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      Rupert Murdoch took direct role in Fox News 2020 election call, filings reveal

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      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Arizona for Biden took most observers by surprise and enraged Trump and his followers.Trump’s attempts to have the call rescinded are well documented.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

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      in US Politics

      Angry Fox News chief said fact-checks of Trump’s election lies ‘bad for business’

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      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

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      in US Politics

      TikTok CEO grilled for over five hours on China, drugs and teen mental health

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      The chief executive of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, was forced to defend his company’s relationship with China, as well as the protections for its youngest users, at a testy congressional hearing on Thursday that came amid a bipartisan push to ban the app entirely in the US over national security concerns.The hearing got off to an intense start, with members of the committee hammering on Chew’s connection to executives at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, whom lawmakers say have ties to the Chinese Communist party. The committee members asked how frequently Chew was in contact with them, and questioned whether the company’s proposed solution, called Project Texas, would offer sufficient protection against Chinese laws that require companies to make user data accessible to the government.Lawmakers have long held concerns over China’s control over the app, concerns Chew repeatedly tried to resist throughout the hearing. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” he said in prepared testimony.But Chew’s claims of independence were undermined by a Wall Street Journal story published just hours before the hearing that said China would strongly oppose any forced sale of the company. Responding for the first time to Joe Biden’s threat of a national ban unless ByteDance sells its shares, the Chinese commerce ministry said such a move would involve exporting technology from China and thus would have to be approved by the Chinese government.Lawmakers also questioned Chew over the platform’s impact on mental health, particularly of its young users. The Republican congressman Gus Bilirakis shared the story of Chase Nasca, a 16-year-old boy who died by suicide a year ago by stepping in front of a train. Nasca’s parents, who have sued ByteDance, claiming Chase was “targeted” with unsolicited suicide-related content, appeared at the hearing and grew emotional as Bilirakis told their son’s story.“I want to thank his parents for being here today, and allowing us to show this,” Bilirakis said. “Mr Chew, your company destroyed their lives.”Driving home concerns about young users, Congresswoman Nanette Barragán asked Chew about reports that he does not let his own children use the app.“At what age do you think it would be appropriate for a young person to get on TikTok?” she said.Chew confirmed his own children were not on TikTok but said that was because in Singapore, where they live, there is not a version of the platform for users under the age of 13. In the US there is a version of TikTok in which the content is curated for a users under 13.“Our approach is to give differentiated experiences for different age groups, and let the parents have conversations with their children to decide what’s best for their family,” he said.The appearance of Chew before the House energy and commerce committee, the first ever by a TikTok chief executive, represents a major test for the 40-year-old, who has remained largely out of the spotlight.Throughout the hearing, Chew stressed TikTok’s distance from the Chinese government, kicking off his testimony with an emphasis on his own Singaporean heritage. Chew talked about Project Texas – an effort to move all US data to domestic servers – and said the company was deleting all US user data that is backed up to servers outside the US by the end of the year.Some legislators expressed that Project Texas was too large an undertaking, and would not tackle concerns about US data privacy soon enough. “I am concerned that what you’re proposing with Project Texas just doesn’t have the technical capability of providing us the assurances that we need,” the California Republican Jay Obernolte, a software engineer, said.At one point, Tony Cárdenas, a Democrat from California, asked Chew outright if TikTok is a Chinese company. Chew responded that TikTok is global in nature, not available in mainland China, and headquartered in Singapore and Los Angeles.Neal Dunn, a Republican from Florida, asked with similar bluntness whether ByteDance has “spied on American citizens” – a question that came amid reports the company accessed journalists’ information in an attempt to identify which employees were leaking information. Chew responded that “spying is not the right way to describe it”.The hearing comes three years after TikTok was formally targeted by the Trump administration with an executive order prohibiting US companies from doing business with ByteDance. Biden revoked that order in June 2021, under the stipulation that the US committee on foreign investment conduct a review of the company. When that review stalled, Biden demanded TikTok sell its Chinese-owned shares or face a ban in the US.This bipartisan nature of the backlash was remarked upon several times during the hearing, with Cárdenas pointing out that Chew “has been one of the few people to unite this committee”.Chew’s testimony, some lawmakers said, was reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in an April 2018 hearing to answer for his own platform’s data-privacy issues – answers many lawmakers were unsatisfied with. Cárdenas said: “We are frustrated with TikTok … and yes, you keep mentioning that there are industry issues that not only TikTok faces but others. You remind me a lot of [Mark] Zuckerberg … when he came here, I said he reminds me of Fred Astaire: a good dancer with words. And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit nebulous, they’re not yes or no.”Chew, a former Goldman Sachs banker who has helmed the company since March 2021, warned users in a video posted to TikTok earlier in the week that the company was at a “pivotal moment”.“Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok,” he said, adding that the app now has more than 150 million active monthly US users. “That’s almost half the US coming to TikTok.”TikTok has battled legislative headwinds since its meteoric rise began in 2018. Today, a majority of teens in the US say they use TikTok – with 67% of people ages 13 to 17 saying they have used the app and 16% of that age group saying they use it “almost constantly”, according to the Pew Research Center.This has raised a number of concerns about the app’s impact on young users’ safety, with self-harm and eating disorder-related content spreading on the platform. TikTok is also facing lawsuits over deadly “challenges” that have gone viral on the app.TikTok has introduced features in response to such criticisms, including automatic time limits for users under 18.Some tech critics have said that while TikTok’s data collection does raise concerns, its practices are not much different from those of other big tech firms.“Holding TikTok and China accountable are steps in the right direction, but doing so without holding other platforms accountable is simply not enough,” said the Tech Oversight Project, a technology policy advocacy organization, in a statement.“Lawmakers and regulators should use this week’s hearing as an opportunity to re-engage with civil society organizations, NGOs, academics and activists to squash all of big tech’s harmful practices.” More

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      in Elections

      Fox News and Dominion face off in court over 2020 election claims

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      Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News will return to court on Wednesday for the second day of a pre-trial hearing previewing many arguments in a closely watched $1.6bn defamation case.Dominion is suing the rightwing network over its decision to repeatedly air false claims about its voting equipment in 2020 as Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the election.Both sides are asking Eric Davis, a Delaware superior court judge, to rule in their favor ahead of trial.Davis said on Tuesday he had not reached a decision. His ruling will probably set out the scope of issues for a trial scheduled for mid-April.On Tuesday, Justin Nelson, a Dominion lawyer, presented a slew of internal communications from Fox News showing hosts, producers and executives all knew the claims about Dominion were false.That evidence is in service of Dominion’s effort to prove that Fox News committed “actual malice” when it knew the statements were false or recklessly disregarded the truth when it published claims about Dominion.On Wednesday, the hearing will feature the remainder of an argument from Erin Murphy, presenting Fox News’s case to the court.Much of her argument on Tuesday focused on the idea that Fox News was not presenting facts to its audience, but rather what reasonable viewers would have understood to be allegations from Donald Trump and his lawyers.She is expected to focus on why Fox News’s actions did not meet the “actual malice” standard required to prove defamation.Davis peppered both sides with questions on Tuesday and at times seemed skeptical of some of Fox News’s arguments.Part of its argument in the case is that it cannot be held liable for defamation because it was reporting newsworthy events in a neutral and dispassionate way.Davis questioned whether Fox News’s reporting was neutral and dispassionate, pressing Murphy about tweets from the host Lou Dobbs that contained the hashtags “Maga” and “America First”.Abby Grossberg, a Fox News staffer, separately sued the network this week, saying she was coerced by attorneys into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit. More

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      in US Politics

      With $1.6bn at stake, Fox News is suddenly interested in freedom of the press | Margaret Sullivan

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      As it tries to defend itself against the accusation that it knowingly spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, Fox News has touted some lofty notions about the role of journalism in a democratic society.“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” said a recent company statement, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v Sullivan.”The background, of course, is that Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6bn in damages from the media giant, arguing that Fox News spread damaging falsehoods purporting that the voting machine company rigged the election to defeat Donald Trump. Dominion intends to show that network representatives at the highest levels – right up to Fox News’s founder, Rupert Murdoch – knew that this was utter nonsense, that the election was valid, and that their primary concern was not truth-telling but appeasing their disappointed pro-Trump audience.Don’t get me wrong. I believe press rights belong to a wide spectrum of media organizations, whatever their political leanings.But Fox’s reliance on first amendment protections – while part of a legal strategy that may prove successful in court – is the height of hypocrisy. America’s founders believed it was essential that American citizens be well-informed about the behavior of public officials and other powerful entities, and thus be capable of self-governance.The recent revelations from court filings, however, make it clear that such a noble mission was far from top of mind at Fox, not just in the aftermath of the 2020 election but going back years.Take, for example, one of the network’s biggest stars, Sean Hannity, who ventured far outside the bounds of journalistic norms when he appeared with Trump at a 2018 campaign rally. (Fox brass, normally tolerant of their stars’ excesses, went so far as to reprimand him.)Hannity, who has stated that he’s not a journalist, has played the role of a Trump insider – even an informal adviser to Republican officials. Recall his January 2021 text message to former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Republican congressman Jim Jordan: “Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days,” apparently referring to persuading Trump to conclude his presidency peacefully before inauguration day.“When Hannity advised the president about the ongoing insurrection he did not do so as a journalist but as an ally, a confederate, a teammate, rather than an umpire or observer,” the famed first amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told me last year, characterizing this as “non-journalistic behavior, in fact almost the precise opposite of journalistic behavior”.And given Fox’s clear reliance on the landmark press-rights case Times v Sullivan, why haven’t its journalists grilled their new heartthrob, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, about his newsworthy desire to weaken the journalistic protection it provides?DeSantis wants the courts to revisit Times v Sullivan, but somehow this doesn’t get the attention of Fox News interviewers. His alarming views on that landmark decision, which established a higher bar for defamation lawsuits involving public figures, haven’t provoked a single challenge in his 12 Fox appearances this year, according to a Media Matters for America database.Initially, Fox even forbade its own Howard Kurtz, who hosts a weekly show on the news media, from covering the Dominion case. After Kurtz, to his credit, publicly expressed his disagreement with that prohibition, and after plenty of outside criticism followed, the bosses relented long enough last weekend to let him discuss the case and call it a test of the first amendment.Meanwhile, Fox hosts for years have urged their grievance-hungry audience to despise journalists. (Granted, over the years, Fox has sometimes filed “friend of the court” briefs in support of other media outlets.)Rants against the media are a mainstay for personalities like Laura Ingraham, who drops disparaging phrases like “leftwing media hacks” and “regime media” into her segments.But it took Tucker Carlson – the very face of Fox News – to go further in a 2021 interview, calling mainstream journalists “cringing animals not worthy of respect”.“It just makes me sick. I really hate them,” said Carlson, who more recently has been busy portraying the violent insurrection on 6 January 2021 as a largely peaceful protest or even a friendly tourist visit.Yet somehow, when it comes time to defend the network’s profit-driven willingness to circulate lies, Fox News is eager to claim solidarity with those supposedly despicable cowards. Now, you see, it’s all about journalists standing together, arm-in-arm, on the very underpinnings of American democracy.I’m all for press rights and for applying them broadly. But somehow, I don’t think this was what the founders had in mind.Fox News doesn’t deserve the second word in its name.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News

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      Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News The network is facing a $1.6bn false-claims lawsuit – and its top star’s private texts about the ex-president are causing anguishTucker Carlson was once seen as untouchable. Now the most popular TV host on American cable news is at the center of a firestorm threatening to engulf Fox News and also anger Donald Trump, whose conspiracy theory-laden political cause he has long championed and who his audience loves.Court filings attached to the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit accuse Fox News of allowing its stars to broadcast false accusations about rigged voting machines in the 2020 presidential election.Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape can be used in civil rape trial, judge rulesRead moreThe documents contained numerous emails detailing the private views and concerns of senior Fox management and its stars, which often seemed at odds with what they were publicly broadcasting to their audience.While anchors Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo have been singled out for pushing false claims of a fraudulent election, the fallout has landed primarily on Carlson.In group chats obtained by Dominion, the network’s biggest names – Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity – appeared to doubt claims of election fraud that were featured prominently on the network. At the same time, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch said in a court deposition that anyone who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of”.So far, Fox is standing by its stars. On Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, heir apparent and executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation, voiced support for management, its roster of stars and backed Fox New’s editorial standards.“A news organization has an obligation – and it is an obligation – to report news fulsomely, wholesomely and without fear or favor. That’s what Fox News has always done and that’s what Fox News will always do,” he said.That might not wash with many observers and media critics. But likely of equal concern, especially for Carlson, are some of the private opinions voiced about Trump. The Dominion lawsuit revealed a text from Carlson declaring: “I hate him passionately.”Nor is that the only political fight Carlson became mired in last week. Carlson was directly criticized by the White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates for describing the January 6 rioters as “orderly and meek … sightseers” as he began broadcasting footage from the insurrection handed to him by Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy.Ironically, news of Carlson’s antipathy for Trump broke around the same time the ex-president was praising Carlson as doing a “great job” in his presentation of Capitol security video.Many people – including some Republicans – reacted with outrage to Carlson’s broadcasts, with chimed with a broader far-right push in the US to recast the January 6 attack on the Capitol as an overly enthusiastic demonstration and the hundreds of people jailed for it as political prisoners.The White House, Bates said, “agrees with the chief of the Capitol police and the wide range of bipartisan lawmakers who have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law – which cost police officers their lives.”The Guardian contacted Fox for comment but received no reply.Carlson, for his part, has been unapologetic. He claimed the clips offered “conclusive” evidence that Democrats and the select committee that organized last year’s January 6 hearings misinformed the public about what had taken place.Some experts see the current crises at the network as serious, as it seeks to keep a Trump-loving audience glued to its screens – no matter the cost, and no matter what its executives privately think.“They feel that they have to appease a certain audience they’ve trained to expect a certain kind of information flow. And at the same they see that if you take it too far, you risk serious legal and financial liability – to say nothing of embarrassment that comes when internal communications are exposed,” said Bill Grueskin, a faculty professor at Columbia Journalism School.The news-opinion formula worked for Fox News through the Trump presidency, but in the aftermath of Trump’s election fraud claims and the Capitol riot, it is starting to show signs of strain, Grueskin said.If Fox managers and anchors doubted Trump’s election fraud claims and went along with them to maintain ratings dominance, particularly over other emerging rightwing outlets, their anxieties were confirmed when Fox News viewers fled after it declared Arizona for Joe Biden.“The Murdochs think about this almost exclusively in terms of ratings, audience and money,” said Grueskin. “If they were concerned about Tucker Carlson’s truthfulness, they might have done something about this months or years ago.”And they might be right. After Dominion filed internal Fox News communications last month viewership rose by 2.4%, compared to total viewership for the first full week of February.More so, Carlson likes controversy. He remains hugely powerful, and may be beyond the reach or will of the organization to rein in. He has survived controversies over racist comments and his embracing of tenets of white nationalism.Fox News primetime anchors, particularly Carlson and Hannity, exert so much power in that organization that even the Murdochs have to dance around it, Grueskin said.“It goes beyond Tucker Carlson,” he says. “Rupert Murdoch may be the smartest media person in the world, but you can’t fix this problem they’ve created for themselves.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024US elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      What did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?

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      ExplainerWhat did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?Revelations stem from evidence in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the networkFox News’s reputation as an unyielding backer of Donald Trump is in tatters after revelations that many of its top executives and on-air personalities never believed his lies about the 2020 election, and even personally disliked the former US president.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreThe details stem from documents released as part of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine firm Trump and Fox News singled out for unfounded allegations of rigging in the aftermath of the presidential race two years ago.The case is viewed as potentially the biggest financial threat to Fox News since it came on the air in 1996, but the details that have trickled out have already reshaped views of the network and shown a broad gulf between what its top personalities tell their viewers in public and what they privately believe.Here are the key things to know:When did the lawsuit begin?Dominion sells voting machines and tabulators and has headquarters in Denver, Colorado and Toronto, Ontario. It filed its lawsuit in March 2021, claiming Fox News spread lies about the 2020 election in an effort to stop viewers from switching to other networks.The firm’s complaint singled out some of Fox’s biggest personalities, such as Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro “and their chosen guests”, saying they plucked “defamatory falsehoods” from obscure far-right websites and broadcast them to their tens of millions of viewers. “Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” Dominion said.When will the case go to trial?The trial is scheduled to begin on 17 April, and expected to last five weeks.Why do we know so much about behind-the-scenes happenings at Fox News?Dominion began making evidence in the case public in mid-February as part of court filings, which included emails and text messages exchanged between Fox News personalities and executives, as well as depositions made as part of the suit.What did Fox News hosts really think about the 2020 election?Even as they went on the air to cast doubt about whether the vote went off fairly, many Fox News personalities privately doubted Trump’s claims. “He’s acting like an insane person,” Hannity, one of the network’s best-known personalities, allegedly said of Trump, according to a Dominion court filing.They also released messages from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, in which he wrote that it was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere”, and the then president’s insistence on doing so was “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Carlson, Fox’s most popular commentator, took aim at Sidney Powell, a top lawyer for Trump who repeatedly claimed on air that Dominion’s machines changed votes from Trump to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. “Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote to a producer, later calling her “dangerous as hell”.Murdoch also said that several of the network’s top stars “endorsed” Trump’s false claims, and “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” according to a deposition in the case.What do we now know about their views of Donald Trump?Publicly, Trump has few friends like the personalities on Fox News. Privately, some of them loathe him. The case’s filings reveal that Carlson, for instance, wrote of Trump: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Murdoch felt that Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani were “both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.” And on 4 January, two days before Trump riled up a crowd of supporters who went on to attack the US Capitol, Carlson wrote in a text, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.“I truly can’t wait.”Why did Fox News continue promoting election lies?With competitors like Newsmax and One America News Network waiting in the wings, Fox executives apparently feared losing their dominant place among America’s conservative viewership if they broke with Trump over the 2020 election.“We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” Fox News’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, told Murdoch the day before the January 6 attack.The network’s concern with maintaining advertising revenue also comes through in the documents. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch said in his deposition, when asked why Fox allowed the conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to run ads for his MyPillow product on the network.Fox has released its own evidence to argue against some of Dominion’s assertions, including comments from the Fox Corp co-chairman and CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, who said he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by a dip in the network’s ratings after the 2020 vote.TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020TV newsTelevision industryUS politicsDonald TrumpexplainersReuse this content More