Both sides of the case are seeking a win in the judge’s opinion
Dominion Voting Systems Can Move Forward: A Motion to Disprove the MyP CEO from Lindell’s Defamation
Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell can move forward after the Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider Lindell’s attempt to block the case.
In his ruling, Judge Carl Nichols wrote that Lindell’s claims were inherently implausible because his sources were unreliable, and that he failed to acknowledge the validity of countervailing evidence in instances where he told audiences to purchase MyP.
Fox has dismissed both suits as efforts to stifle legitimate coverage of inherently newsworthy allegations – election fraud – made by inherently newsworthy people – including the then-sitting U.S. president and his top campaign advisers. Trump and his campaign viewed Fox’s projection of Arizona for Biden as a sin, and never back down from it. While viewers abandoned the network for harder-edged fare on Newsmax and OAN, some stars challenged the legitimacy of Biden’s certification in early January.
Fox News has maintained that it is proud of its 2020 coverage and has stated that the lawsuit could weaken the First Amendment. Fox News has argued that it can’t be held liable for airing inherently newsworthy allegations from public figures that Dominion rigged the 2020 election, even if those claims were false. Fox News has also argued in court that Dominion’s request for $1.6 billion in damages is a wildly inflated figure, citing the company’s previous valuations.
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 supporter and attorney, on its programs to accuse the voting systems ofSwitching Votes from Trump to Biden. Fox hosts and executives thought her to be unreliable and crazy. Powell had shared her allegations with the hosts. Even the author of the memo called the claims “bizarre”.
Keller said that a host or producer who are pre-scripting material for the show that is tethered to a specific channel’s telecast and a network executive are not the same as a host.
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. 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.”
He even questioned the network’s editorial decision to embrace Trump’s election denialism, which Dominion claims was done because Fox was afraid of losing its pro-Trump audience.
Media outlets rarely lose defamation cases in court. Under a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the New York Times, plaintiffs have to prove the claims made about them were false and damaging to their reputation. Additionally, they have to prove that those making the statements in question either knew the assertions were untrue or had good reason to know they were untrue, and willfully ignored that information. That’s known as “actual malice,” under the late Justice William Brennan’s decision.
The Ethics of Fox News: A Deposition against Fox News and a High-Sensitivity High-Tensor Investigating Election-Decision Fraud
Baier released a statement questioning how his objections were framed, which no one at Fox would comment on. 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.
Murdoch acknowledged in the deposition that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
In December 2020, Dobbs contended on the air that Trump’s opponents within the government had committed “treason,” and later suggested any action by a Republican officeholder to uphold Biden’s victory might have been “criminal.” His departure from the network was hastily announced the day after another election software company, Smartmatic, filed its own $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox for defamation surrounding similarly false accusations of fraud. That case is not as far along in the process.
The court filing said that executives at Fox News criticized some of the network’s top talent. The network president said that the North Koreans did a “more nuanced show” than Lou Dobbs did. Jerry Andrews, the executive producer of “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” referred to host Jeanine Pirro as “nuts.”
Fox News has used American free speech principles to defend itself, saying the Smartmatic case is meant to chill independent reporting and commentary.
Murdoch did not agree that Fox News supported Donald Trump in the election. But Murdoch conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest being stolen.
In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. He has tried to force the site to pay out several times for critical commentary, and he 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.
The fate of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News lies in the hands of a plain spoken judge known for his uncompromising poker face.
The Delaware judge had some questions for Fox News lawyers on Tuesday. He challenged some of the legal theories but warned watchers not to predict his ruling based on rigor of his questioning.
“If he were to receive a name in culture, it would be Cool Hand Andrew,” said Joseph Hurley, a criminal defense attorney who has argued before Davis but has no involvement with the case. “In court, he never shows any emotion, and I mean that in a good way.”
Newsmax attempted to have Smartmatic’s defamation claim thrown out. Newsmax’s airing of stolen-election claims was reckless enough to meet a high legal bar required for defamation, according to a decision by Davis.
It was reported that Smartmatic’s software had switched Trump votes to Joe Biden. Those claims were broadcast on Newsmax, Fox News and elsewhere.
“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.
“I think it’s clear that the judge wasn’t having Newsmax arguments, and he should have,” 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.”
Murdoch vs. Smartmatic: Media Magnate Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News Corp., and a New York State Circuit Court of Appeal
In the heat of the moment, right after Election Day 2020, media magnate Rupert Murdoch knew that the hosts on his prized Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud.
Smartmatic has sued Fox for over $2 billion, but that suit is not as far along as the other one. 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. No cause was stated in the ruling on the Fox Corp claims.
Connolly said it would amend the complaint to detail Murdoch’s involvement.
Lawyers for Newsmax argue that a legal privilege known as neutral reportage allows them to present allegations without adopting them as true so that the public can draw their own conclusions about a news story.
He notes that the First Amendment protects reporters in order to guarantee arobust and unintimidated press, but adds that it’s not unlimited. He said a neutral reportage principle does not protect a publisher who “deliberately distorts” statements to “launch a personal attack of [its] own on a public figure.”
The stakes could hardly be greater in the two cases. Davis does not want to amplify his own profile. (Indeed, his court declined to make a photo of him available for this story.) And the judge has repeatedly sought to ensure an air of comity around the proceedings, a hallmark of the Delaware legal bar.
In a Feb. 8 court hearing, Davis apologized to the rival legal teams and said he came off as mean in an email.
He pinned it on his use of the 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 is a sign that I am making a statement. But that wasn’t why I was doing it.”
Fox News shouldn’t hide: Murdoch’s plan to stop hiding the truth about the 2016 midterm election in the era of public opinion censorship
Murdoch floated the idea of having the three Fox News host appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden the rightful winner of the election, according to the messages.
In one set of messages revealed in the court filing, Carlson texted Ingraham, saying that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so. Sidney is a complete nut. Nobody will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
Fox News executives and hosts worried about losing their viewers to Newsmax in the immediate aftermath of the election because of election denialism, according to the legal filing.
Lawyer Rodrigue said the lawsuit was about protecting the integrity of the public debate and protecting the public from deliberate falsehoods.
Trump urged his followers to switch to Newsmax after he attacked Fox. They did that in the days and weeks after the election. Newsmax gained a lot of viewers and Fox News shed a little audience.
► Behind the scenes, Paul Ryan repeatedly warned the Murdochs to stop allowing the spread of election lies. The former speaker stated that Fox should stop talking about Trump and stop hyping up election lies. Ryan told Murdochs that a lot of those who thought the election was stolen got a lot of information from credible sources. He was not wrong.
The person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that she didn’t know who was trying to get her fired and that she wasn’t aware of the details in the legal filing.
In another case, when host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press briefing where election misinformation was being promoted, senior Fox News leadership were told such a move presented a “brand threat.”
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.”
Fox News Stars False ClaimsTrump Election 2020: An Analysis of the Cosmic Cable News Insights into their Importance for Editorial Reporting
Slaven Vlasic of AP, Carolyn Kaster of AP, MichaelBrochstein of Shose Images, and Alex Brandon of AP are all pictured.
The stars, producers and executives of the network disdained those conspiracy theories as if they were insane and completely bs – often in far earthier terms.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make… good journalists do bad things,” Bill Sammon, at the time the network’s Washington Managing Editor, privately wrote on Dec. 2, 2020. Executives above him were upset with 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.
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.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157558299/fox-news-stars-false-claims-trump-election-2020
The Call of Sammon to Fox News on January 6, 2021: After the Capitol Attack on November 5, 2020, President Donald Trump Failed to Enter the House of Representatives
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. Twitter. Bulls—.”
When Sammon left Fox News two months later, they called it a retirement, which he declined to comment on.
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.
According to a source familiar with the work of the House Select Committee, they didn’t know Trump had made the call.
The panel wanted to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements 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 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.
“But Fox executives vetoed that decision,” Dominion’s filing continued. Why? It’s not due to a lack of newsworthiness. An important event was on January 6. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day.”
Fox hosts were okay with defaming the key engine of America’s democracy, our ability to peacefully and rightfully transfer power, if it would hold their audience and boost their stock.
What did she learn about Dominion and her mother, Raj, do in South Carolina, when she was born and raised in New Delhi, South Carolina
I have never met Haley, but from what I have heard, she had a good story to tell about herself as a successful South Carolina governor and 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. Her father taught biology at Voorhees College for 29 years, after earning a doctorate from the University of British Columbia. The clothing boutique was opened on the side.
To counter that defense, Dominion’s legal filings summon the words of seemingly authoritative figures: Fox Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch and his top corporate advisers.
“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.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
The professor and media law scholar said that she had never before seen evidence like it collected in a high profile defamation case, and that it was pretty big.
In the pre-trial stage of a defamation suit, Tushnet had never seen such incriminating evidence. “I don’t recall anything comparable to this,” Tushnet said. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.”
David Korzenik is an attorney who teaches First Amendment law and represents a number of media organizations.
“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.”
Murdoch gave Kasner “confidential information” about Joe Biden’s ads and criticized Fox News for leaking information about the 2016 presidential contest
Murdoch said that some of their commentators were in agreement with the hosts about the election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he added.
Murdoch acknowledged that some people promoted false information about the presidential contest being stolen.
Murdoch wrote an email to New York Post’s Col Allan, describing election lies that Trump was pushing as bulls**t and damaging.
Murdoch responded to an email from Ryan that said that Sean Hannity was scared to lose viewers because he had been disgusted by Trump for weeks. Hannity was not up front with his audience because he feared they would rebel against him, which is why he always claims to say the same things on camera.
► 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.” This type of action could lead to an investigation and other measures at most news organizations.
The documents lay bare that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but rather on feeding them content — even dangerous conspiracy theories — that keeps viewers happy and watching.
Murdoch said that he could not have told Fox News’ chief executive to stop giving air time to Rudy Giuliani. Murdoch said he could have. “But I didn’t.”
“I’ve been a journalist my whole life, and I’m going to celebrate my 92nd birthday,” Murdoch said in his deposition. I like to be involved in those things.
He was steadfast in his defense of Fox News’ call of the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. 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. She and another executive canceled the show because they were afraid guests would say that the election was stolen and if she pushes back, it would be just a token.
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.”
Anne Dias is the board director for Fox Corp. I believe Fox News is ready to take a stance, if you want to. It is an existential moment for the nation and for Fox News as a brand.”
“Just tell her,” said Lachlan. Fox News called the election right and is adjusting its coverage as fast as possible. We have to lead our viewers which is [] not as easy as it might seem.”
“This is one of the most devastating depositions that I’ve ever seen,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said Monday. “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.
“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.
Some media lawyers think that Fox’s attorneys might be right about the consequences of a loss to the media’s freedom.
“To simply say Fox is a bunch of liars – that they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this and their wild speculations should not be reported and should not be protected – I just think that that is a slippery slope,” says Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
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 and Domination: If Fox News Loses Defamation Media, It’s Not Just the Newspapers
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 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 sworn statements that he dismissed the claims of election fraud as bogus and affirmed that some of his stars had endorsed them publicly carries no legal weight.
Regardless of whether the allegations were ultimately going to be anything they could prove, the president and his lawyers doing their jobs was enough to make anyone notice. Journalists think the safe ground of neutral reporting is telling their audiences what others are saying.
Baier and MacCallum, as well as the New York Times’ Peter Baker show, were alarmed by the loss of viewers and were considering ways to get them back.
When a news outlet loses a defamation case, they often result in settlement or apologies, while they are still appealing. The two most prominent defamation cases of recent years resulted in divergent outcomes.
Rolling Stone magazine paid settlements to the University of Virginia dean and a campus group after reporting on a faked account of 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
Fox News doesn’t care about its employees, nor do they listen to them. And when does she stop talking about Jews? A lawsuit against Carlson
“The Dominion case is such a strange case it provides an exception to the general rule,” Goodale says. Let us hope this one won’t be just like this one again.
Grossberg told CNN that she filed her lawsuit in hopes that it will spur change at the network and because she believed it “was the only step” she had to regain her pride and save her career. She said she had seen the lies and deception on Fox News shows for years.
Fox doesn’t care, Grossberg said. “It summarizes everything perfectly. They don’t care about their employees … and they don’t care about their viewers.”
The environment was terrible when she began work on the show. On her first day, she said she learned the show’s workspace was decorated with large photos of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “in a plunging bathing suit revealing her cleavage.”
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 and members of his staff were named in the lawsuit.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/media/fox-news-producer-lawsuit/index.html
The Evidence Against FOX News: The Role of Coverage in Political Reporting and the President’s Propagation of Left-Right Symmetry
“It’s constant,” she added. The shows, the network and the hosts all depend on ratings. Coverage is a business and that is what motivates it.
The sides were in court for a huge hearing where they tried to convince the judge to grant a summary judgment instead of a jury trial.
“They made the decision to let it happen,” Nelson said, referring to the litany of baseless claims about the voting company that got airtime on Fox News in late 2020.
“Compelling live testimony at trial will add nothing other than media interest,” lawyers for the right-wing network wrote in a Monday filing. “But this is a trial, not a public relations campaign.”
One of Fox’s arguments doesn’t seem to be intellectually honest. He was questioning Fox News’ argument that former host Lou Dobbs had engaged in legally protected neutral reporting when he signed many of his accounts with the MAGA acronym.
“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.
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.
