Tucker Carlson is one of the Fox hosts that have been requested to testify at a trial
The 2020 Fox News High-Energy Election Coverage Case Revisited: The Murdochs, Dominion, and the Fox News Jury
Fox News said in court papers that it has journalism experts who will testify that its 2020 election coverage did not stray from professional standards, and that it can argue that Domino’s systems are plagued with security problems.
Dominion’s potential witness list, which is not final and will surely face legal challenges from Fox’s lawyers, is part of the routine process of haggling over witnesses while both sides prepare for trial.
Fox told the judge that Murdoch would be in a tough position if he were to testify in person.
Both Fox News and Dominion previously asked the judge to declare them the outright winner without a trial. The judge hasn’t made a ruling on the case yet, but most legal experts believe that the case will go to a jury trial if the two sides don’t reach a settlement. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on April 13.
Murdoch claimed that he was traveling and it was an annoyance, Davis said. He recently got engaged and is able to travel around quite a bit, even though he is hardly infirm.
“We are not arguing that Mr. Murdoch is infirm or unable to travel,” Fox lawyer Matthew Carter said Tuesday, arguing that Dominion should rely on Murdoch’s “seven-hour-long deposition.”
The Murdochs, top Fox News executives and many of its TV hosts sat for lengthy depositions, which revealed that they didn’t believe election-rigging claims that were being peddled on-air.
“If I think you’re just trying to interrupt testimony out of gamesmanship… you may have a problem,” Davis said. “…Be careful, people. Keep your powder dry on this stuff. This is not a game. This is a trial, and you’re going to be presenting to a jury.”
Both sides are hoping for testimony from their experts that specialize in election statistics, the security of voting machines, journalism ethics, and more.
Dominion said in court filings that its experts will describe how it would’ve been literally “impossible” for its software to flip millions of votes from Trump to Biden, which is precisely what many Fox hosts and guests suggested it did in 2020.
Fox News Sentiment Responds to Dominion’s Controversy About the 2020 Election: Suzanne Scott, the Fox News Chief Executive Vice President, Prime Time Programming, and Pauline Perino
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott sounded the alarm inside the company about the financial fallout that the right-wing network would suffer if it continued fact-checking then-President Donald Trump’s lies after the 2020 election, according to messages that became public Wednesday.
Scott wrote an email to the executive vice president of prime time programming, urging her to fact-check Trump.
Scott said, “This is bad for business because there is no understanding of what is happening in these shows.” “The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. It is bad for business.
The email to Cooper was revealed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Like several documents made public Wednesday, the email had previously been redacted in earlier court filings. The new emails were included in a presentation that Dominion showed at a hearing last week in Wilmington, Delaware. The full slideshow was publicly released by the voting technology company. Fox News, which denies any wrongdoing, has accused Dominion of cherry-picking emails to present a self-serving narrative about what the right-wing network did after the 2020 election.
“These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement. The role of news organizations to cover the news is a key component of the First Amendment and we will continue to advocate for it.
In another email written by Scott, zinging host Dana Perino for her “dismissive tone” in November 2020 after the presidential contest, the Fox News chief disclosed that the company had “lost 25k subs from FOX NATION,” its streaming service.
The messages underscore the panic that gripped Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election when its viewers rebelled against the channel for accurately calling the election for President Joe Biden.
Emails were released that showed how networks inflated ratings by putting Trump lawyers on the air. Powell, Giuliani and host Lou Dobbs were spreading conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was rigged by a shadowy group of people.
“Any day with Rudy and Sidney is guaranteed gold!” The producer wrote a letter. In another email, another Dobbs producer wrote, “to keep this alive, we really need Rudy or Sidney.”