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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files show

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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files showEmail from billionaire mogul among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting SystemsRupert Murdoch said Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of Donald Trump’s voter fraud lie, according to an email submitted as evidence in a defamation lawsuit brought by an election operations company.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreDominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked allegations that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Trump, in favour of Joe Biden.Documents that became public on Tuesday offered a window into Fox’s internal deliberations. They show executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims.More than 6,500 pages were released. The full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, now 91 and chairman of Fox Corporation, emailed the Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, the day after Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested that primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won”. Murdoch told Scott some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen” and reasoned that Trump would “concede eventually”.According to the Dominion filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea gaining traction on the right – “sound[s] ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continues, referring to a news conference by the then Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”In a text, Murdoch described the claims of election fraud as “really crazy stuff”.These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the company’s effort to prove Fox News either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice”, which public figures must prove in defamation cases.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general found no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. Trump’s allegations have been rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed.The lawsuit has given a stunning insight into the gap between what Fox News presented to millions of viewers and what its top stars thought and said in private, as well as their dread of losing audience to competitors.Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the host Tucker Carlson texted a producer to say: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”In an exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson said what Trump “is good at is destroy[ing] things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fox News argues claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech”.Fox News has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would chill press freedom.Its evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented”.For example, Fox News cites additional testimony by the Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.In a reply brief, Dominion pushes back: “The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement.”“Finally, Fox has conceded what it knew all along,” the brief reads.The exhibits released on Tuesday had several references to accusations against Dominion made by the Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. In one email, the Fox News host Dana Perino referenced a Powell interview with another host, Maria Bartiromo, saying “this is nuts”. Carlson said in a text message: “Sidney Powell is lying.”In another exhibit, Hannity said he was giving Powell time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Powell “for one second”.In his own deposition in January, Murdoch was asked by a lawyer for Dominion, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?”The media mogul replied: “Yes.”He added later: “The election was not stolen.”A Dominion spokesperson said the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks. But there is little sign of it making an impact on the tone and tenor of Fox News coverage. Carlson has this week used footage of the deadly January 6 attack to falsely portray it as a largely peaceful gathering, earning rebukes from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “It wasn’t about the country, it was about the ratings. It wasn’t about objective, honest journalism. It was about Maga [Make America great again, Trump’s slogan] propagandism.“It’s about further ingratiation of Fox and its cohorts, the folks on TV, being loyal to Trump to the point that they were so afraid of losing him. It is like the worst, most dependent relationship in history because the consequences go beyond Fox and Trump.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityUS elections 2020Joe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files show

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      Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files showEmail from Murdoch among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against FoxRupert Murdoch said that Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of voter fraud claims, according to an email submitted as evidence in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox.Dominion is suing Fox News Networks for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked claims that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Donald Trump, in favor of his rival Joe Biden.The reams of documents that became public on Tuesday offer a window into Fox’s internal deliberations as it covered the election. They show top executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims of election fraud.Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleRead moreMore than 6,500 pages were released on Tuesday, although the full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, chairman of the Fox Corporation, emails Fox News president Suzanne Scott the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange with Scott, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested to him that the network’s primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won.” Murdoch told Scott that some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”According to Dominion’s unsealed filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea that had been gaining traction on the right – “sound ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continued, referring to a news conference by then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the voting machine company’s effort to prove the network either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice,” which public figures must prove to prevail in a defamation case.Fox has defended its coverage, arguing claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the first amendment of the US constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech.”Fox has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would “stop the media in its tracks” and chill freedom of the press.Fox’s evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented” in its summary judgment filing.For example, Fox cites additional testimony by Fox Corp co-chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath that he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.Dominion has alleged Fox continued to push the stolen election narrative because it was losing viewers to right-wing outlets that embraced it.In another exhibit, Fox News host Hannity said that during an interview with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, he was giving her time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Trump’s lawyer “for one second.”A Dominion spokesperson said in a statement that the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks.TopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityReuse this content More

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      Fox News reportedly imposes ‘soft ban’ on Donald Trump

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      Fox News reportedly imposes ‘soft ban’ on Donald TrumpThe former president has not made a weekday showing on the channel since appearing on Sean Hannity’s show in SeptemberFox News has imposed a “soft ban” on Donald Trump appearing on the channel, his inner circle is reportedly complaining, even as the broadcaster extends a warm invitation to other Republican hopefuls in next year’s presidential election.Trump not entitled to immunity from civil suits over Capitol attack, says DoJRead moreThe news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September.Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are currently frequent guests on Fox. Media Matters for America, a watchdog that keeps a close eye on the network’s output, has counted seven weekday appearances by the former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley since she launched her presidential bid last month.Even the lesser known right-wing activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who threw his hat into the ring last week, has appeared four times on Fox. Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to compete with Trump though he has yet to declare, is also repeatedly seen on the network.Semafor said it based its story on information supplied by four members of Trump’s circle. It quoted an unnamed individual “close to Trump” saying: “Everyone knows that there’s this ‘soft ban’ or ‘silent ban’. It’s certainly – however you want to say, quiet ban, soft ban, whatever it is – indicative of how the Murdochs feel about Trump in this particular moment.”The Guardian asked Fox News to confirm or deny the existence of such a ban, but did not immediately receive a reply.The undeniable tailing off of Trump’s exposure on Fox comes at a tense moment for the network, which is battling a $1.6bn lawsuit from the voting machines company Dominion. The suit claims that Fox News Network, with the complicit approval of its parent company Fox Corp, allowed wild defamatory conspiracy theories to proliferate on its platform, falsely accusing Dominion machines of stealing the 2020 presidential election from Trump by flipping votes from him to Joe Biden.In excerpts of a deposition given in the case by Rupert Murdoch in January, the owner and chair of Fox Corp admitted that he knew that several Fox hosts were endorsing lies about the election being stolen from Trump yet he chose not to stop them. Legal and media experts have suggested that the admission places Murdoch’s empire in considerable legal and financial peril.During Trump’s rise to the White House in 2015-16, and his ensuing years in office, he was virtually inseparable from Fox News. He regularly made impromptu calls into his favourite shows, and in the single year 2019 posted 657 tweets responding to content aired by the channel or its sister outlet Fox Business.In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 election, Fox hosts were permitted to continue broadcasting lies about massive voter fraud. But since the stolen election campaign reached its nadir on 6 January 2021, with the insurrection at the US Capitol, followed later that year by the lodging of lawsuits by Dominion and another voting machine company, Fox has gradually backed away.In turn, Trump has increasingly vented his anger towards his former media friend. This week he posted a rant on his social media platform Truth Social in which he accused Murdoch himself of peddling “fake news” after the Fox chief was revealed to have said in a deposition that he did not believe the stolen election lie from the beginning.“If Rupert Murdoch honestly believes that the presidential election of 2020, despite massive amounts of proof to the contrary, was not rigged & stolen, then he & his group of Maga hating globalist Rinos [Republicans in name only] should get out of the news business as soon as possible,” Trump said.There is no evidence that the election was rigged, as numerous top officials, including Trump’s own former US attorney general Bill Barr, have attested.TopicsDonald TrumpRupert MurdochFox NewsFoxUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of trouble

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      Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleMedia mogul’s admission in Dominion Systems election case that he let cable network broadcast falsehoods stuns observersIn his 71 years as a media executive, Rupert Murdoch has proved himself to be a grand master in the arts of survival. He has weathered bruising battles with British trade unions, the phone hacking scandal, countless ratings wars and a volatile private life, all the while growing his News Corp empire into global colossus.It was against this seven-decade backdrop of seeming invincibility that news of Murdoch’s deposition in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News Networks and its parent company Fox Corp dropped like a bomb. Not only did he admit that he knew that Fox News hosts spread lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, but he confessed that he had allowed them to keep on doing so on air to millions of viewers.Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrativeRead moreTo say that the 91-year-old’s statement astounded close Murdoch watchers would be an understatement. “I was shocked,” said Angelo Carusone, president of the watchdog Media Matters for America. “It is stunning, as it not only exposes a lot about how Fox works, it opens them up to potentially cascading litigation and liability.”Fox News and its parent company now face escalating damage on two fronts: to its reputation as a journalism outlet that ostensibly pays lip service to truth and accuracy – and to the financial health of the operation. Media and legal experts told the Guardian that, partly as a result of his stunning testimony, Murdoch can now expect potentially severe injury to both.A former Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Donald Trump Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, said that the reputational damage was self-evident. “This is so profoundly cynical, and deeply corrosive to the role of the largest cable news network in the country,” Wilson remarked. “They admittedly engaged in fraud and lied to their audience.”Wilson predicted that there would be fallout for Fox News in terms of defections from viewers angered by the admission as much as the substance of it. He said: “There’s been worry at Fox for some time now that they’re losing their iron grip on their audience. We are going to see a migration now of Fox News viewers to even further-right outlets like Newsmax and OANN.”Brian Stelter, the former anchor of CNN’s media show Reliable Sources who is now a media and democracy fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, told the Guardian that Fox News would be cushioned by its financial success. “It’s a license to print money,” he said. “It is facing large potential damages which may be a major blow, but not a death blow.”What would hurt most, Stelter suggested, would be the realization among the Fox News base that they had been served a dishonesty. “The most damning headlines to come so far are about the gap between what Fox News hosts say in public and private,” he said. “Even if a little of that seeps into the Fox bloodstream, it still has an impact.”In his deposition, Murdoch – whose newspaper holdings include the Sun in the UK and the Wall Street Journal – made an admission that could have dire consequences, not only reputationally but also to the Dominion lawsuit on which a lot of money is riding.Under heavy pressure from Dominion’s lawyers, he admitted that several Fox News hosts – Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity – had endorsed the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and handed to Joe Biden.“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” he said. “Yes. They endorsed.”Murdoch tried to make a distinction between the hosts – “commentators” he called them – who were making false claims of election fraud and Fox itself. But in other parts of his devastating testimony, he admitted that he chose not to keep election deniers such as Rudy Giuliani off the air even though he had the power to do so.He also tried to justify allowing Mike Lindell, an avid conspiracy theorist, to run MyPillow ads on the network as a purely financial decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” he said.In a statement, Fox accused Dominion of attempting to “publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting president of the United States”.The company called the argument put forward in the lawsuit a “blatant violation of the first amendment” right to free speech and said it represented “an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting”.The word “endorsed” in Murdoch’s deposition could be critical. Under the first amendment’s protection of free speech, Dominion would have to prove “actual malice” in its defamation case against Fox. “It has to show they not only knew these claims were false, but continued to push them with a reckless disregard for the truth,” Carusone said. “‘Endorsement’ neutralizes one of the most important defenses Fox could have used.”The Media Matters president added that, in his view, Murdoch’s extraordinary deposition – so out of kilter with his previous consummate survivor’s record – could be put down largely to hubris. “I think it was hubris,” Carusone said. “He thought he was untouchable.”Carusone pointed to another potential devastating part of the newly released depositions – the testimony of the Republican former US House speaker Paul Ryan. The depositions revealed that Ryan had implored Murdoch to “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies”.Ryan now sits on the Fox Corp board of directors. “This is catastrophic, frankly,” Carusone said. “It opens the door to litigation from shareholders, given that their own board member tried to stop this.”RonNell Andersen Jones, a media law professor at the University of Utah, said that the deposition could prove highly damaging in the ongoing Dominion case. She said: “It adds some key factual support for the narrative that Fox made a conscious decision to tell a knowing lie and that it did so to win back viewers who were defecting.”She predicted that the revelations would spur “much larger conversations about the stolen election lie and the role Fox and Murdoch played in perpetuating it”.TopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrative

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      Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrativeNetwork owner also admitted in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit deposition that Trump’s claims were ‘damaging to everybody’Newly released court documents reveal that Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News, acknowledged under oath that several Fox News hosts endorsed Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.The mogul made the admission during a deposition in the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of maligning its reputation. In his deposition, Murdoch said that the hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed” the false narrative promoted by Trump.Will a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit finally stop Fox News from spreading lies? | Margaret SullivanRead more“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Murdoch said in the deposition, the New York Times reported on Monday.In previous court filings, attorneys for Dominion have argued that Fox News hosts ridiculed Trump’s false claims of a “stolen election” while promoting those lies on television. While Sean Hannity pushed that narrative on his prime-time show, he allegedly wrote that Trump was “acting like an insane person”.Even Murdoch himself dismissed Trump’s claims, describing the former president’s obsession with proving the election was stolen as “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Murdoch acknowledged in his deposition that he could have ordered the network not to platform Trump lawyers such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on its programs: “I could have. But I didn’t,” he said.Dominion’s defamation case is being described as a “landmark”. A Harvard law professor recently told the Guardian he had “never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues”.How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Read moreThe Fox hosts were also privately critical of members of Trump’s team, including Sidney Powell, an attorney who claimed that Dominion’s machines had changed votes cast for Trump to Joe Biden. In a deposition, Hannity said: “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second”.Still, the network continued to give coverage to proponents of the election fraud narrative as it feared upsetting its viewers. In a conversation about the network’s coverage of the issue on 5 January 2020 – a day before rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the election from being certified – Suzanne Scott, the Fox News media chief executive, and Murdoch debated whether Fox hosts should acknowledge Trump’s defeat and admit that Biden won. “We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” Scott told Murdoch.Dominion sued Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation in March 2021 and November 2021 in Delaware superior court, alleging the cable TV network amplified false claims that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Trump, a Republican who lost to Democratic rival Biden. Dominion’s motion for summary judgment was replete with emails and statements in which Murdoch and other top Fox executives say the claims made about Dominion on air were false – part of the voting machine company’s effort to prove the network either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy.In its own filing made public on Monday, Fox argued that its coverage of statements by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would “stop the media in its tracks”.Reuters reported that a Fox spokesperson said that Dominion’s view of defamation law “would prevent journalists from basic reporting”.A trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochFox NewsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS politicsTV newsTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings show

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      Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings showComments by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham revealed in $1.6bn Dominion defamation lawsuit Hosts at Fox News privately ridiculed Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen while simultaneously peddling the same lies on air, according to court filings in a defamation lawsuit against the network.Rightwing personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are among those named in the $1.6bn action brought by Dominion Voting Systems, the seller of electronic voting hardware and software that is suing Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation for maligning its reputation.From colonialism to Putin: what did Tucker Carlson defend in 2022?Read more“He’s acting like an insane person,” Hannity allegedly wrote of Trump in the weeks following the election as the host continued to push the so-called “big lie” during his top-rated prime time show, aided by a succession of election deniers he had on as guests.Even billionaire Fox owner Rupert Murdoch was dismissive of the former president’s false allegations, the filing alleges, calling them “really crazy stuff” in one memo to a Fox News executive, and criticizing Trump’s scattergun approach of pursuing lawsuits in numerous states to try to overturn his defeat.It was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere”, Murdoch wrote, adding in another note that Trump’s obsession with trying to prove fraud was “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Meanwhile, Carlson, one of the network’s most prominent and controversial stars, was disdainful of Sidney Powell, a senior Trump attorney who repeatedly claimed Dominion’s machines flipped votes cast for Trump to Joe Biden.“Sidney Powell is lying,” he wrote to a producer, the Dominion lawsuit alleges. He referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell”.Trump, Carlson said, was a “demonic force” who was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fellow host Ingraham told Carlson that Powell was “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second”, according to Dominion’s filing.Other internal communications revealed that Fox News executives, hosts and researchers used phrases including “mind-blowingly nuts”, “totally off the rails” and “completely BS” to describe the false election theories they were publicly promoting.All were included in a 192-page redacted summary judgment brief filed on Thursday at the Delaware superior court by Dominion’s attorneys. A trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.The company claims multiple Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS’,” the brief states.“Not a single Fox witness testified [in depositions] that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true. Indeed, Fox witness after Fox witness declined to assert the allegations’ truth or actually stated they do not believe them.”Top US conservatives pushing Russia’s spin on Ukraine war, experts sayRead moreThe brief highlighted an 8 November 2020 interview on Maria Bartiromo’s show in which Powell insisted Dominion voting machines were used to engage in election fraud.Bartiromo knew what Powell intended to say before the interview, according to the filing, in part because Powell had forwarded an email to her revealing her source came from a woman who got her information from “the wind”.The Fox News executive responsible for Bartiromo’s show, David Clark, admitted in a deposition he “would not have allowed that claim to be aired” if he knew about the “crazy” theory from the email.The filing also shows how Hannity and others were critical of their own network for its early call of Arizona for Biden on election night, which enraged Trump. Hannity texted Carlson and Ingraham that the call “destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable”, while Carlson called it an “act of vandalism”.Attorneys for the cable news station argued in a counterclaim that the lawsuit was an assault on the first amendment. They said Dominion had advanced “novel defamation theories” and was seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines and chilling protected speech.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN [Fox News Network] for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day – allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox responded to the new claims in a statement to ABC News. “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsFox NewsRupert MurdochSean HannityDonald TrumpUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?

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      Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?The media mogul and Fox Corp are being sued for allegedly broadcasting ‘lies’ about the voting machine company Rupert Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News.Its conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the climate crisis and Covid-19 have been lapped up by Fox viewers and scorned by much of the rest of America, and then the world moved on. But on Tuesday, the 91-year-old billionaire media mogul will be obliged to answer difficult questions under oath about the inner workings of Fox.Rupert Murdoch to testify in Dominion voting machine defamation caseRead moreDominion Voting Systems is suing the cable news station and its Murdoch-owned parent company, Fox Corp, for $1.6bn (£1.3bn) over repeated claims that it rigged its voting machines as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.The suit shines a spotlight on Fox News’ part in promoting Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign and its hand in driving the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. But legal experts say that Dominion, which supplied voting machines to 28 states, appears to be building a wider case that Fox News has a long history of misinformation and steamrolling facts that do not fit its editorial line.Over the past few months, Dominion’s lawyers have been working their way up the tree of Fox News producers, executives and presenters with interrogations under oath about the network’s work culture and its weeks of conspiratorial, and at times outlandish, claims about Trump’s defeat. On Monday, lawyers deposed Murdoch’s eldest son, presumed successor and Fox Corp CEO, Lachlan.Now, Dominion has reached the top of the tree. Months of accumulated testimony are expected to put Murdoch, the chair of Fox Corp, in the difficult position of either having to deny he has control over what happens at his most influential US news operation or defend its campaign to promote the biggest lie in US electoral history.Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch to testify in $1.6bn Dominion lawsuitRead moreMurdoch is already grappling with the costly legacy of phone hacking by British newspapers the News of the World and the Sun. His UK company has paid more than £1bn ($1.2bn) over the past decade to keep the gruesome details from being heard in open court with no end in sight after a high court judge earlier this year refused to prevent the filing of new claims.When Murdoch was called to give evidence to a UK parliamentary hearing in 2011 about News of the World hacking the phones of a murdered schoolgirl as well as hundreds of politicians, celebrities and other public figures, he said that it was the most humble day of his life. He also claimed to have known nothing about the wrongdoing and said that he had been misled.“I feel that people I trusted … I’m not saying who … let me down and I think they behaved disgracefully,” he told parliament. “And it’s time for them to pay.”But he can make no such claim about Fox News, where its misrepresentations were on full display. So far, the only people to pay at the network are the ones who got it right.The trouble started on election night after Fox called the key swing state of Arizona for Joe Biden. The call drew Trump’s ire and unleashed a backlash against the network from his supporters.At that point, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned against bowing to pressure to embrace an alternate reality and reverse the Arizona call.“We can’t give the crazies an inch,” she said, according to court records.As it turned out, “the crazies” took a mile, as Fox News put a parade of Trump lawyers, advisers and apologists front and centre over the following weeks to promote a myriad of conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from Trump, including by rigging the voting machines.Alongside them, some of Fox’s biggest names took up the cry of fraud. NPR revealed that during the discovery process, Dominion acquired an email written by a Fox News producer begging colleagues not to allow one of those presenters, Jeanine Pirro, on the air because she was spreading conspiracy theories about the vote. Pirro, a former district attorney and judge who is close to Trump, continued broadcasting.Lawyers have also obtained rafts of internal messages that are “evidence that Fox knew the lies it was broadcasting about Dominion were false” and part of a culture of politically loaded reporting and broadcasts far from the network’s claim to be “fair and balanced”.Dominion claims that without Fox, “these fictions” about electoral fraud would never have gained the same traction among large number of Americans.“Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” the company claims in its lawsuit.In August, lawyers questioned another presenter, Sean Hannity, who has been described as “part of Trump’s campaign apparatus”. He was grilled for more than seven hours including about a broadcast two weeks after the presidential election in which Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell was a guest.Powell claimed that Dominion “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from Trump and awarded them to Biden”. She said the company “used the machines to inject and add massive quantities of votes for Mr Biden”. Powell has also claimed that Dominion used software developed to help the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez steal elections.Dominion has said that it warned Fox News that such claims were false but that it continued to air them in an attempt to assuage Trump supporters out of concern they would move to other right-wing broadcasters.Top US conservatives pushing Russia’s spin on Ukraine war, experts sayRead more“It’s an orchestrated effort,” Dominion’s lawyer told a court hearing. “It’s not just on the part of each host individually, but it’s across Fox News as a company.”So far the only Fox employees to pay a price for the debacle are those who got it right. Weeks after the election, the network fired its political director, Chris Stirewalt, who had infuriated Trump and other Republicans by refusing to back down from calling Arizona for Biden. The Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, who supported Stirewalt’s decision, took retirement.Fox argues that Hannity and the other presenters are protected by journalistic privilege but that position has been complicated by the Fox host’s own description of his role.In defending his overt bias in favour of Trump and Republicans, Hannity has more than once said he is not a journalist but a talk show host, and so does not have to adhere to the profession’s ethical standards. He took the same position earlier this year after the January 6 congressional committee exposed dozens of his messages to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, offering advice and seeking direction as the White House challenged the presidential election result.TopicsRupert MurdochFox NewsUS politicsUS television industryfeaturesReuse this content More