater in the two cases. Davis doesn’t want to amplify his own profile. His court did not allow a photo of him to be used for this story. The hallmark of the Delaware legal bar is an air of comity around proceedings.
In a Feb. 8 court hearing in Dominion’s suit against Fox, Davis apologized to the rival legal teams, saying he had been surprised to re-read an email in which he said he came off as snarky.
He pinned it on his use of a pat phrase. “You know that typical sarcastic thing that judges say?” Davis asked. “‘Tell me if I’m wrong…’ Which means, don’t tell me I’m wrong. It means that I am making a statement. But that wasn’t why I was doing it.”
Fox News, the First Amendment, and the Truth About Election Fraud: An Empirical Analysis of a Report by Carlson and Murdoch
A public disclosure made earlier this month shows that Fox News ridiculed claims of election fraud, despite the right-wing channel promoting lies about the presidential contest.
In one text, Carlson said that he had caught Sidney Powell, who was representing the Trump campaign, lying and that he had lied to her. Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.
There was no illusions that the election fraud allegations would be taken seriously, even by those Fox figures who were the most aggressive in their support for Trump.
James Goodale, who was the general counsel of the New York Times, told NPR in an email he included ownership in the Pentagon Papers inquiry because it was not a good idea to make a wholesale inquiry into newsroom decisions. The First Amendment should protect newsroom decisions.
Hardly. For one thing, Fox was never a news network to begin with. Whereas a news network is a platform built on the premise that one of its first obligations is providing citizens with vetted information that they can use to be free and self-governing, Fox was founded in 1996 as a political platform and run by Roger Ailes, a political operative.
It also showed attempts to crack down on fact-checking election lies. On one occasion, Carlson demanded that Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich be fired after she fact-checked a Trump tweet pushing election fraud claims.
A person with direct knowledge of the situation said that Heinrich was not aware that top hosts were trying to get her fired because they were not familiar with 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.
Lachlan Murdoch warned Scott that a Fox News anchor’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally was “mug and obnoxious.” On the same day, she retaliated by saying she was calling to fix the problem. (Anchor Leland Vittert’s final appearance on Fox was in January 2021; he is now an anchor for the fledgling cable news outlet NewsNation.)
Murdoch has done more to undermine American democracy than Fox News, and the cable news network’s attorneys argue that Dominion’s “demonstration” is directed at the profit of Staple Street Capital Partners
Carolyn Kaster/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket; Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images.
Off the air, the network’s stars, producers and executives expressed contempt for those same conspiracies, calling them “mind-blowingly nuts,” “totally off the rails” and “completely bs” – often in far earthier terms.
Murdoch is responsible for Fox News. Fox News has played, by far, the largest single part in the polarization of American politics, 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.”
In a separate filing, also released to the public on Thursday, the cable network’s attorneys say Dominion’s ten-figure request for damages is designed to “generate headlines” and to enrich the company’s controlling owner, the private equity fund Staple Street Capital Partners.
A Call to the Fox News CEO After the January 6 Capitol Attack: When President Trump Dialed into Lou Dobbs’ Show, he Accused 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. Allegations – stories. People are using the social media website, 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 its defamation case, the company said that Donald Trump tried to call in to Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol but the network refused to put him on the 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 was able to piece together a minute-by-minute account of Trump’s actions on the day. His call showed that some of the gaps still exist, because of the obstacles faced by the committee.
“The afternoon of January 6, after the Capitol came under attack, then-President Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs’ show attempting to get on air,” Dominion lawyers wrote in their legal brief.
The decision was blocked by the Fox executives, according to Dominion’s filing. “Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 is an important event. The key figure that day was President Trump, because he was the sitting President.
“It’s a major blow,” renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said of Dominion’s motion for a summary judgment, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put Fox in a more precarious situation” in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.
According to a University of Florida professor, a journalistic organization can be at risk of extinction if damages get into the billions.
Editor’s Note: David Zurawik is a professor of practice in media studies at Goucher College. He was a media critic at the Baltimore Sun for three decades. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
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 she had never seen such incriminating evidence before the trial stage of a defamation suit.
An attorney who teaches First Amendment law and represents a number of media organizations said that the filing showed that the case against Fox News has serious teeth.
“The dream for a plaintiff’s attorney is what Dominion claims to have here,” Jones said, “smoking-gun internal statements both acknowledging the lie and deciding to forge ahead with perpetuating it.”
The Murdoch Dilemma of the Fox News Network and the Denial of the 2020 Call for the Key State of Arizona: A Deposition by Scott Murdoch
And Fox takes those calls. In the time before Donald Trump, I spent my share of moments in Fox green rooms and pitching stories to Fox producers. I knew they were more interested in stories about, say, religious liberty than most mainstream media outlets were. 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 hosts’ on-air positions about the election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he added.
When asked about the obligation of Fox executives to stop hosts from broadcasting lies, Mr. Dinh said it was 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 the son-in-law a preview of the Biden ads before they were public, and Murdoch offered Trump’s wife a preview of their debate strategy as well. This type of action would result in an investigation by 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.
Murdoch was asked if he could have told Fox News to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani. Murdoch said he could have. “But I didn’t.”
Emails and other communications introduced into the case show that the Murdochs are very involved in the network’s editorial path.
The elder Murdoch, who is just two weeks shy of his 92nd birthday, said in his deposition that he is a journalist. I like being 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 he heard Trump shouting in the background as he was told the situation was terrible.
Scott forwarded the 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.” He said that positive impressions among Fox News viewers “dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.”
Ryan is an anti-Trump Republican and is a board member of Fox. He said he spoke to the Murdochs that Fox News should stop spreading 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,” Rupert said to Lachlan. The election was called correctly by Fox News. It isn’t as easy for us to lead our viewers.
Tucker Carlson had a man on his show. The attorneys of the company were told by Murdoch that they could stop taking money for my plaid ads.
“This is one of the most devastating depositions that I’ve ever seen,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said Monday. You can be held liable under the actual malice standard when you go beyond reporting, because your chairman admits there was endorsement.
Evidence put into the public sphere seems to show that Fox knew the truth and decided to go with an alternate narrative.
Murdoch, meanwhile, conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted falsehoods about the presidential contest being stolen.
Who is he? Murdoch is a media magnate and the Fox News Channel’s controlling owner, as well as one of the inspiration for the character in Succession.
The filings, he said, showed members of the Fox Corp board had failed to act to prevent misconduct by Fox executives, and warned the disclosures will result in “likely” shareholder lawsuits, a possible SEC investigation into “deceptive practices of the board for conspiring to conceal known misconduct with material adverse impact,” and the potential loss of insurance protection for the company’s directors and officers.
Sonnenfeld, who has advised hundreds of CEOs and recent US presidents, said the board should take immediate action, including the removal of high-ranking personnel, such as Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, from their roles.
Sonnenfeld told CNN in an email that the outlet had a duty to remove officials who peddled known election lies.
“If the board does not act appropriately,” Sonnenfeld added, “it shows a failure of management oversight and jeopardizes their own directors and officers insurance protection with such gross conscious failure of diligent management oversight.”
The duty of loyalty and diligence isn’t limited to management but to the owners, according to Sonnenfeld. “By silently going along with misconduct about which they are aware, all directors, including Paul Ryan, are guilty of complicity through their complacency.”
Vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors and expert on corporate governance told CNN she agreed with everything Sonnenfeld said. Minow said that she would give board members the power to contact their largest shareholders to hear their suggestions for new independent directors.
The Murdochs and the Semafor Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Scott: A Chance for a Success or Frustration
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.
This is not the first time that Murdoch has been faced with a serious and embarrassing matter in his media empire. The News of the World was implicated in the phone hacking scandal. In 2016, Fox News founder Roger Ailes was accused in an explosive lawsuit of sexual harassment. And in 2017, star host Bill O’Reilly was caught in his own sexual misconduct scandal.
Murdoch made the decision to cut ties with top personnel. One source who once worked in Murdoch-world said, “He’s throw a lot of money and give heads 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.
“Looking back to previous scandals, Murdoch and the companies have tended to try to pay early and quietly to make things go away, or they ignore them thinking they’re so big they can ride things out,” Folkenflik said. When things get really bad, they try to fit 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’s what he does. It can be someone who does an editing job. It can be someone in the business. It can be stars. He is not throwing himself over the side.
Folkenflik explained that all senior executives who take a senior executive position under Murdoch know that is the ultimate fall position. It is part of the job. You are paid very well. It can be a nice life. If you fall out of favor with the sun king, or it is to his benefit, that’s part of the equation.”
We’ll see what Scott’s fate ultimately looks like. Fox is not going to make a statement of support for her. When I reached out to Fox spokespeople on Wednesday asking for comment, the company declined.
Why should Fox News? The opinion of Murdoch and Scott on the issue of media freedoms and censorship in the 21st century
Ailes worked on the media team that helped put Richard Nixon into the White House and saw it as a way to amplify a 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.
Right-wing politics are all about money and nastier. Murdoch suggested in his description of why he allowed the CEO of MyPillow to argue against the election in favour of the Republicans that it was not in that order.
But it has become much deeper in its culture. Fox News is a lifestyle show that shows the world in a warm way for older people who feel left behind by the changes in American life. Fox tells them that if they are struggling, it is not their fault. 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. And I suspect most other viewers who have let Fox News that far into their lives won’t be either.
Ronald Chen, an authority on law at Rutgers University, says that it is challenging to get “smoking gun” emails that show that the accusation is false and that Fox was actually fighting for its own interests.
Murdoch and Scott told their colleagues they weren’t going to confront their viewers bluntly with the facts because it would make them more hostile towards them.
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.
Kirtley says she thinks it is a slippery slope to say that Fox should be protected and that reports should not be reported.
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.
How Fox News Loses Defamation: How Kamgan, Kagan, and Baier, MacCallum Revisited
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. A third, Elena Kagan, published her own musings years before she joined the court that the protections for the press might be too strong.
The idea of “actual malice,” Murphy says, requires Dominion to prove specific people directly involved with the broadcasts knew the statements they aired were wrong. Murdoch’s statements that he had dismissed the claims of election fraud as bogus, and that some of his star hosts had nevertheless endorsed them publicly, has no legal weight.
Regardless of whether or not the allegations were going to be anything they could prove, what the President and his lawyers did was news, regardless of the situation. She invoked what journalists consider the safe ground of “neutral reporting” – just telling their audiences what others are saying.
Baier and MacCallum were worried about the loss of viewers and wondered how to convince them to return to Fox News.
When news outlets do lose defamation cases, they often result in retractions or apologies and settlements while they’re still on appeal. Two defamation cases of recent years resulted in different outcomes.
The University of Virginia dean sued Rolling Stone magazine after the publication of a story about a woman who claimed to have been raped on a campus.
A year ago, The New York Times beat SarahPalin after she was wrongly linked to a mass shooting.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media
The Dominion Case as an Exception to the General Rule: Is It Really Necessary if the Cosmological Constant is Finite?
“The Dominion case is such a strange case it provides an exception to the general rule,” Goodale says. Let us hope that we don’t see a weird case like this again.
