Court docs spotlight Fox’s embrace of lies for $$
When Dominion Voting Systems filed its $1.6 billion (that’s with a “b”) lawsuit against Fox News Network two years ago, it alleged that Fox had intentionally and recklessly defamed it by publishing and re-publishing false claims that Dominion had rigged the 2020 presidential election, manipulated vote counts and paid kickbacks to government officials. News Alert: Fox is in trouble.
Last week, after using the judicial process to disgorge internal Fox documents and take the sworn testimony of Fox producers, executives and television hosts, Dominion’s lawyers filed hundreds of pages of materials strongly indicating that it has the proverbial receipts. The conservative media powerhouse will be fortunate to avoid a jury’s verdict that it lied about Dominion,
that it knew it was lying, and that among its principal motivations for promoting lies was its perceived need to pander to the most untethered of its viewership, which keeps Fox’s bank books fat and Rupert Murdoch happy. To put it succinctly: Dominion’s court filings show that Fox is perfectly happy to traffic in falsehoods in order to preserve its cash flow.
For weeks following the 2020 election, Fox hosts hawked Donald Trump’s snake oil, fostering and repeating the fraudulent claim that Trump, not Joe Biden, had won the election. They endorsed, regurgitated and recycled the hogwash spewed by Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and pillow salesman Mike Lindell, that Dominion had cooked the election in Biden’s favor using “software” and “algorithms,” changing Trump votes to Biden votes.
It was garbage, of course — and Fox knew it, as a ton of evidence from Fox’s own internal files makes quite clear. Fox host and money-machine Tucker Carlson admitted to his producer “Sidney Powell is lying,” acknowledging that what she was selling on Fox “news shows” was “ludicrous,” “totally off the rails” and “shockingly reckless.” One Fox reporter admitted to Fox’s chief political correspondent “It’s dangerously insane these conspiracy theories.” A Fox producer called the accusations against Dominion “complete BS.” The company’s senior vice president warned that this stuff was “mind-blowingly nuts”.
Fox’s internal factchecker stated simply that the allegations against Dominion were “incorrect.” Asked under oath about the claims published on Fox, the network’s own political editor replied “No reasonable person would have thought that.”
But that didn’t stop Fox from continuing its barrage of trash — because it concluded that if it didn’t, it would lose viewers, and revenue, to Newsmax, the fledgling ultra-conservative network that makes Fox look like the house organ of the Democratic National Committee. When Fox called the Arizona election for Biden on election night, the full fury of Trump World was unleashed on Fox, and Fox management panicked that its base would turn to Newsmax. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” an alarmed Carlson texted his producer. “We’re playing with fire for real… an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
When a Fox reporter tweeted “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” Carlson was furious. “Please get her fired.
Seriously.” he texted colleague Sean Hannity. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” A Fox executive agreed. “She has serious nerve doing this,” he responded about the reporter-gone-rogue, “and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.”
The next day, the reporter deleted her tweet.
“We can’t make people think we’ve turned against Trump,” one Fox executive admonished. Carlson’s producer made the same point, only slightly differently. “Many viewers were upset tonight that we didn’t cover election fraud,” he warned. “It’s all our viewers care about right now.” Turns out that the only fraud was that which Fox was promoting — for profit.