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Hundreds of pages of testimony, private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives were made public Thursday, adding to the trove of documents that show a network in crisis after it alienated core viewers by reporting accurately on the results of the 2020 presidential election.
A judge unsealed the documents, along with portions of some of employee depositions, as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit Fox News is facing from Dominion Voting Systems.
The messages are blunt and, at times, profane, as hosts and top executives panicked about how to boost their ratings as then-President Donald Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat. The depositions, meanwhile, offer the broadest picture yet of how executives including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch allowed baseless conspiracy theories to flourish on air.
In one email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Murdoch lamented the anger at the network was getting from Republican senators, including Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, for stories suggesting the election had been stolen.
“Still getting mud thrown at us!” Murdoch complained. “Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” he continued, referring to hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Smaller snippets of the exchanges were referenced in two Dominion briefs made public in a Delaware court last month, when Dominion sought a summary judgement ruling from the judge and opposed Fox News’ own motion asking the judge to dismiss the case.
Dominion’s briefs previously revealed how top figures at Fox News privately blasted election fraud claims as “crazy” and “insane,” even as the network aired them on television, and that top boss Murdoch considered some of Trump’s voter fraud claims to be “bulls— and damaging,” yet acknowledged in a deposition he did nothing to rein in hosts who were promoting the bogus claims in the days after the 2020 election.
Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021, alleging the network caused the voting machine company “severe damage” by giving oxygen to conspiracy theories it knew were false, including bogus claims that Dominion equipment was used to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden, that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that it bribed U.S. government officials.
Fox News has previously said it was “proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism,” and argued that the Dominion lawsuit is designed only to garner headlines. Dominion argues that the First Amendment doesn’t allow media outlets to broadcast conspiracy theories that they know are false.
“As the dominant media company among those viewers dissatisfied with the election results, Fox gave these fictions a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved. With Fox’s global platform, an audience of hundreds of millions, and the inevitable and extensive republication and dissemination of the falsehoods through social media, these lies deeply damaged Dominion’s once-thriving business,” the company’s 441-page lawsuit says. “Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire.”
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
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