Murdoch acknowledges Fox news hosts are involved in election fraud
Fox Corp. vs. Dominion in a Class Action Against the Fox News Washington Co-Projecting Joe Biden
Murdoch suggested firing the Fox News Washington bureau chief shortly after the network projected Joe Biden would win in Arizona, which had caught network anchors off guard and put the election all but out of reach for Trump.
Dominion initially sued the network and its parent company separately. Fox Corp. has tried to sidestep the case, saying the decisions were left up to the executives and journalists within Fox News.
The judge ruled that the contracts should go to Dominion in yesterday’s ruling.
Fox hosted Sidney Powell on its shows to argue that the voting systems of Dominion had switched votes from Trump to Biden. Yet Fox hosts and executives privately dismissed her as unreliable and unhinged. Powell shared the memo with the hosts. The author of the memo called the claims wackadoodle.
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.
Fox News executives were very focused on losing viewers to smaller right-wing rivals and that is why they removed senior journalists who were reflecting the facts. In a note to the network’s top publicity executive, Fox News CEO Scott denounced Sammon, the former Washington managing editor. According to Scott, Sammon’s job was to protect the brand and he did not understand the impact of projecting Arizona for Biden.
Nelson cited a document from Fox that talked about the daily editorial meeting, including almost all of these executives.
In a statement, Fox pushed back against Dominion’s legal standing, saying the company’s lawsuit “has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny.”
Defamation is notoriously difficult to prove in the United States, which grants news organizations and entertainment companies wide berth under the First Amendment. Fox has repeatedly stressed that airing the fraud claims was newsworthy and protected under the Constitution.
Baier released a statement that questioned the way his objections were framed, and no one at Fox directly commented 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.
Murdoch was asked by a lawyer if Fox endorsed the idea of a stolen election. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators.”
Murdoch stated he encouraged the firing of Lou Dobbs because he was an extremists, but allowed him to continue hosting a show 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.
A legal team from the company asked the court to force additional testimony from Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, because she was shielded from some questions during her deposition. There is a rule on whether or not to return for questioning.
In its legal briefs, Fox leans heavily on the idea that news organizations must be allowed to convey allegations by major public figures to their audiences – even wild allegations. Rutgers’ Chen says that doesn’t hold up if Fox was motivated by profit instead of the newsworthiness of the claims being presented in its programs.
Murdoch agreed with the suggestion by a lawyer from Dominion that Fox was trying to straddle the line when it came to calling out conspiracy theories.
Murdoch is accusing a smaller media outlet of defamation. He’s forced the site to pay out before for critical commentary several times, and he plans on using the suit to test recent changes to the country’s libel law. There is less legal cover for media in Australia than there is in the U.S.
According to the messages, Murdoch even floated the idea of having Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham all appear together in prime time to proclaim Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election.
Ingraham called Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell “a bit nuts.” Carlson, who famously demanded evidence from Powell on the air, privately used a vulgar epithet for women to describe her. In a private letter, a top network programming executive stated that he didn’t think the shows of Carlson, Hannity and Jeanine were credible sources of news.
The legal filing underscores how worried Fox News executives and hosts were in the immediate aftermath of the election of losing their audience to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel.
This lawsuit is about “protecting the integrity of our public discourse itself,” Dominion lawyer Rodney Smolla said, adding cases like these “protect the public from deliberate falsehoods.”
The Fox News Victims: Why We Need to Learn Now, When We Need It. And How We Can Ensure We Don’t Abandon It
The audience began to shrink that fall, starting with Election Night. Newsmax is a threat to the executives and stars of Fox. The damage from Fox’s Arizona call was in “immense” because it destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build. Carlson said it was “vandalism”. Dana Perino was equally shocked.
Carlson urged Sean to get her fired. What the f**k? It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It is measurably hurting the company.
A person who has direct knowledge of the situation told CNN that she was not aware that top hosts were trying to get her fired.
Neil Cavuto was attacked by his colleagues for pulling his show away from a presentation in which a White House spokeswoman made false claims of fraud once more. McIntyre is a host on Fox News.
The next day, Scott wrote to Rupert Murdoch that Fox needed to retain “the audience who loves and trusts us. … [W]e need to make sure they know we aren[‘]t abandoning them.” She told Murdoch that her network would highlight our stars and plant flags to let viewers know we respect them.
The Fox News Correspondence Report on “Fox News’ Theorems on Twitter,” Twitter, Facebook and the Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2020
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images; Michael Brodchstein/SOPA Images; Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP.
The network’s stars, producers, and executives expressed contempt for those same conspiracy theories on the off the air, many of which were considered to be completely bs.
In group chats, the network’s top stars Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity text contemptuously of the claims, even as they denounced colleagues who pointed that out.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the network’s Washington Managing Editor wrote privately in December of 2020. Network executives above him stewed over the hit to Fox News’ brand among its viewers. Yet there was little apparent concern, other than some inquiries from Fox Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, over the journalistic values of fairness and accuracy.
The attorneys for the cable network said in a separate filing that the damages request is designed to “generate headlines and enrich the company’s controlling owner,” Staple Street Capital Partners.
A Call to Fox News to Critique the January 6 Twitter Attack on the White House and the Fox News News Resolves the Medialibelization Problem
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 is a verified account on the social media platform, 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.
The former president tried to reach Fox News after supporters of his attacked the US Capitol but the network refused to show him, according to court documents.
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. Some of the gaps in the record are due to obstacles the committee faced, according to his call to Fox News.
After the Capitol came under attack, President Donald Trump called into Lou Dobbs’ show to try to get his show on air, according to a legal brief.
“But Fox executives vetoed that decision,” Dominion’s filing continued. “Why? There isn’t a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was important, regardless of the measure. The key figure that day was President Trump, who was also the sitting President.
Fox hosts and the Murdoch family were willing to demoralize America’s democracy if it would hold their audience and boost their stock.
The Case against Fox News in the Early Stage of a Defamation Against the First U.N. Embassies in South Carolina
I had never met Haley, but it seemed like she had a good story to tell about her time as governor of South Carolina and as the first U.N. ambassador to 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, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and then taught as a biology professor at Voorhees College for 29 years. They opened a clothing boutique on the side.
Murdoch and his top corporate advisers have been called to counter that defense.
A professor at the University of Florida said that a journalistic organization, even one as profitable as Fox, can be in danger when damages get into the billions.
Editor’s Note: David Zurawik is a professor of practice in media studies at Goucher College. For three decades, he was a media critic at the Baltimore Sun. The opinions are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.
The difference between what top people at Fox said publically and what they were privately admitting was laid out in the filing by the Dominions, said Rebecca Tushnet.
Tushnet has practiced and taught law for many years but she had never seen such incriminating evidence in the early stage of a defamation suit. Tushnet said he didn’t recall anything comparable to this. Donald Trump seems to be very good when it comes to generating unprecedented situations.
David Korzenik, the lawyer who teaches First Amendment law and represents a number of media organizations, said that the filing showed 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.”
Murdoch and the Fox News Correspondence: Weinstein’s Dilemma About the Murdoch Campaign Against the 2020 Mid-term Election
He was asked about the hosts on-air positions about the election and he said some commentators were endorsing it. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight.”
Murdoch responded to Ryan’s email by saying Sean Hannity was scared to lose viewers as he had been disgusted with Trump for weeks. 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.
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 and Trump had a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public, the filing said, and Murdoch gave him confidential information about the ads. The type of action would result in an investigation by the news organization.
The documents lay bare that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but rather on feeding them content — even dangerous conspiracy theories — that keeps viewers happy and watching.
Asked whether he could have told Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. Murdoch said he could have. I didn’t.
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 resolute about defending Fox News’ call of the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — Nov. 3, 2020. 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 over prime-time programming, Meade Cooper. 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 was grilled by a conservative commentator for his decision to remain on the board of directors of Fox News.
Just tell her, that is what he advised Lachlan. Fox News, which called the election correctly, is pivoting as fast as possible. We have to show them how hard it is to lead them.
On Jan. 26, Tucker Carlson had Lindell on his show. Rupert Murdoch told Dominion’s attorneys he could stop taking money for MyPillow ads, “[B]ut I’m not about to.”
Norm Eisen, a CNN legal analyst, said this deposition was one of the most devastating he had ever seen. If you go beyond reporting and your chairman admits there was endorsement, then you are exposed to liability under the malice standard.
The evidence so far looks like it shows that Fox knew the truth and chose to use an alternate narrative.
Murdoch admitted that many people promoted false information about the presidential contest being stolen.
Fox News Republicans What Matters: Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley’s Florida Congressional Candidate Will Miss The LEP Conference
The painful truth about email and text messages, which every TV anchor and media executive should learn, is that you never know which message will be publicly released when your company is sued.
If the messages show that you are allowed to give false information on the air, it is even more painful.
Ryan said that there was not a bigger platform in America. I don’t like where the conservatives are at right now, as they’re going through a lot of turmoil.
Had Russia invadedUkraine, Fox would have been in favor of military aid for the country. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.
But its top stars, like Carlson, are mimicking Trump and questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia’s authoritarianism and invasion of Ukraine.
As CNN notes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is an evolution of his own policy positions, as he was a congressman.
A big stop for potential Republican presidential candidates, Trump will appear this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The other major announced candidate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, will also attend.
As he prepares to promote his new book, DeSantis is skipping the event as he is soft launching a campaign. He will be in Palm Beach, Florida, where he can attend a private retreat for the anti-tax Club for Growth.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/fox-news-republicans-what-matters/index.html
Fox News – Bringing out the AIDS: Donald Ailes and the Truth about the Media and the Fox News Channel in his Pregalactic Life
CNN spoke to more than 20 lawmakers that they described as being hardcore Trump supporters, people who are members of the Freedom Caucus, and people who were his closest defenders during his four years in office.
Republicans are worried about Trump’s viability as a candidate. They’re worried that he could give Joe Biden another four years in the White House after he underperformed in the last three election cycles
The members of the Freedom Caucus traveled to Florida not for a meeting with Trump but to talk to him. They were happy to hear that.
Ailes, who was involved in putting Richard Nixon in the White House in 1968, believed that it was an outlet that could be used to amplify a conservative viewpoint. It was all about propaganda from the beginning. It was created to counterbalance what Ailes believed to be a liberal bias in the TV, radio and newspapers in the country. He referred to the channel as news but it was always about politics and ideology.
Now, it’s all about right-wing politics (the hotter and nastier, the better) and money. Murdoch suggested in his description of the reason for allowing Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, to promote election rumors on Fox that it wasn’t necessarily in that order.
Fox is more and more away from the news part of its name. It still presents itself as a news channel in name using the tropes of anchor desks, correspondents and panels of guests.
It is so much deeper culturally. Fox News is a lifestyle show where people watch for 24 hours a day, in a warm bath of false nostalgia and aggrievement, which is mostly for older adults. Fox tells them that if they’re struggling, it’s not their fault. Millions of dollars are coming out of the pockets of viewers because of the Democrats giving the country to immigrants and minorities.
Some audience members might tune out the channel forever due to the effect of Murdoch’s admission.
The deposition of Murdoch is shocking and disgusting but my relatives won’t change their viewing habits because of it. I think most viewers who have watched Fox News will not be like that.
Ronald Chen, a Rutgers University law professor, says “how often do you get emails that show that the accusation is false, and that the reason Fox reports it is to benefit their own mercenary interests?”
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 attorneys think Fox’s attorneys may be right in predicting that a loss would make the media less free.
Kirtley, who was the former executive director of the Reporters, believes that saying that Fox is a bunch of liars is a slippery slope.
Brennan believes Americans ought to have the right to get things said about public officials and politics wrong so that there is free and robust debate.
When Fox News Loses Defamation, Dominion Media Are Hard: Murdoch’s “Male Case” and the Case of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
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.
Murphy says to prove actual malice is the only way to make sure people are aware the broadcasts were wrong. Murdoch’s sworn statements that he had dismissed the claims of election fraud as fake, and that some of his star hosts had nonetheless endorsed them publicly, carries no legal weight.
“Anything the president and his lawyers were doing was a big deal at the time, regardless of what they could prove,” Murphy says. She invoked what journalists consider the safe ground of “neutral reporting” – just telling their audiences what others are saying.
Yet Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum also were deeply concerned about the loss of viewers and deliberated about how to win them back, evidence uncovered by Dominion’s attorneys and separate reporting by the New York Times’ Peter Baker show.
When news outlets lose defamation cases, they often result in some form of apology or settlement. The two most prominent defamation cases of recent years resulted in divergent outcomes.
Two cases were settled by Rolling Stone magazine in response to reporting on a source’s false account of rape on a University of Virginia campus.
A year ago, The New York Times beat back the attempts by former Alaska Gov.SarahPalin to damage her political career after an editorial wrongly linked her to a mass shooting.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media
Fox News Media, Bartiromo, Pelosi, Fox, and Goodale: Are They Really Eavesdropping on Us? The Case of Abby Grossberg
Goodale says that the case is a strange exception to the general rule. “Let us hope we don’t see such a bizarre case as this one again.”
“Ms. Grossberg has threatened to disclose FOX News Media’s attorney-client privileged information and we have filed a temporary restraining order to protect our rights,” the network said in a statement.
The lawsuits filed by Abby Grossberg, who worked as a senior booking producer for Maria Bartiromo and most recently head of booking for Tucker Carlson, accused Fox’s legal team of having engaged in wrongful conduct as it prepared her for a pre-trial deposition in the election technology company’s case.
Her law firm had shared with the network a draft version of her civil complaint, which cited “pages of allegations purportedly summarizing and quoting communications that Defendant had with Fox News’ attorneys,” Fox’s legal briefs allege.
The memo Powell delivered detailed allegations of fraud without providing evidence. The author admitted her claims were pretty wackadoodle.
The lawsuits from Grossberg, who has since been placed on administrative leave by Fox, were filed in Delaware Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In a phone interview Monday night, Grossberg and her attorney, Gerry Filippatos, disputed Fox News’ assertion the complaints only came after a critical performance review.
“Fox just does not care,” Grossberg added. Everything is summarized perfectly. They care less about their employees than they do about their viewers.
Grossberg, who indicated she was passed over for a top job on Bartiromo’s show because the network preferred it be filled by a male, said Fox News executives referred to the “Sunday Mornings Futures” host as a “crazy b**ch” and “menopausal.”
The environment was terrible when she began working on Carlson’s 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 Carlson’s show as a place where jokes about Jewish people were made out in the open and women were subjected to crude terms. Grossberg named Carlson and members of his staff in the lawsuit filed in New York.
The Case for a Grand Unified View of Fox News, an Opinion Leader’s View on the Media and the Reporting Ethics of the Present and Future
“It’s constant,” she added. “Ratings are very important to the shows, to the network, and to the hosts. It’s a business and that’s what drives coverage.”
Both sides were in court for a major hearing, where they tried to persuade Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to to grant “summary judgment” — and decide the case in their favor now, instead of proceeding to a scheduled jury trial next month.
“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.
Lawyers for the right-wing network stated that live testimony at trial will not add to the interest of the media. “But this is a trial, not a public relations campaign.”
Davis, who was appointed by a Democratic governor to the Delaware bench in 2010, had some tough questions for Fox News’ lawyers on Tuesday. He challenged some of the legal theories that were presented, but also warned court watchers not to predict his outcome based on the rigor of his questioning.
He said one of Fox’s arguments “doesn’t seem to be intellectually honest.” He questioned how Fox News could contend that former host Lou Dobbs had engaged in legal reporting when he signed many of his posts with the #Fetish slogan.
He mused that the President who lost the election could have made a bigger story of it.
The 65 Project: Bringing the Murdochs to Disciplinary Action against Attorneys for Spreading Election Lyricism about the 2016 January 6 Attack
The judge refused to throw out the lawsuit and allowed Fox to become involved in the case, giving the Murdochs even more exposure to the law.
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.
She accused the company of inflating their numbers by assuming that they would get every business they tried, despite there being no guarantee that they would. In previous court submissions, it has said that its calculation is correct. The company hired experts to evaluate their books and lost business opportunities, which resulted in the $1.6 billion figure.
The consequences of your lies can’t be minimized, according to a letter from Teter to Carlson. “Mr. and Mrs. Epps have been subjected to threats, intimidation, and harassment, resulting in significant economic and emotional damages. The harm goes up when Mr. Carlson and Fox News spread more misinformation.
In the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, conspiracy theorists baselessly suggested that the assault was a so-called “false flag” operation staged by the federal government to make supporters of then-President Donald Trump look bad.
As part of that conspiracy theory, some right-wing figures baselessly claimed Epps was part of a secret FBI plot to orchestrate the attack. Carlson has repeatedly breathed life into those conspiracies by giving them attention on his highly rated program. On many occasions, Carlson mentioned that they had a segment from January 6 where Epps appeared at the Capitol.
In a private deposition with the House committee that investigated January 6, Epps denied that he had worked for either the FBI or federal law enforcement. He told the committee that he supported Trump in 2020 because he was worried about voter fraud.
The attorney for the Epps said conspiracy theories about his client had been discredited by videos and accounts of the January 6th events.
Teter had been involved in the legal repercussions from January 6. He has publicly pushed for professional accountability against lawyers who have spread election lies. The 65 Project is trying to takeDisciplinary action against attorneys for pushing false information about the election.
