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      Why Fox News Had to Settle With Dominion

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      WILMINGTON, Del. — It is deeply disappointing that Fox News settled the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems before Rupert Murdoch and his roster of celebrity propagandists had to testify. But it is not surprising. Fox News, after all, had no viable defense.On Tuesday, I arrived at Superior Court here at 7 a.m. to secure a seat for what I, like many others, hoped would be an epic trial about the falsehoods Fox aired after the 2020 election, when it accused Dominion and the voting technology company Smartmatic of perpetrating heinous voter fraud. Jury selection took all morning, and opening statements were scheduled for the afternoon.More than anything, I was curious about what Fox’s lawyers would say, because there seemed so little that they could say. Part of Fox’s sinister on-air brilliance is the way it encases its audience in a comprehensive alternative reality. But now, for once, the network would be forced to account for itself outside the right-wing bubble. How it would possibly do so was a matter of great suspense.Already, Eric Davis, the judge in the case, had ruled in Dominion’s favor on key issues. “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 March 31 pretrial decision, a rare judicial use of all-caps bold italics. Fox’s statements, he ruled, constituted “defamation per se.”Davis prohibited Fox from arguing that the network was merely reporting on allegations made by Donald Trump and his lawyers, which Fox contended were newsworthy whether or not they were true. So the case would turn not on whether Fox had aired defamatory falsehoods, which Davis determined it had, but on whether, in airing defamatory falsehoods, Fox had displayed “actual malice” — essentially, reckless disregard for the truth.The evidence for such reckless disregard brought to light by Dominion’s lawyers during the discovery phase of the case was already overwhelming, and the trial promised more to come. A filing that Fox’s lawyers made last week demonstrated their predicament. In it, the attorneys laid out some of the points they planned to make in their opening argument, asking for “guidance from the court to ensure that it can make its opening statement without undue interruption and delay.” Those points looked a lot like an attempt by Fox to use a legal backdoor to smuggle in arguments that the judge had already forbidden.“To defend this case, Fox witnesses must be able to testify about the reasons why Fox covered the allegations on the air,” said the filing. “Fox witnesses will all testify that they covered the Dominion-related allegations because the allegations were part of the most newsworthy story of the day.” This, even though Davis had specifically ruled that this argument was invalid because, among other things, “the evidence does not support” the contention that Fox “conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting.”In order to defend Fox from a finding of actual malice, its lawyers seemed set on bringing Fox’s alternative reality into the courtroom, acting as if taking Trump and his attorneys at their word was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Testimony and documentary evidence, Fox’s lawyers said in the filing, “will show that the president and the lawyers bringing the election fraud lawsuits continuously told Fox that they had evidence to support their claims and that they would be presenting that evidence to courts.” That, in turn, explains why the Fox hosts “did not know that the president’s allegations were false or harbor serious doubts about the truth of the allegations.”In other words, they can’t be blamed for treating the president of the United States as a reliable source.Responding to the filing, Davis refused to give Fox the green light it sought. If the network’s lawyers wanted to make the arguments that they were telegraphing, they would have to take their chances in front of the jury, and risk getting shut down. On Tuesday morning, Davis reminded the parties that they would not be able to make arguments “about things that I’ve ruled inadmissible.” I was waiting to hear what Fox’s lawyers were going to argue instead.But after lunch, the jury didn’t return, and Davis came back to the courtroom only briefly before beckoning some of the lawyers out. The hours ticked by while the journalist-filled audience grew increasingly restless. Courtroom protocol against texting or using the internet gradually collapsed. News broke that the judge had ordered a special master to investigate whether Fox had “complied with their discovery obligations.” (The network had previously been sanctioned for withholding evidence.) Rumors about a settlement buzzed through the room.At 4 p.m., the jury filed back in, and the judge confirmed that the trial was over before it began.Fox is paying Dominion $787.5 million, which appears to be one of the largest defamation settlements in history and is one that constitutes a humiliating admission of fault by the network, even though, as The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg reported, the deal doesn’t require Fox to apologize. But the public will be deprived of seeing Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and several of their colleagues grilled on the stand, forced to reckon with the real world, unable to fall back on the dense lattice of misinformation that typically sustains Fox’s narratives.At least, the public will be deprived for now. Smartmatic is still suing Fox for $2.7 billion, though no trial date has been announced yet. “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” Smartmatic lawyer J. Erik Connolly said in a statement on Tuesday. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”I’m not sure I believe it — Fox has just shown the world what it’s willing to pay to avoid the unmasking. But reality isn’t done with Murdoch and the rest of them yet.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Fox-Dominion Trial Delayed: What to Know About the Company Behind the Lawsuit

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      Dominion, which is owned by a New York private equity firm, has accused the news network of spreading false narratives about its election technology.If not for the 2020 election, most people would not have heard of Dominion Voting Systems, an elections technology company that John Poulos started out of his basement in Canada more than two decades ago.But in the days and weeks after the election, former President Donald J. Trump and many of his allies accused the company of perpetrating election fraud. Dominion then filed a slew of defamation lawsuits against public figures and news networks, accusing them of spreading the false narratives and exposing its employees to harassment. The company’s case against Fox News is scheduled to go to trial this week. Judge Eric M. Davis, who is presiding over the case, said in a statement late on Sunday that he was delaying the trial by a day, until Tuesday. He did not cite a reason but said he would make an announcement Monday at 9 a.m.Here is what we know about the company, from its private equity owner in New York to its powerful perch in the nation’s elections industry.Dominion’s Early DaysDominion became one of the largest providers of election technology in the United States by selling, licensing and maintaining products such as its Democracy Suite software and ImageCast voting and tabulation machines. During the 2020 election, the company served 28 states, including many swing states, as well as Puerto Rico. Mr. Poulos, who has degrees in electrical engineering and business, incorporated Dominion in Toronto in 2003 with some friends after a stint in Silicon Valley. His sister was his first investor, followed by his parents and his friends’ parents. (Dominion declined to comment for this article.)The company is named after Canada’s 1920 Dominion Elections Act, which removed barriers to voting that had excluded women and voters of certain racial, religious or economic groups. Mr. Poulos’s business idea was to help people with disabilities, such as paralysis or blindness, cast their ballots as independently as possible while still leaving an auditable paper trail. Dominion incorporated accessible technology like audio readouts and large screens into election machines.The company scored its first American contract in 2009, providing voting technology to dozens of counties in New York. The next year, it moved its headquarters to Denver, where it now has several hundred employees.Private Equity OwnersStaple Street Capital, a private equity firm in New York, is the majority owner of Dominion. Mr. Poulos, Dominion’s chief executive, retains a roughly 12 percent stake. PennantPark Investment, a financial firm based in Miami, is another investor.Fox said in a legal filing that Staple Street paid $38.3 million in 2018 to acquire 76.2 percent of Dominion. At the time, the private equity firm valued the technology vendor at $80 million, or one-twentieth of the $1.6 billion in damages that Dominion had sought from Fox, according to Fox’s filing.Staple Street’s owners, Stephen D. Owens and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, first worked together in 1998 on buyouts for the Carlyle Group, a private equity giant. (Their résumés also feature stints at Lehman Brothers and Cerberus Capital Management.) The firm’s board of directors includes a former chief executive of Dunkin’ Brands as well as a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and ambassador to the European Union.Staple Street declined to comment.On its website, Staple Street says it has $900 million of assets under management — mostly midsize companies such as a flower bulb distributor in New Jersey, an accounting and payroll reporting service popular with restaurant chains, a support organization for dental clinics and, at one point, the theme park operator Six Flags.Fox said in its filing that Mr. Yaghoobzadeh had authorized Dominion’s lawsuit against the network. The lawsuit, Fox said, is meant to generate publicity, deter negative reporting and “unjustly enrich” Staple Street.Fox cited discovery documents that it said showed Dominion “in a solid financial position, maintaining substantial cash, carrying no debt and producing a steady return on investment” to Staple Street. In 2021, Dominion paid full bonuses to its employees and executives and projected $98 million in revenue for 2022, Fox said.Last year, when asked whether he believed that Dominion was a “toxic” company after the 2020 election, Mr. Owens answered, “That’s correct.”A Business in FluxIn its complaint, which it filed in 2021, Dominion accused Fox of broadcasting lies that “deeply damaged” its “once-thriving” business, “one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America” with a potential value of more than $1 billion.Shasta County, a rural area in Northern California that has become a hotbed for election denial, terminated its Dominion contract in January. Lawmakers in Montgomery County in Pennsylvania renewed a deal with Dominion for $518,052 in February, the same month that officials in Kern County, north of Los Angeles, narrowly approved a three-year, $672,948 contract after hours of heated debate.Dominion’s contracts with local and state governments typically last for several years and range from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $100 million, the company said in its complaint against Fox. The company estimated that misinformation about the company had cost it more than $600 million in profits.In an expert witness report submitted in the case late last year, Mark J. Hosfield, a managing director of the investment bank and advisory firm Stout, wrote that the false narratives had led Dominion to lose $88 million in profits from current and future opportunities. He also wrote that Fox’s coverage had caused the value of Dominion’s equity and debt to drop $920.8 million. Dominion’s renewal rate with clients had historically been 90 percent, he said.Fox has said the $1.6 billion that Dominion is seeking is “a staggering figure that has no factual support” and was “pulled out of thin air.” There has been no evidence of Dominion’s laying off employees, closing offices, defaulting on credit obligations or suffering canceled contracts as a result of Fox’s coverage, the network said.Fox said in other court filings last year that “Dominion’s calculations are riddled with mathematical overstatements” and losses misattributed to damaging news coverage, and that the company had beaten revenue forecasts that it set before the election.“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished First Amendment rights,” Fox said in a statement.Dominion, in a statement said: “In the coming weeks, we will prove Fox spread lies causing enormous damage to Dominion. We look forward to trial.”An Important but Mysterious IndustryThe elections technology industry has few major players and offers little public information about its finances. Dominion is most likely the second-largest company of its kind operating in the United States, behind Election Systems & Software in Nebraska, according to Verified Voting, an election security nonprofit.Both companies, along with Hart InterCivic in Texas, have acquired smaller competitors over the past two decades. As of 2016, the three vendors served more than 90 percent of eligible voters in the country, according to a report from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.Wharton researchers at that point described the election technology business as having “all the aspects of an industry that new investors would want to avoid — a costly regulatory environment, constrained market size, cost-conscious customers, and concentrated and entrenched vendors.”The Brennan Center for Justice estimated last year that replacing outdated voting equipment over the next five years could cost more than $580 million. A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent letters in 2019 to Staple Street and other private equity firms that had invested in election technology companies, voicing concern about industry consolidation and the maintenance of voting machines. In response, Staple Street wrote to Ms. Warren that it spent roughly 10 to 20 percent of its revenue on research and development.Susan C. Beachy More

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      Is Public Television the Israeli Government’s Next Target?

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      When you host one of the world’s last over-the-air radio shows in Yiddish, fans occasionally get in touch. But you hear more often from critics. They write to Avraham Zaks, the 37-year-old behind the mic of a weekly program called “We Are Here!” to nitpick about his grammar. Or to complain about his accent, which doesn’t sound sufficiently Eastern European to their ears. Some tell him the show needs more religious content.Mr. Zaks, who has flecks of gray in his beard and warm dark eyes and wears wire-rim glasses, does not mind. On some level, he is kind of tickled by the feedback.“I write and say: ‘Thank you very much, we’re doing our best. It’s nice to hear that you’re listening,’” he said on a Wednesday afternoon, just minutes before his show started. “The problem in broadcasting generally is that most of the time, you don’t get any reaction. You feel like you’re speaking to yourself.”“We Are Here!” is one of a handful of niche language radio offerings of Kan, Israel’s public media network, officially known as the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.Avraham Zaks, the host of a weekly program called “We Are Here!” on Kan, Israel’s public media network.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMost of the company’s 1,000 employees run a highly regarded TV, radio and digital news division or oversee the production of some of the country’s most prestigious television shows, some of which air on U.S. streaming platforms. As Israel’s answer to the BBC or PBS, Kan, whose headquarters is in Jerusalem, is more interested in gravity than ratings.These days, Kan has a new focus: survival. It sits squarely in the cross hairs of Israel’s right-wing government elected in November. Through Shlomo Karhi, the minister of communications, the government has issued a number of threats against the network, starting with a vow to defund the company and shut it down.“There is no place in this day and age for a public broadcaster when there is a wide range of channels,” Mr. Karhi said during a news conference in January.In case anyone thought he was talking exclusively about saving taxpayer money — Kan receives the equivalent of $180 million a year from Israel’s coffers, about 85 percent of the company’s budget — he also accused the media more broadly of being “too biased toward the left.”A few weeks later, a spokesman for Mr. Karhi said in a statement that the closure of Kan was delayed “until further notice” so that the government could concentrate on overhauling the judiciary, a plan that has convulsed the nation.More recently, the minister said he wanted to strip Kan of three of its eight radio spectrums, which are needed for radio stations. The station broadcasting “We Are Here!” is expected to survive any cull because an Israeli regulation requires foreign language broadcasting in this nation of immigrants. The fear among Kan’s supporters is that once the government is done with the judiciary overhaul, whether its plans end with success or failure, the network is next.“If you’re looking for a textbook on how to turn a democracy into an autocracy, it includes shutting down independent media,” said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, who drafted Kan’s journalistic code of ethics. The media market in Israel, a country of 10 million people, is small by American standards and highly competitive. There are four TV networks in total. The other three are privately held and Kan is generally in a tie for fourth place in the ratings race with Channel 14. That network, often called Israel’s version of Fox News, enthusiastically supports the Netanyahu administration. In recent months, according to the network, it has enjoyed a ratings surge.Political leaders in Israel, like those in virtually every country, try to influence and shape news coverage. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems especially eager to manage the media. Two of the three corruption trials against him involve quid pro quos for favorable coverage from powerful publishers — one the owner of a large daily newspaper and the other a telecom tycoon who operates a popular online news site. (Mr. Netanyahu denies wrongdoing.)“The coalition is not interested in the standard pushback game we’ve seen in the past,” said Shuki Tausig, chief editor of The Seventh Eye, a media watchdog publication. “They want to use regulations to weaken, or even smash, big commercial players that are not obeying them. And they want to eliminate or control Kan.”The network is the successor to the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which was closed in 2017 after critics from across the political spectrum concluded that its programming was shabby and the authority too easily buffeted by politicians, who appointed its board members and controlled its budget.Kan has been designed for imperviousness to partisanship, relatively speaking; the job of selecting board members is up to industry professionals. It’s a structure that has produced a catalog of highly compelling television, including a three-part documentary about Adolph Eichmann, “The Devil’s Confession,” available on Amazon Prime and bankrolled by a number of companies. Last month, Kan was nominated for 125 Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars and Emmys, more than double its nearest rival.The media market in Israel, a country of 10 million people, is small by American standards and highly competitive. There are four TV networks in total. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times“All the other networks are trying to make a profit so they are filled with shows where people are on an island for three weeks fighting over a bag of rice,” said Tsuriel Rashi, senior lecturer at Ariel University’s School of Communication. The Eichmann documentary, he added, was “a huge undertaking.”“It’s expensive, and it won’t make money,” he said, “but it’s important.”Kan is in an office building in a generic patch in Jerusalem, not far from an ultra Orthodox neighborhood and near the Israel Tax Authority. During a recent visit, the place hummed with reporters readying an evening broadcast. In the Arab media room, a handful of employees were watching dozens of televisions broadcasting from around the Middle East.“Today is kind of quiet,” said a reporter with his eyes trained on the screens. “There was a machine gun fired into the air in Gaza, which set off sirens in Israel, but no rockets.”“I’ve seen scarier things in my professional life,” one of his colleagues said.Despite the business-as-usual vibe here, morale has sagged, as it would at any institution facing extinction.“We had a companywide meeting a few weeks ago, and I told everyone, ‘I know there are people here who go home at night and have children ask if they will have a job in the morning,’” Gil Omer, chairman of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, said in an interview at Kan’s offices. “And I told them that we will do everything we can to keep this place alive.”Gil Omer is the chairman of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, known as Kan and is Israel’s answer to the BBC or PBS.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesFor now, the government appears to have scaled back its ambitions to those three radio spectrums, which it plans to make available to commercial networks.It’s not a measure Mr. Karhi could take unilaterally. Yoaz Hendel, his predecessor as minister of communications, said in an interview that Mr. Karhi did not seem to understand the job, which has nothing to do with Kan’s budget — that’s the finance ministry’s purview — and is all about building communications infrastructure, like 5G.“Karhi could announce tomorrow that all Israelis need to wear red hats, but that doesn’t mean anyone would listen to him,” Mr. Hendel said. “He should focus on what he was appointed to do, which is to make sure that Israel is well-connected.”Elad Malka, the vice director general at the Ministry of Communications, disagreed. “The minister in charge of public broadcasting is the minister of communications,” he said. “Of course, if there are changes that the minister wants, he needs to go to the Knesset,” Mr. Malka added, referring to Israel’s Parliament.Even if he lacks the authority to unplug Kan on his own, Mr. Karhi, a former member of the Knesset, has grabbed national attention in Israel because his statements appear to reflect the will of the government. And grabbing attention is one of Mr. Karhi’s specialties. In February, he denounced critics of the judicial overhaul plan as “erav rav,” an ancient term for demons who pose as Jews and must be killed. In early March, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, he tweeted a message wishing everyone well — except for reservists soldiers opposed to the judicial overhaul, who he said could “go to hell.”“He has no interest in media,” Mr. Tausig said. “His actions as minister are just political opportunism, a way to demonstrate he’s more extreme than extreme, to serve Netanyahu.”A spokesman for the Ministry of Communications declined to comment.Mr. Zaks, the host of “We Are Here!,” has closely followed the drama that has engulfed his employer, but one recent Wednesday afternoon he was more interested on his upcoming interview with the head of the Yiddish Department at Hebrew University.They discussed how to attract Israel’s ultra Orthodox to evenings of Yiddish theater and literature, a major challenge given that much of the canon is downright irreligious. Reaching the Haredi, or ultra Orthodox, community is important to Mr. Zaks, who was raised in a Lubavitcher community outside Tel Aviv. By the time he was 20, he realized that he was an atheist and left. He spent the next few years discovering popular culture that he had never encountered — television, movies, professional sports.“I knew about radio because it was on all day at home,” he said. “That was it.”The biggest group of Yiddish speakers in Israel are Haredi, but he assumes they are a tiny percent of the audience for “We Are Here!” because it’s a secular show. He knows, however, that every year a few thousand exit the ultra Orthodox community and he’s happy to offer them some connection to the world they have left behind.“It’s like being an émigré and reading a newspaper in the language you were raised in,” he said. “I don’t love the place that I left, but I love Yiddish. It’s a heritage that we have to keep.” More

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      Landmark Trial Against Fox News Could Affect the Future of Libel Law

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      Jury selection starts on Thursday in Delaware Superior Court, where the proceedings will tackle misinformation and the limits of journalistic responsibility.Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News, which goes to trial in Delaware next week, is expected to stoke hot-button debates over journalistic ethics, the unchecked flow of misinformation, and the ability of Americans to sort out facts and falsehoods in a polarized age.For a particular subset of the legal and media communities, the trial is also shaping up as something else: the libel law equivalent of the Super Bowl.“I’ve been involved in hundreds of libel cases, and there has never been a case like this,” said Martin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer. “It’s going to be a dramatic moment in American history.”With jury selection set to begin on Thursday in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, the case has so far been notable for its unprecedented window into the inner workings of Fox News. Emails and text messages introduced as evidence showed the Fox host Tucker Carlson insulting former President Donald J. Trump to his colleagues, and Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the Fox media empire, aggressively weighing in on editorial decisions, among other revelations.Now, after months of depositions and dueling motions, the lawyers will face off before a jury, and legal scholars and media lawyers say the arguments are likely to plumb some of the knottier questions of American libel law.Dominion, an elections technology firm, is seeking $1.6 billion in damages after Fox News aired false claims that the company had engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election for Joseph R. Biden Jr. The claims, repeated on Fox programs hosted by anchors like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, were central to Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade Americans that he had not actually lost.Lawyers for Fox have argued that the network is protected as a news-gathering organization, and that claims of election fraud, voiced by lawyers for a sitting president, were the epitome of newsworthiness. “Ultimately, this case is about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news,” the network has said.It is difficult to prove libel in the American legal system, thanks in large part to New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that is considered as critical to the First Amendment as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is to civil rights.The Sullivan case set a high legal bar for public figures to prove that they had been defamed. A plaintiff has to prove not just that a news organization published false information, but that it did so with “actual malice,” either by knowing that the information was false or displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.The question of that motivation is central to the Dominion case. The trial judge, Eric M. Davis, has already concluded in pretrial motions that the statements aired by Fox about Dominion were false. He has left it to the jury to decide if Fox deliberately aired falsehoods even as it was aware the assertions were probably false.Documents show Fox executives and anchors panicking over a viewer revolt in the aftermath of the 2020 election, in part because the network’s viewers believed that it had not sufficiently embraced Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud. Dominion can wield that evidence to argue that Fox aired the conspiracy theories involving Dominion for its own financial gain, despite ample evidence that the claims were untrue. (Fox has responded that Dominion “cherry-picked” its evidence and that the network was merely reporting the news.)Lawyers on their way out of Delaware Superior Court. Fox suffered some setbacks this week before the trial.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesMr. Garbus, the First Amendment lawyer, has spent decades defending the rights of media outlets in libel cases. Yet like some media advocates, he believes that Fox News should lose — in part because a victory for Fox could embolden a growing effort to roll back broader protections for journalists.That effort, led mainly but not exclusively by conservatives, argues that the 1964 Sullivan decision granted too much leeway to news outlets, which should face harsher consequences for their coverage. Some of the leading proponents of this view, like the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are conservative heroes who are sympathetic to the right-wing views of Fox programming. But if Fox prevails in the Dominion case, despite the evidence against it, the result could fuel the argument that the bar for defamation has been set too high.Not all media lawyers agree with this reasoning. Some even think a loss for Fox could generate problems for other news organizations.Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who teaches media law at the University of Minnesota, said she detected from Fox critics “an intense desire for someone to say definitively that Fox lied.” But she added, “I don’t see a victory for Dominion as a victory for the news media, by any means.”“As an ethicist, I deplore a lot of what we’ve learned about Fox, and I would never hold it up as an example of good journalistic practices,” Ms. Kirtley said. “But I’ve always believed that the law has to protect even those news organizations that do things the way I don’t think they should do it. There has to be room for error.”Ms. Kirtley said she was concerned that the Dominion case might lead to copycat lawsuits against other news organizations, and that the courts could start imposing their own standards for what constituted good journalistic practice.Dominion’s effort to unearth internal emails and text exchanges, she added, could be reproduced by other libel plaintiffs, leading to embarrassing revelations for news outlets that might otherwise be acting in good faith.“It’s an intense scrutiny into newsroom editorial processes, and I’m not sure that members of the public will look at it very kindly,” she said. “Maybe the emails show they’re being jocular or making fun of things that other people take very seriously.”Journalism, she said, “is not a science,” and she said she felt uncomfortable with courts determining what constituted ethical news gathering.Fox suffered some setbacks this week before the trial. On Tuesday, Judge Davis barred the network from arguing that it aired the claims about Dominion on the basis that the allegations were newsworthy, a crucial line of defense. On Wednesday, he imposed a sanction on Fox News and scolded its legal team after questions arose about the network’s timely disclosure of additional evidence. The judge said he would probably start an investigation into the matter; the network said its lawyers had produced additional evidence “when we first learned it.”The trial may feature testimony from high-profile Fox figures, including Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Carlson, Ms. Bartiromo and Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media. More

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      How Fox Chased Its Audience Down the Rabbit Hole

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmOn the evening of Nov. 19, 2020, Rupert Murdoch was watching TV and crawling the walls of his 18th-century mansion in the British countryside while under strict pandemic lockdown. The television hosts at Murdoch’s top cable network, Fox News, might have scoffed at such unyielding adherence to Covid protocols. But Jerry Hall, his soon-to-be fourth ex-wife and no fan of Fox or its conservative hosts, was insisting that Murdoch, approaching his 90th birthday, remain cautious.The big story that day, as it had been every day in the two weeks since the election, was election theft, and now Rudolph W. Giuliani was giving a news conference at the Republican National Committee. With Sidney Powell, the right-wing attorney and conspiracy theorist, at his side, Giuliani, sweating profusely, black hair dye dripping down the side of his face, spun a wild fantasy about Joe Biden’s stealing the election from President Donald J. Trump. Dizzying in its delusional complexity, it centered on a supposed plot by the Clinton Foundation, George Soros and associates of Hugo Chávez to convert Trump votes into Biden votes by way of software from Smartmatic and voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.Murdoch wasn’t pleased. He had built the most powerful media empire on the planet by understanding what his audience wanted and giving it to them without fear or judgment. But Trump now appeared to be making a serious bid to overturn a legitimate election, and his chaos agents — his personal lawyer Giuliani chief among them — were creating dangerous new appetites. Now Murdoch was faced with holding the line on reporting the facts or following his audience all the way into the land of conspiracy theories. Neither choice was necessarily good for business. At 5:01 p.m. London time, he sent an email to his friend Saad Mohseni — an Afghan Australian media mogul sometimes referred to as the Afghan Rupert Murdoch — from his iPhone. “Just watched Giuliani press conference,” he wrote. “Stupid and damaging.” Shortly after, he sent another email, this one to his Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us, too.”Murdoch had for weeks — for years, really — avoided making a choice. Trump and his supporters were already furious at Fox News for being the first network to call Biden the victor in Arizona, and two newer cable networks were offering them a version of reality more fully on Trump’s terms. One of them, Newsmax, was moving up in the ratings while refusing to call Biden the winner. When Murdoch’s own paper, The Wall Street Journal, reported a few days before Giuliani’s news conference that Trump allies were considering pouring money into Newsmax to help it mount a stiffer challenge to Fox, Murdoch alerted Scott to the piece. Fox would have to play this just right, he said in an email. Take Giuliani with “a large grain of salt,” he wrote, but also be careful not to “antagonize Trump further.”The network’s coverage of the Giuliani news conference showed just how impossible this balancing act would be. Immediately afterward, a Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, went to the network’s camera position outside the West Wing and fact-checked the allegations. “So much of what he said was simply not true,” she told Fox viewers. Giuliani, she said, provided no hard proof for a claim that “really cuts to the core of our democratic process.” Fox’s opinion hosts, who had been broadcasting the Giuliani-Powell Dominion fantasies to varying degrees themselves — some appearing to endorse them outright — had been complaining internally that the news division’s debunking efforts were alienating the core audience. An executive at the Fox Corporation, the network’s parent company, had recently started a brand protection effort to, among other tasks, “defend the brand in real time.” After Fisher’s segment, the group sent an alert to top news executives. In a follow-up email, Scott vented to a deputy. “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories,” she wrote. “We have damaged their trust and belief in us.” One of Fisher’s bosses told her that she needed to do a better job of “respecting our audience,” and Fisher later complained of feeling sidelined. More

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      Trump’s Return to Fox News Gets a Cool Reception … on Fox News

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      The network used to be a safe space for the former president. But Brian Kilmeade, Jason Chaffetz and others had tough words for his appearance on “Hannity,” his first Fox interview in months.Reunions can be awkward.Former President Donald J. Trump finally returned this week to his old stomping ground, Fox News, after several months away. The chilly reception from some of his onetime media allies underscored his uneasy place at the moment in Republican politics.Yes, Sean Hannity, the Fox News anchor who conducted the interview, listened patiently as Mr. Trump reeled off his usual talking points about the “fake news media” and “horrible” Democrats. The former president said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, would be toiling “at a pizza parlor” without his endorsement. And he concluded with the grim assessment that “our country is dead.”But while Fox News and Mr. Trump existed for years in a kind of symbiosis — with on-air personalities effusively praising Mr. Trump, and benefiting from big ratings for his frequent appearances — the network is no longer the all-encompassing Trump safe space it used to be.Rupert Murdoch has used media properties like Fox News to promote Mr. DeSantis as a potential savior of the Republican Party. Until this week, Mr. Trump had not appeared on a Fox News broadcast since declaring his candidacy in November. And minutes after his interview aired, network personalities were taking the former president to task.Laura Ingraham, whose prime-time program directly follows “Hannity,” was once so close to Mr. Trump that she attended his election night party in November 2020. On her Monday show, she allowed the New York Post columnist Miranda Devine to criticize Mr. Trump for “complaining endlessly about the past” and “constantly dwelling on grievance.”When her other guest, the Trump loyalist Stephen Miller, loudly interjected that the former president “has put forward a new policy plan every week,” Ms. Ingraham sounded skeptical of his argument. “Why isn’t he talking about them?” she asked Mr. Miller.The next morning, Jason Chaffetz, a Republican congressman turned Fox News contributor, denounced Mr. Trump’s performance as “absolutely horrific.”“I voted for Donald Trump twice, I have defended him countless times; I thought he was horrific,” Mr. Chaffetz said. “I think that was the worst interview I’ve seen the president do.” He went on to criticize the former president for “whining,” “complaining” and playing “the victim card.” Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, two of the co-hosts of the morning show “Fox & Friends,” also knocked Mr. Trump’s performance.Nielsen ratings — one of Mr. Trump’s preferred metrics — provided their own kind of tough review. In past years, a Trump interview almost always delivered Fox News’s biggest audience of the day. On Monday, Mr. Trump drew 3.04 million viewers, higher than the average episode of “Hannity” but well below that day’s viewership for “The Five” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”With a defamation suit against Fox News filed by Dominion Voting Systems hurtling toward a trial, it was notable that Mr. Hannity’s interview with Mr. Trump was taped. Mr. Trump’s baseless claims about a “rigged” 2020 election are central to the Dominion case; a live appearance by Mr. Trump in which he repeats those claims could be hazardous for the network. It could also put a Fox News anchor in the awkward position of having to contradict Mr. Trump on the air, the kind of exchange that could easily go viral and turn off some of the network’s viewers.Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, continues to rely on Fox News and other Murdoch properties for his major media appearances, even as his absence from other conservative-friendly outlets like Breitbart News has come under new scrutiny.Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News star who now hosts a successful podcast, revealed to listeners this week that Mr. DeSantis had been ducking her invitations.“I love Piers Morgan, he’s a pal of mine, but why would you go sit with the British guy and not come on this show?” Ms. Kelly said on her program, referring to Mr. DeSantis’s recent interview with the London-based Mr. Morgan.“I will venture to say he’s afraid,” Ms. Kelly added. “I’m just going to put it out there: He’s afraid because he knows the kind of interview that I would give him. He’s not going to get a pass.”The Florida governor avoids most one-on-one interactions with the mainstream media. Other than a recent appearance on Eric Bolling’s Newsmax program, Mr. DeSantis has leaned extensively on venues controlled by Mr. Murdoch, even those based overseas. He gave an interview to The Times of London. Mr. Morgan is based at TalkTV, a British network owned by Mr. Murdoch, although his DeSantis interview aired on the streaming channel Fox Nation and was excerpted by The New York Post.It has not been lost on Mr. Trump’s allies that Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have softened when he is enjoying mostly sympathetic coverage from Fox News.And there are subtle signs that Mr. DeSantis may not always be able to bank on the network’s good graces. On Tuesday, Jesse Watters, a co-host of “The Five,” offered some advice to the Florida governor in the wake of Mr. Trump’s attacks.“DeSantis is taking a bruising,” Mr. Watters said. “If I were Ron, I would start talking. Because every day that goes by, Trump draws blood.” He added: “How many more weeks and months is this going to sustain itself? Ron’s got to come out and say something, or else he’s just going to limp into this primary.” More

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      Fox Argues Top Executives Weren’t Involved in Voter Fraud Broadcasts

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      Lawyers for the company, which faces a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, are pushing for a judge to rule in their favor before a trial.WILMINGTON, Del. — Fox Corporation executives, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, had no direct involvement in what aired on the company’s cable news channels, and therefore their company should not be found liable in a $1.6 billion defamation case, lawyers for Fox argued Wednesday in a Delaware court.The argument was part of Fox’s request for a pretrial victory. Dominion Voting Systems has accused both Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of defaming the business. Dominion says Fox’s shows repeatedly linked its voting machines to a vast conspiracy of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.Erin Murphy, a lawyer for both Fox Corporation and Fox News, said there was no evidence that corporate executives were involved in the Fox News shows in question. She said Dominion would need to show that they had directly participated in the broadcasts to meet the high standard needed to prove defamation.Ms. Murphy conceded that some of the executives had the power to bar certain guests from the shows, but said: “It’s not enough for them to show that they have the ability to step in. They have to have been involved.”Fox has asked that Fox Corporation be dropped from the lawsuit.Dominion must prove that Fox knowingly broadcast false information about the company, or was reckless enough to disregard substantial evidence that the claims were not true. Defamation cases have traditionally proved hard to win because of the First Amendment’s broad free speech protections. But legal experts say Dominion may have enough evidence to clear that high bar.Dominion, too, is asking for summary judgment; its legal team gave its arguments in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday. The judge, Eric M. Davis, said he would make his decision by April 11. A jury trial is scheduled to start April 17.Judge Davis told both sides on Wednesday that he preferred for trial witnesses to appear in person rather than over a video link, setting up the possibility that Fox News hosts like Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson could show up. He said Rupert Murdoch might also be compelled to testify in person, though he did not issue any decisions on the matter.Fox lawyers had submitted a letter to the judge on Monday asking that Mr. Murdoch and some other executives not be compelled to testify, saying that it would amount to “hardships” on the witnesses and that their testimony would “add nothing other than media interest.”After Fox finished its arguments, a lawyer for several media outlets, including The New York Times, asked the judge to review redactions that Fox had made to some of the communications it handed over, arguing that Fox kept too much confidential. Judge Davis said he would consider the request.Judge Davis also remarked on a lawsuit filed in Delaware on Monday by a Fox News producer, Abby Grossberg. She argues that Fox lawyers coerced her into providing misleading information in her deposition in the Dominion lawsuit.Judge Davis said the lawsuit had been originally assigned to him but then given to another judge in Delaware Superior Court.Fox News said in a statement on Wednesday: “Despite the noise and confusion that Dominion has generated by presenting cherry-picked quotes without context, this case is ultimately about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute need to cover the news.” More

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      Tucker Carlson Is No Less Dangerous

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      Gail Collins: Bret, we have all kinds of deeply important issues to tackle. But let’s start with Tucker Carlson. We’ve learned he didn’t really believe all the stuff he said on TV about a “stolen” election. Shocking!Bret Stephens: They say that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, but in this case it’s the tribute that cynicism pays to cowardice.Gail: Since you’re in charge of that side of our world, I really want to hear your opinion.Bret: I sometimes think of Carlson in the same mold as Father Coughlin, but worse: At least Coughlin was an honest-to-God fascist, a sincere bigot, whereas Carlson only plays one on TV for the sake of ratings.Gail: Wow, been a while since I heard a Father Coughlin comparison.Bret: As for Fox, the way in which they are trying to “respect” their viewers is to lie to them. I can only wish Dominion Voting Systems well in its $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network for claiming that their voting machines played a role in Trump’s loss. I believe in strong protections against frivolous lawsuits, but knowingly and recklessly spreading falsehoods about the subject of one’s reporting is the very definition of — dare I say it — fake news.Gail: Glad we can come together on the importance of not making up the news.Bret: But Gail, let’s move on to weightier things. Like President Biden’s dead-on-arrival $6.8 trillion budget. Your thoughts?Gail: Yippee! Whenever I wonder if we’re ever going to have a serious fight again, government spending rears its head.So let’s have at it. Obviously, Biden knows his plans aren’t going anywhere with a Republican-sort-of-controlled House. But he’s laying his cards down, and I think the cards look great.Bret: Explain.Gail: He’s ready to raise taxes on the rich. Good for him! Right now the Republicans seem to be claiming we can keep taxes as they are, or lower, plus protect Social Security and Medicare, plus protect or increase military spending. Which would, I believe, cut the rest of the budget by 70 percent.Bret: To steal a line from “Pride and Prejudice,” “My feelings are so different. In fact, they are quite the opposite.”Gail: Love that you’re bringing up Jane. Even if it’s to disagree with me.Bret: Ten years ago, federal spending was $3.45 trillion. Biden’s budget request is double that, and he has the chutzpah to suggest he wants to reduce the deficit — achieved almost entirely by huge tax increases instead of spending discipline.Gail: I will refrain from referring at length to a super-deficit-exploder named Donald Trump. Who was very much with his party’s program in one sense — pretending to be anti-deficit without proposing anything difficult to reduce it. Of course, the gang is OK with cutting back on, say, child care. Which makes it tougher for single parents to go to work and create a better future for the whole family.Bret: I too will refrain from noting that, godawful as Trump was, his final pre-Covid 2019 budget request was around $4.75 trillion, which is still $2 trillion less than Biden’s current request. I’m also not too thrilled by Biden’s proposal for higher taxes, including a nakedly unconstitutional tax on the appreciated assets of very rich people. It won’t pass, which I guess is the point, since the budget is less of a serious proposal and more of a campaign platform.Speaking of platforms: Your thoughts on the administration’s reported decision to approve an $8 billion oil-drilling project in the Alaskan wilderness?Gail: I’m horrified, actually. We’re supposed to be worrying about global warming and Biden is approving a plan that, as our story pointed out, will have an effect equivalent to adding almost two million more cars a year on the roads.Bret: OK, so now it’s my turn to cheer Biden while you jeer. We’re going to need oil for decades to come no matter how many electric vehicles we build, and the oil has to come from somewhere. Europe has discovered the price of relying on Russia for its energy, and I’d much rather have our gas come from a remote corner of Alaska, extracted by American workers, under American regulations, than from, say, Venezuela or Iran.But I’m really curious to see how this will play out within the Democratic Party. To me it looks like a crucial test of whether the party will again reach out to its old blue-collar manufacturing base or move further into the orbit of knowledge-industry workers with, well, coastal values. What do you think?Gail: The Biden administration is obviously going along with labor, lower-cost energy and all the other stuff you think of when you’re running for re-election. Democrats who worry about the environment may be rightfully horrified, but I doubt it’ll cost Biden votes. When the elections roll around, they’ll realize the other side is worse.Bret: Smart political advice.Gail: Still, the least the oil-drilling forces could do would be to apologize in advance to the kids who are currently in kindergarten and will have to live with the results.Bret: Also known as jobs and energy security.Gail: Hey, talking about youth reminds me of … oldth. I was so sorry to hear Mitch McConnell had fallen and been hospitalized with a concussion. He’s 81 and you can’t help wondering if he’s coming to the end of his career as the Senate Republican leader. Any predictions?Bret: First of all, we’ve got to petition the O.E.D. to make “oldth” a word as the appropriate antonym of youth. Second, I wish the senator a speedy recovery.His bigger problems, though, aren’t his physical stumbles but his political ones. He let Biden score his unexpected political wins last year. He’s fallen between two stools when it came to Trump: not Trumpy enough for Trump and his crowd, but not brave enough to stand up to them and move the party past them — like when he lambasted Trump after Jan. 6 but refused to vote to convict him during his second impeachment trial. And he’s been the Republican Senate leader forever, or at least it feels that way.Gail: So who’s next?Bret: He’d probably be wise to step aside for his whip, South Dakota’s John Thune, except that the Trumpians hate Thune for his anti-denialist position when it came to the 2020 election.Gail: Well, if you want to see the kind of leader that can crawl between the regular Republicans and the Trumpians, there’s … Kevin McCarthy. Senators would be better off with a hospitalized McConnell.Bret: A very good point. Since we’re speaking of Trump, your thoughts on his potential indictment?Gail: So many to choose from! Are we talking about the secret government documents he piled up at Mar-a-Lago, or his attempt to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 ballot counting, or the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the ex-lover Trump wanted to keep quiet? Although possibly as much about his sexual ineptitude as his marital sins? Pick one, Bret.Bret: My general view with most of these legal efforts is that, merited though they may be, they are more likely to help Trump than to hurt him. The weakest case seems to be the one that may be closest to an actual indictment — the alleged hush money payments to the alleged paramour Stormy Daniels. Problem there is that the star witness, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, is an ex-felon with a big-time ax to grind against his former boss.Gail: Well, when your witnesses have to be people who spent a lot of quality time with Donald Trump, the options will almost always be depressing.Bret: The stronger case is the one in Georgia. Then again, is a jury in Georgia going to vote unanimously to convict the former president? Color me skeptical. At this point, the most realistic way for the country to be done with Trump is if Ron DeSantis or some other Republican defeats him, fair and square, in the race for the G.O.P. nomination. Which is why you’re strongly rooting for DeSantis to jump in the race, am I right?Gail: Oh, Bret, it’s so hard to admit I’d rather see Trump as the nominee than DeSantis, but it’s true. I would. Rather have a terrible Republican with no real fundamental values than one who has strong but terrible commitments and is a genuine obsessive on social issues like abortion rights.Bret: That sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor. But I’m giving you full points for total honesty.Gail: Plus, if we have to live through two years of presidential politics featuring Joe Biden on one side, I’d rather have the awful, wrong-thinking Republican who isn’t also incredibly boring. Is that shallow?Bret: Other than for the entertainment value, do you prefer to have Trump as the nominee because you think he has no chance of winning the election? You could very well be right. Then again, I remember how that worked out in 2016.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More