Hundreds of pages of testimonials, private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives were made public Thursday, adding to the trove of documents showing a network in crisis after it alienated mainstream viewers. by accurately reporting on the results of the 2020 presidential election. election.
A judge has unsealed the documents, along with portions of some of the employee statements, as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit facing Dominion Voting Systems’ Fox News.
The messages are blunt and sometimes profane, as hosts and top executives panicked about boosting their ratings as then-President Donald Trump refused to concede defeat. Meanwhile, the remarks offer the broadest picture yet of how executives, including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, have allowed unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to flourish on the air.
In an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Murdoch lamented the anger of Republican senators, including Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, over stories suggesting that the election had been stolen.
«They still throw mud at us!» Murdoch complained. «Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,» he continued, referring to hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
smaller fragments of the exchanges were mentioned in two Dominion briefs made public in a Delaware court last month, when Dominion sought a summary judgment ruling from the judge and opposed Fox News’ own motion asking the judge to dismiss the case.
Dominion’s reports previously revealed how top figures at Fox News privately criticized the voter fraud claims as «insane» and «insane,» even when the network aired them on television, and that top boss Murdoch considered some of the Trump’s voter fraud claims were «baloney». — and damaging,” though he acknowledged in a statement that he did nothing to curb hosts who were promoting false claims in the days after the 2020 election.
Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021, alleging that the network caused «serious damage» to the voting machine company by giving oxygen to conspiracy theories it knew to be false, including false claims that Dominion’s team it was used to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden, who was linked to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and bribed US government officials.
foxnews he has previously said that he was «proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism.» and argued that Dominion’s lawsuit is designed only to garner headlines. Dominion argues that the First Amendment does not allow the media to broadcast conspiracy theories that they know to be false.
“As the dominant media company among viewers dissatisfied with the election results, Fox gave these fictions a prominence they never otherwise would have achieved. With Fox’s global platform, an audience in the hundreds of millions, and the inevitable widespread republication and dissemination of falsehoods via social media, these lies deeply damaged Dominion’s once-thriving business,» the company said. 441 page demand says. «Fox took a small flame and turned it into a wildfire.»
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