Fox News made a mockery of press freedom
When journalists devalue the truth, they cheat their profession, audience and, ultimately, themselves. Facts are the building blocks of journalism, the foundation of every news organization. Reporters and editors learned that the first day of Journalism 101.
Some Fox News personalities — the term “journalists” seems inappropriate — did not value the lesson. Court filings from a defamation lawsuit the election-tech company Dominion has filed against Fox News Network show the hosts echoed claims of fraud following the 2020 presidential election even though they knew those claims were false. The gambit displayed a stunning lack of fidelity to the truth, as audacious as it was egregious.
Following the lead of then-president Donald Trump, who hurled the accusations after his defeat to Joe Biden, the hosts attacked Dominion for supposedly “flipping” votes from the Republican to the Democrat. The result, they said, was a “rigged” victory for Biden. Of course, none of this was true. Dominion is now seeking $1.6 billion in its defamation lawsuit against the network.
Trump initiated the lie about election fraud, but the network buttressed it, disseminating it to a broad audience. Perpetrators need co-conspirators, and Fox filled the role. The false claims of voter fraud sparked the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion stated in its 192-page summary. “That evidence alone more than suffices for summary judgment on the falsity of the claims that Dominion rigged the election and its software manipulated vote counts.”
Court records show the disparity between what the hosts knew and what they said. In text after text, email after email, they disparaged the very sources they were lauding on air. Millions of viewers were duped, something the hosts acknowledged in private conversations.
On his Nov. 30, 2020, program, for example, Fox News host Sean Hannity interviewed Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell. He told her, “Why we would use a system that everybody agreed sucked or had problems is beyond me.”
Yet in a text, he called her “a (expletive) lunatic.”
Host Tucker Carlson, perhaps the most controversial star in the Fox pantheon, was equally dismissive, referring to Powell as a “complete nut” and an “unguided missile.” He also
called Trump a “demonic force.” The comments all contradicted statements he made on his nightly program.
For Fox, the trouble started on Election Night, when it was the first network in the nation to (correctly) call Arizona for Biden. The hosts feared a backlash. They were right; Trump led the charge, and Fox News responded.
“(The Arizona call) destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable,” Hannity said.
Let’s just pause to remember that Fox correctly called Arizona and was the first to do so. The network got it right — and yet the fear was getting it right would destroy the brand.
In this alarming juxtaposition between fact and fiction, the hosts proved more adept at theatrics than journalism, the artifice so staggering that they freely acknowledged it — behind closed doors. They were reading from a script. The hosts, like politicians, were appealing to their base — an audience of far-right viewers.
The irony is that the hosts recognized the tightrope they were walking. Lies are as heinous as the men and women who spew them, and when discovered, they can backfire. This is what the Fox personalities feared.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us,” Carlson texted one of his producers.
Fox claims the lawsuit represents an “an assault” on the First Amendment, but it was the network that attacked press freedoms, which the Founding Fathers designed to illuminate, not obfuscate.
“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,” the network said in a statement.
Fox also claimed that Dominion “cherry-picked” comments from texts and emails between Fox staffers.
Perhaps. But, as the court filings show, there were multiple cherry blossoms from which to pluck.
Lawsuit shows network’s hosts, championing the Big Lie, put the far right above the truth