Fox News
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
‘Wow’ and ‘OMG’: shock after Fox News announces Tucker Carlson departure
Shocked reactions are pouring in across social media on the abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, with the network announcing that the prominent far-right television host is leaving the channel.Many were surprised by the announcement given the popularity that Carlson enjoyed at Fox as well as the highest-rated host on cable television.“Wow,” tweeted the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who accused Carlson and other Fox pundits of inciting violence during an MSNBC interview that aired on Sunday.Some remained skeptical that Carlson’s departure from Fox would be the end of his career despite critics who called out his show as racist and inaccurate.“I’d like to think Tucker Carlson’s departure is the end of an era, but I’m quite certain it’s the beginning of his political career,” the founder of gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, Shannon Watts, tweeted.Several conservative pundits took to social media to express their displeasure at the announcement.“I STAND WITH TUCKER CARLSON!”,” the far-right Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert tweeted.Donald Trump Jr, the son of former president Donald Trump, tweeted his reaction to Carlson’s departure news. The tweet read, “Confirmed: Tucker Carlson out at Fox News. OMG.”Carlson’s departure from Fox has already been acknowledged on air by the network.Shortly after the news broke, the Fox anchor Harris Faulkner shared the channel’s statement, adding: “We want to thank Tucker Carlson for his service to the network as a host, and prior to that, as a long-term contributor.”In a statement published early on Monday, Fox News announced that Carlson and the network agreed to part ways and that his last show was last Friday.“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” Fox’s statement said. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”It appears that many at Fox – including Carlson himself – had no inclination that Friday would be his last show.Fox was still previewing Carlson’s show Monday morning, with the network teasing an interview between the departed host and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and 2024 US presidential candidate.For what will be his last show with Fox, Carlson hosted Tyler Morrell from Cocco’s Pizza in Pennsylvania for his show last Friday. Morrell went viral after doorbell camera video showed him helping police catch a suspected car thief while on a delivery.While chowing down on pizza pies delivered to him by Morrell, Carlson wished viewers a happy weekend before signing off.“We’ll be back on Monday,” Carlson said. More
- in US Politics
Fox paid $787.5m for its 2020 lies. But will that restore confidence in elections?
Election officials across the US have faced an unprecedented amount of threats and harassment since the 2020 election. Now they say that Dominion Voting Systems’ decision to settle its landmark defamation lawsuit with Fox for $787.5m last week may not do enough to stop conspiracy theories about the company’s machines leading into the 2024 election.While election officials in states and localities that use Dominion machines agree the settlement is a win for the integrity of elections, they lamented that election misinformation will continue, especially given that Fox News personalities and executives didn’t have to testify about whether they knowingly spread false claims about the voting machines, or offer a public apology.The Maricopa county recorder, Stephen Richer, who was asked by Dominion to sit for testimony in the litigation in September, said he expects the misinformation about Dominion machines, which is one of the most prevalent types he hears about regularly, to continue.“This is not a panacea, especially at the grassroots level,” he said about the settlement. “I don’t think that a bunch of people are going to now say, ‘Oh it seems that tabulation equipment was actually OK.’”Richer runs elections in the largest county in Arizona, a critical swing state that has been a hotbed of election misinformation, threats and harassment.“We still, every single day, hear questions about vote switching, connectivity to the internet, and it doesn’t matter how many studies, how many reports, how many outside audits, how many election technology companies come in and look at this, those haven’t been able to go away,” he added.Public pressure about Dominion’s machines has made the Maricopa county board of supervisors, which selects the county’s vendors for voting machines, consider whether or not to renew its contract with Dominion for vote tabulators, Richer said. In a court filing, he said: “I have concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion.”But other officials are calling Tuesday’s settlement a victory for elections. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said it “fully vindicates Georgia’s voting system”.“It vindicates how we recorded the election results in 2020,” he said, adding: “We have shown, without a doubt, that we have safe and secure elections.”The settlement might not stop some who hold extremist views from believing elections are rigged, but there is little that can be done to change those people’s opinions, Raffensperger said, and even a trial would not have done anything.“Anyone who wants to educate themselves on the issue and be fully informed will have the information and they just have to come to grips with the reality that the machines accurately recorded the votes in 2020. The machines did not flip the votes,” he said. “People that really want to lean into these false narratives, the misinformation and disinformation, perhaps there’s nothing you can do to convince them.”New Mexico’s secretary of state, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, told a local reporter that the settlement was a victory for voter confidence and democracy.“Hopefully the settlement of this lawsuit helps to further discredit the people and organizations that push election lies in our state and across the nation,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTammy Patrick, chief executive for programs at the National Association of Election Officials and a former Maricopa county elections official, said litigation and sanctions are all steps in the right direction to hold people accountable for misinformation, but the public has to know these things are occurring.“It will only be with the same effort of amplification of these penalties that we can hope to convince the public of the truth: that their votes were accurately counted,” she said. If that happens, “then election officials might be able to get back to the tasks at hand of conducting elections without simultaneously dealing with death threats and distracting conspiracy theories”.Experts on misinformation say they don’t expect Fox News to change its behaviour, as election disinformation is now entrenched throughout the Republican party. In its statement after the settlement, Fox acknowledged that the court found some of its statements about Dominion to be false, but said its settlement “reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards”.And even if Fox News tamps down on some of the claims it spreads, other further-right networks will continue to air extreme claims.Still, Richer said he’s hopeful the settlement could mean that false claims will be less widespread moving forward.“Will claims like these have less oxygen because some of the main platforms that gave oxygen to them will be reticent to air them?” he asked. “Maybe it’ll have more of a helpful impact for the ‘24[-hour news] cycle’.” More
- in US Politics
AOC: ‘Better for country’ if Dominion had secured Fox News apology
Dominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said.Dominion and Fox this week reached a $787.5m settlement, shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in a Delaware court.Legal filings laid out how in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win and the run-up to the January 6 attack on Congress, Fox News hosts repeated claims they knew to be untrue, as executives feared viewers would desert the network for rightwing competitors One America News and Newsmax.Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul and Fox News owner, was among witnesses due to testify.Fox faces other legal challenges but its avoidance of an apology to Dominion caused widespread comment, with some late-night hosts moved to construct their own on-air mea culpas.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, acknowledged Dominion was not beholden to public opinion.“This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages,” she told the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, on Sunday. “Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. And I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public.”The congresswoman continued: “I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that. But that is not their role.“And so for us, I think this really raises much larger questions. Very often, I believe that we leave to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that our legislating is supposed to solve.“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. And we saw that with January 6. And we saw that in the lead-up to January 6, and how we navigate questions not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence.”Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack. Acquitted by Senate Republicans, he is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked if media platforms should be held accountable for incitement, Ocasio-Cortez said: “When it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.“And when you look at what [the primetime host] Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.” More
- 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
