Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s reputation took another hammer blow on Monday when post-litigation testimony in a court filing revealed Murdoch admitting that Fox News hosts knowingly and repeatedly endorsed “stolen election” lies.
The damning admission came in a 200-page document filed with the Superior Court of the State of Delaware by lawyers acting for Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (DVSC).
Fox had argued that its programme hosts were reporting “neutrally” without “endorsing” any of the lies about Dominion but, asked if he was “now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election?”, even Murdoch was forced to concede the point. He at first claimed it was not Fox itself but “maybe” one or two of its employees as commentators had done so, but when pressed he admitted that, “some of our commentators were endorsing [the stolen election lie]” – while still denying Fox News Network had any responsibility.
He was specifically referring to hosts Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity.
The lies were “newsworthy“
Fox’s defence in part was that “the press has a right to cover and comment on newsworthy allegations made by newsworthy figures”. In other words they were simply quoting the lies of President Trump. But Dominion’s legal team showed by many examples that it was Trump following Fox’s lead, making the same false allegations against DVSC only after Fox had made them first.
Fox were not just reporting the news but creating it as well.
And previous court filings showed that Murdoch himself, Fox executives, producers and hosts were exchanging message throughout the entire period showing without a doubt that they didn’t believe what they were broadcasting to their own audiences about possible election fraud.
Fox hosts went beyond reportage
Fox hosts often went well beyond reportage. Here’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, 15 November 2020, 11 days after the election, talking about Dominion:
“A very, very dangerous foreign company that did the votes in 27 states, a company that’s not American, a company that’s foreign, a company that has close, close ties with Venezuela and therefore China, and uses a Venezuelan company software that’s been used to steal elections in other countries.
“And the software that they use is done by a company called Smartmatic… Dominion sends everything to Smartmatic.
“And President Trump won… by millions of votes, that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose… It was exported internationally for profit by the people that are behind Smartmatic and Dominion… They have done it before…
“We’re collecting evidence now from various whistleblowers that are aware of substantial sums of money being given to family members of state officials who bought this software.”
There was no evidence whatsoever that any of these assertions were true beyond DVSC operating in 27 US states, and some were provably false. Bartiromo made no attempt to suggest any of the allegations were unproven and even told viewers, they would be seeing “new evidence this morning of backdoors on voting machines”.
She closed her segment but by thanking Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, “for breaking all of this news”.
In an interview with Trump a fortnight later on 29 November 2020, Bartiromo had apparently pre-scripted a comment to tell the then president that “the facts are on your side”.
The truth didn’t matter, the greenback did
As late as 26 January 2021, Fox News was still giving airtime to Trump supporting business leader Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of My Pillow, Inc, a pillow, bedding, and slipper manufacturing company based in Minnesota.
Lindell had made and continues to make what are said to be “baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged in favour of President Joe Biden” and appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to “spread lies” about Dominion. When asked why he continued to give a platform to Lindell, Rupert said Fox earned a lot of money from My Pillow advertising. It was reported Lindell’s company spent $50mn in 2020 alone although My Pillow has now cut its Fox ads after a reported disagreement over a commercial promoting an event linked to his repeated claims of voter fraud.
Murdoch confirmed he could have stopped running Lindells’ advertisements at anytime, but said, “I’m not about to” and he agreed that “It is not red or blue, it is green [the Greenback dollar]”.
Fox News “not a news network”
Oliver Darcy, senior media reporter at CNN said that Fox News is “not at its core a news network. News [organisations] tell the truth to viewers. These documents show that Fox knew the truth, but peddled election lies to its audience”.
One news network was troubled enough to contact Fox News Network. On 1 December 2020, a Washington Post reporter emailed asking if Fox News Media management had any concerns about the veracity of some of the claims being made on their shows and if they had “encouraged” show hosts to fact-check claims about voter fraud.
The email found its way to senior executive vice president of corporate communications Irena Briganti, who forwarded it to CEO Scott with the message: “there’s nothing to combat this, so we are not responding”.
From Left to Right: Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity
Murdoch deeply involved
The filing seeks to show how personally involved both Rupert and his son Lachlan were in the editorial decisions made at Fox News.
From November 2020 through January 2021, the Murdochs were in close contact with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott about coverage of the election and its aftermath. Lachlan testified that he works through Scott, and he contributed to the “specific direction on both the tone and narrative of Fox’s news coverage”.
Rupert spoke with Scott multiple times a week, via phone calls and emails with “suggestions” on hosts, narratives, topics, and guests – including on issues related to the 2020 election, how to cover the conspiracy claims, how to treat Trump, the hosts of the accused broadcasts and guests like Rudy Giuliani.
As Murdoch senior testified, “I’m a journalist at heart. I like to be involved in these things.”
What does this tell us about the Sunday Times and The Sun?
