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- in US Politics
Fox and Dominion settle for US$787.5m in defamation lawsuit over election lies
Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement in a closely watched defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.The settlement came before scheduled opening statements and after an unexpected lengthy delay Tuesday afternoon just after the jury was sworn in. Neither party immediately disclosed the terms of the settlement other than the dollar amount, and attorneys for Dominion declined to answer questions about whether it requires Fox to issue a retraction or a formal apology.“The parties have resolved their case,” judge Eric Davis told jurors on Tuesday afternoon before excusing them from the courtroom.In a press conference outside the courthouse, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said the more than $787m represented “vindication and accountability”. The settlement amount is less than half of the $1.6bn Dominion demanded in its lawsuit.“Truth matters,” he said. “Lies have consequences. The truth does not know red or blue,” he continued. “People across the political spectrum can and should disagree on issues, even of the most profound importance. But for our democracy to endure another 250 years and hopefully much longer, we must share a commitment to facts.”In a statement, Fox said the settlement reflects its “continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards”.“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” the statement said.Opening statements were scheduled to start on Tuesday after a lunch break, but the judge and jurors did not return to the room until close to 4pm. During the more than two-hour delay, attorneys huddled and left the courtroom to convene in adjacent meeting rooms.After returning to the courtroom, Davis thanked the jurors for their service, and called the efforts by the lawyers on both sides “the best lawyering I’ve had, ever” in his career on the bench since 2010.The anticipated six-week jury trial was originally set to begin on Monday, but Davis, the judge overseeing the case, postponed the start of trial by a day as the sides worked to reach a settlement agreement.The trial in Wilmington, Delaware, was set to be a blockbuster media trial. Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old chief executive of Fox, was called to testify in the case, along with top Fox talent including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo.The lawsuit was seen as one of the most aggressive efforts to hold Fox, or any actor, accountable for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. It was a lie that led to threats against election officials across the country, and ultimately helped fuel the violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January. Nine deaths have been linked to the event.Though the case was settled, Dominion had unearthed a stunning trove of internal communications from Fox laying bare how top talent and hosts knew the outlandish claims about Dominion and a stolen election were false. The extensive messages offered a remarkable insight into how some of the most powerful hosts in America did not buy the allegations they were broadcasting to their audience each night.Dominion, a relatively obscure company until the 2020 election, sought $1.6bn in damages in the case. It challenged repeated claims made on Fox’s air after the general election that Dominion switched votes, paid government kickbacks, and was founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez.In the press conference Tuesday, Dominion CEO John Poulos called the settlement historic because of Fox’s admission that it was telling ties.“Throughout this process, we have sought accountability,” he said. “We believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading lies. Truthful reporting in the media is essential to our democracy.”Even before trial, Davis had already concluded that Fox’s claims about Dominion were false. “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote in a ruling earlier this month.The question that would have been before the jury was whether Fox committed “actual malice” in airing the claims. That required Dominion to show whether key decision makers were aware the claims were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.Fox still faces several legal battles related to its decision to broadcast false claims. Smartmatic, another voting equipment company, is suing the company for $2.7bn. Abby Grossberg, a former Fox employee who worked for Bartiromo and Carlson, is also suing the company, alleging she was coerced into giving misleading testimony.The network also faces a separate lawsuit from a shareholder who is seeking damages and argues that executives breached their fiduciary duty to the company by causing false claims about the election to be broadcast.During the press conference, Stephen Shackelford, an attorney who was set to give opening arguments for Dominion on Tuesday, said that the company will continue seeking accountability.“Money is accountability,” he said. “We got that today from Fox. But we’re not done yet. We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming for them.” More
- in US Politics
Pentagon leaks suspect wins praise from far-right US politicians and media
Washington lawmakers have written off Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old air national guardsman accused of being behind the worst US intelligence leak in a decade, as an “alleged criminal” after his arrest yesterday, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning praise from the political right.“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal. That’s how Washington works. Telling the truth is the only real sin,” declared the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening in the opening monologue of his show, which is the most watched on cable television. “The news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden,” the late al-Qaida terrorist leader.Federal prosecutors allege Teixeira took secret documents from the Massachusetts air national guard base where he worked as a low-ranking cyber specialist and posted them online. They first appeared on one of the gaming messaging platform Discord’s servers in January before spreading to other social media sites and being reported on by news outlets earlier this month.Shortly after he was taken into custody in Massachusetts on Thursday, the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has persistently called for the Joe Biden White House and Washington in general to cut off support to Kyiv – rallied to his defense.“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” she tweeted in an apparent reference to one of the leaked documents that indicates 14 US special forces soldiers were present in Ukraine during the past two months.“Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen [sic]? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-Nato nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?”Other documents have revealed details of how the United States gathers its information and how deeply its intelligence agencies have penetrated Russia’s military. Also among the leaked material is a pessimistic assessment of Ukraine’s prospects of recapturing territory from Russia this spring – a subject Carlson seized on.“Ukraine is in fact losing the war,” he said, citing other documents that indicate Washington’s concerns about Kyiv’s ability to defend its airspace.“The Biden administration is perfectly aware of this. They’re panicked about it, but they have lied about this fact to the public. Just two weeks ago, for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the US Senate that Russian military power is ‘waning’. In other words, Russia is losing the war. That was a lie. He knew it was when he said it, but he repeated it in congressional testimony. That is a crime, but Lloyd Austin has not been arrested for committing that crime.”Congressional Republicans adopted a comparatively sober view of Teixeira’s arrest. He made his first court appearance on Friday in Boston and learned he was facing two charges under the Espionage Act.“Leaking classified information jeopardizes our national security, negatively impacts our relationship with our allies, and places the safety of US military and intelligence personnel at grave risk,” the House intelligence committee chair, Mike Turner, said in a statement. “While we seek to learn the extent of classified information released and how to mitigate the fallout, the House intelligence committee will examine why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.“Congratulations to law enforcement for locating and apprehending the alleged criminal.”Democrats generally kept their thoughts about Teixeira’s arrest to themselves. While visiting Ireland, Biden took an administrative tone in a brief statement issued on Friday afternoon: “I commend the rapid action taken by law enforcement to investigate and respond to the recent dissemination of classified US government documents. While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information, and our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies.”The best indication of where the aftershocks from Teixeira’s arrest could be felt next came from the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. His congressional allies have made investigating the Biden administration’s alleged misdeeds a priority, and in a tweet, he said the leaks would be their next focus.“The Biden administration has failed to secure classified information,” he tweeted. “Through our committees, Congress will get answers as to why they were asleep at the switch.” More
- in US Politics
A culture of truth denial is wilting US democracy and Britain is following fast | Will Hutton
The United States is a grim warning of what happens when a society dispenses with the idea of truth. Fragmentation, paranoia, division and myth rule – democracy wilts. Fox News, we now know from emails flushed out by a lawsuit from the voting machine company Dominion, feared it would lose audiences if it told the truth about the 2020 presidential election result. Instead, it knowingly broadcast and fed Donald Trump’s lie that the election had been stolen – in particular the known unfounded allegation that Dominion had programmed its voting machines to throw millions of votes to the Democrats. Fox could have been instructed to tell the truth by its owner, as this month’s Prospect magazine details, but as Rupert Murdoch acknowledged under oath: “I could have. But I didn’t.” There was no penalty for lying, except being on the wrong side of a $1.6bn lawsuit.But the culture of truth denial is no accident; it was a key stratagem of the US right as it fought to build a counter-establishment in the 1970s, 80s and 90s that would challenge and even supplant what it considered an over-dominant liberal establishment. Unalloyed facts, truthful evidence and balanced reporting on everything from guns to climate change tended to support liberals and their worldview. But if all facts could be framed as the contingent result of opinions, the right could fight on level terms. Indeed, because the right is richer, it could even so dominantly frame facts from its well-funded media that truth and misinformation would become so jumbled no one could tell the difference. “Stop the steal” is such a fact-denying strategy. Ally it with voter suppression and getting your people into key roles in pivotal institutions and there are the bones of an anti-democratic coup.For years, the right had a target in its sights, rather as the British right today has the BBC – the 1949 Fairness Doctrine. This required American broadcasters to ensure that contentious issues were presented fairly; that both sides to any argument had access to the airwaves and presented their case factually. Like the BBC, it enraged the right and, over his period of office, Ronald Reagan ensured the Federal Communications Council, which enforced it, was chaired and increasingly staffed by anti-Fairness Doctrine people. Finally, in 1987 the doctrine was ruled unnecessary because it obstructed free speech. Within months, The Rush Limbaugh Show, the ultra-rightwing talkshow platform, was being nationally syndicated as the scourge of the liberal elite – anti-immigrant, anti-tax, anti-feminist, anti-LGBT, anti climate change and later denying Covid vaccines – and always rejecting the evidence that smoking caused cancer. No need any longer for countervailing views. A lifelong smoker, Limbaugh died in 2021 of the very lung cancer he denied.Through the 1990s, many rightwing TV stations were launched following suit, including the “fair and balanced” Fox News – although in 2017 it replaced the logo with “most watched, most trusted”. Donald Trump’s ascent would have been impossible without it, even as the US grew more ungovernable. Tens of millions believe the lies. And anyone who calls out the process is quickly dismissed as an elitist: out of step with the real opinions of real voters in neglected America, opinions that have been forged by the Republican media.In this respect, the next general election is the most important in Britain’s democratic life. The Tory party has learned from the rise of the Republicans. Voter suppression is one part of the toolkit – the new UK requirement to show photographic ID to vote is borrowed straight from the Republican playbook, as is the weakening of the Electoral Commission. Ensuring appointments to key roles are only available to Tories or known Tory sympathisers – from chairing the BBC and Ofcom to membership of any regulatory or cultural body – is another building block in achieving ascendancy. What remains is to control the commanding heights of the broadcast media, given the right already possesses the majority of the print media. Freezing the BBC licence fee in a period of double-digit inflation helps to enfeeble it – but better still would be to consign it and conceptions of fairness and impartiality to history. Thus the promised end of the licence fee before the current charter expires in 2027. This will open the prospect of overtly rightwing broadcaster GB News trying to reproduce the scale and success of Fox News, as its Dubai-based backer the Legatum Ventures Ltd together with hedge fund owner Sir Paul Marshall – stomaching £31m of losses this year – anticipate.GB News in important respects goes further than Fox; Fox gives few presentation slots to active rightwing politicians. But from the married Tory MPs Esther McVey and Philip Davies via Jacob Rees-Mogg to the deputy chair of the Tory party, Lee Anderson, GB News has become the broadcasting arm of Conservative central office. There is little pretence of journalism, which ceases altogether if a programme can be branded as current affairs. Ofcom raps its knuckles over some of the more egregious examples of bias, but it has no real power. Ofcom chair Michael Grade knows from his spells at ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC what good TV journalism looks like – it’s not on GB News – but equally he knows his role in the Tory scheme of things.Lastly, the coup needs useful intellectuals to draw the sting from any critics. Step up last week the academic Matthew Goodwin, who has morphed from studying the right to becoming an active rightwing advocate, arguing that a liberal elite constituting Emily Maitlis, Gary Lineker and Emma Watson (some elite!) has the country in its thrall, out of step with virtuous mainstream working-class opinion who it haughtily disparages. Yes, it is possible to understand why many in the working class in “red wall” seats want strong defence and immigration policies and think climate change is only a middle-class preoccupation – but that does not mean that objectively the “stop the boats” policy is not cruel and inhumane, that climate change is bogus or that Brexit has nothing to do with queues at Dover. What should matter surely is the truth – not whether the answer is closer to the view of some member of an elite or red-wall voter. Goodwin’s function is to throw a smokescreen around what is actually happening.There is endless commentary about how technocratic, charisma-light Keir Starmer lacks definition against proved technocratic Rishi Sunak. Wrong. His election would bring this coup to a halt; Britain would strike out on a different, more democratic course. You may shake your head at the shenanigans in the US, but the Conservative ambition is to go at least as far, if not further in a country with none of the US’s checks and balances. The issue is whether you want that. More
- in Elections
Rupert Murdoch took direct role in Fox News 2020 election call, filings reveal
Rupert Murdoch took a direct role in how Fox News finally called the 2020 US election for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, newly unredacted messages in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation case showed on Friday.“It would be great if we call it for Biden as soon as he gets over, say, 35,000 ahead in Pennsylvania,” Murdoch, the now 92-year-old Fox News owner, wrote to the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, on 6 November 2020, three days after election day but a day before Pennsylvania put Biden over the top.“Whenever we do it, it will all be over. Regardless of Arizona.”Fox News’ election night call of Arizona for Biden took most observers by surprise and enraged Trump and his followers.Trump’s attempts to have the call rescinded are well documented. The author Michael Wolff, for one, reported that when told of the outgoing president’s fury over Arizona, Murdoch responded with a “signature grunt” and said: “Fuck him.”Fox News denies that. But Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, wrote in his memoir that Murdoch told him on election night that “the numbers are ironclad – it’s not even close”.In his emails to Scott revealed on Friday, however, Murdoch pointed to Trump’s commitment to his lie about large-scale electoral fraud and Fox News’ accommodation of it when he said that on “second thoughts” the network should “maybe” call the election when Biden was up by “50,000 in Pennsylvania” but also say the call was “subject to litigation”.Fox in the end called Pennsylvania for Biden 10 minutes after other networks, when he was a little under 35,000 votes ahead of Trump in the state.The anchor Martha MacCallum told viewers: “Keep in mind the Trump campaign is in the midst of waging legal challenges in several states. But the path is clear for the new president-elect.”In emails to Scott, Murdoch also said the Fox News contributor and Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot thought such a call “won’t change Trump”.“But he’s got to get some real evidence,” Murdoch wrote, adding: “Fact that Rudy is advising really bad!”Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became Trump’s personal lawyer, pushed the outlandish claims of voter fraud at the heart of Dominion’s case.Dominion must prove Fox News hosts and executives broadcast such claims while knowing they were untrue. Filings have shown how hosts including the primetime stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham bemoaned Trump’s lie as their network continued to broadcast it.In the filings released on Friday, a top producer for Jeanine Pirro’s show of 21 November 2020 told a senior executive: “She is refusing to drastically change the opening despite the fact-check.”The executive replied: “Understood.”In that opening, Pirro complained about Democrats’ handling of the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016 and said: “Never, ever, not once did we see a scintilla of evidence. Never.”She then described the Dominion conspiracy theory, involving Venezuelan influence and Cuban money, which she nonetheless called “serious allegations” based on “sworn statements of factual allegations”. Giuliani, she said, had “made clear that Democrat cities were targeted by crooked Democrats who stole votes”.The filings on Friday also contained more evidence that Fox executives worried their core audience, refusing to believe Trump lost and attracted by such claims of fraud, would desert the network.In an email on 11 November, Scott told producers there was “intense anger over our AZ call” among Fox News viewers.“A trust has been broken,” she wrote, “and it’s our jobs to help them through this to the other side with strong reporting, investigative pieces and certainly speaking to the audience with respect is critical.”On 13 November, Fox Corporation senior vice-president Raj Shah wrote in a memo to Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son: “Fox News is facing a brand crisis, with viewers upset and online activists in open revolt of Fox’s handling of election night coverage last week and certain programming decisions since.”He added: “This will not simply fade on its own for weeks or months and poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”Fox News contends that Dominion is using “cherrypicked quotes without context to generate headlines”, and that it broadcast newsworthy allegations reasonable viewers would have understood were not factual statements.Claiming “the foundational right to a free press is at stake”, Fox says it “will continue to fiercely advocate for the first amendment in protecting the role of news organisations to cover the news”. More
- in Elections
Gasp heard on Fox News as Donald Trump indictment announced – video
The news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development. ‘We have just gotten word that former president Donald Trump has been indicted,’ the host begins, while a stunned gasp is audible from off-camera. ‘What?’ asks another incredulous voice, as the presenter explains to Fox News’s afternoon audience that Trump will be charged in relation to an alleged ‘hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ More
- in US Politics
Angry Fox News chief said fact-checks of Trump’s election lies ‘bad for business’
The top executive at Fox News was furious one of the network’s reporters was fact-checking Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, writing in a December 2020 email that it was “bad for business”.Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, was responding in early December 2020 to an on-air fact-check by Eric Shawn, one of the network’s anchors. “This has to stop now,” she wrote to Meade Cooper, another Fox executive. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [sic] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”Scott also asked other Fox employees to alert her if the network booked Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, or Mike Lindell, a serial promoter of election misinformation. “They would both get ratings,” she said.The message is part of a tranche of internal communications obtained by the voting equipment company Dominion in its $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox. Dominion displayed a copy of the message a court hearing last week as its lawyers argued that Fox knowingly aired false statements about Dominion because it was concerned about losing viewers to rival networks such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN). The Guardian obtained a copy of the message and the slideshow that was presented in court.Weeks earlier, on 19 November, Scott also complained about a different fact-check on air. “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories,” she wrote.“The audience feels like we crapped on [sic] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us,” she wrote, adding that Fox nation had lost 25,000 subscribers. “We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”The reporter who did the fact-check, Kristin Fisher, later said she felt she was punished for telling the truth, NPR reported.Fox says it was reporting on newsworthy allegations by the former president and his lawyers, and that its viewers would not have understood its broadcasts about Dominion to be statements of fact. It also says top executives at the company and others who expressed concern about the accuracy of its statements about Dominion were not directly involved in determining what went into each show.Dominion’s slideshow also included messages from Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, whose show was a hotbed for false claims about the election. In one message, Bartiromo appeared to be aware that Sidney Powell, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, would come on her show the next day to make specious claims about Dominion software switching votes, saying: “OK, Sidney will say it tomorrow.” In notes to herself, Bartiromo noted that Powell was being shut out from meetings with Jared Kushner at the White House because he did not want to hear about “conspiracy theories”.Dominion also revealed a key 13 November 2020 internal fact-check from Fox from a team known as the “brain room” that debunked false claims about Dominion. Even though executives testified that claims debunked by the brain room should not have been aired, Fox continued to make false claims about Dominion after the fact-check.The documents also show internal concern about statements being made by Jeanine Pirro, another host who aired false Dominion claims. In one message, fact-checkers went over a script for one of her shows and highlighted inaccurate statements about Dominion. “The brain room is going through this now. Jeanine dictated it to Tim. It’s rife with conspiracies and BS and yet another example of why this woman should never be on live television,” Jerry Andrews, a Fox executive, wrote in an email.Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin on 13 April in Wilmington, Delaware. The trial is scheduled to begin 17 April and last six weeks. More
