A billboard truck was seen outside Fox News headquarters. Members of the activist groups Truth Tuesdays and Rise and Resist gathered outside the NewsCorp building in Manhattan for the weekly FOX LIES DEMOCRACY DIES event, this time with a billboard truck.
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Additional disclosures Fox Corp. Testimony from Chairman Rupert Murdoch, as well as evidence gathered from Fox executives and TV anchors in the months leading up to the 2020 election, was revealed Tuesday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
Hundreds of pages of evidence gathered from both sides were released Tuesday, including full excerpts of testimony from depositions, text messages and emails, which previewed the back-and-forth on the right-wing television network in the months since 2020. election.
“Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] gone too far. It’s good that Sean told you he’s disappointed with Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?” Murdoch told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on January 21, 2021, referring to Fox News anchors Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. This exchange is from Capitol Rising on January 6, 2021. 15 days later.
A Delaware judge ordered the documents unsealed. While some of the statements and evidence have been released in recent weeks, Tuesday’s filings against Fox Corp. and are the most extensive revelations of private communications at Fox News.
In its suit, Dominion said Fox and its ring-wing cable channels and talent falsely claimed its voting machines rigged the results of the 2020 election.
As Fox News reported Tuesday, the documents he filed “have been caught red-handed by Dominion, using more distortions and false information in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on freedom of speech and the press. We know they will say and do anything they want to do in this case.” trying to win, but to misrepresent and even falsify quotations to the highest level of our company is really not the pale.”
The company points to Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch’s “stay awake at night” testimony regarding ratings and competition after the 2020 election. After Dominion Fox’s call to Joe Biden in Arizona on election night, text messages between talent about audience fears were revealed. Lachlan Murdoch said the overall ratings are what keep him up at night.
“You know, you get a few gray hairs while you’re awake — sports ratings or news ratings or entertainment ratings are probably the worst,” Lachlan Murdoch said, according to court documents.
A Dominion spokesman said Thursday: “The emails, texts and affidavits speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all points to the same thing — that Fox knowingly spread falsehoods that caused enormous damage to the American company.”
Trump has repeatedly spread false claims that the 2020 election between himself and incumbent Joe Biden was rigged. He tried to pressure a top Georgia official to “find” votes, which became the subject of a criminal case in the state where Trump lost to Joe Biden.
In an exchange between host Maria Bartiromo and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Bartiromo said he was “so depressed.”
“I want to see a massive fraud exposed and see if it can change that. I told my team I wasn’t allowed to tell. [president] at [all]. Not in scripts or on-air banners. Unless it goes through the courts,” Bartiromo said in a text message exchange. Bannon: “71 million voters will never accept Biden. The process is to eliminate the president before it begins; IF it even starts.”
Fox News has consistently denied that it knowingly misrepresented the election. He predicts that Dominion will “cherry pick” from the depositions and documents gathered by the discovery.
Fox Corp. also indicated in court filings that the media company “had no role in the creation or publication of the controversial statements that appeared on Fox Business Network or Fox News” last year.
Also Tuesday, attorneys for Dominion and Fox met before a Delaware judge to discuss the next steps leading up to the trial, which is scheduled to begin in mid-April. Before that, Dominion and Fox will meet again on March 21 in Delaware court on their motions for summary judgment.
“They approved”
The exhibits, filed in a Delaware court on Tuesday, come after weeks of court filings that have revealed portions of the amassed testimony and statements from Murdoch, other Fox Corp. executives and top talent.
In the filings, some of which were released last week, Murdoch acknowledged that some of Fox’s top anchors made false statements in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and that some even endorsed the claims.
“Some of our commentators have approved of this,” Murdoch said during the announcement. “They approved.”
Court documents also show that Murdoch and his son, Fox Corp. shows CEO Lachlan Murdoch’s time with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott over the network’s coverage. Statements and evidence such as text messages show that figures such as Tucker Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham do not believe the statements made on air.
The case is being closely watched by First Amendment watchdogs. Defamation lawsuits typically focus on a single lie, but in this case, Dominion Fox cites a long list of examples of cable channels and their hosts making false statements even after they have been proven to be untrue. Media companies are often broadly protected by the First Amendment.
The court also looked into what was going on behind the scenes at Fox News, as well as other stories related to allegations of fraud in the 2020 election broadcast on the Fox networks.
For example, court filings show that Fox Corp. executives vetoed Trump’s attempt to appear on the network on the evening of Jan. 6, 2021, after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from confirming Biden’s speech. victory.
Later that evening, Fox anchor Tucker Carlson called Trump a “demonic force.”
Court documents also show that Murdoch told Carlson weeks after Jan. 6 that it was “wrong” for Carlson to receive MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who promotes conspiracy theories related to the election.
Carlson, along with top anchors like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, also expressed disbelief at what Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump attorney who aggressively pushed the election-rigging claims at the time, said.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, criticized Fox News host Tucker Carlson for airing footage of what appeared to be a peaceful visit to the US Capitol on Monday, January 6. Schumer also criticized House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for giving Fox News exclusive access to 44,000 hours of Capitol security footage.
In addition, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last week sent a letter to Murdoch and Fox News executives urging them to “stop spreading false election stories and admit they were wrong to do so on air.” negligent conduct”. The letter was released days after further revelations about the case.
