Dominion Lawsuit Reveals Internal Fox News Comms, Hosts Knew 2020 Election Claims Were False
04:31 GMT 17.02.2023 (Updated: 04:32 GMT 17.02.2023)
© AP Photo / Rick Scuteri
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Following the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump and his allies spread unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen. Fox News personalities and anchors helped spread those claims by repeating them on-air. A lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems alleges Fox always knew the conspiracies were false.
Fox News anchors and producers privately acknowledged that former US President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and the claims by him and his allies that the election was wrought with fraud were false. Despite this, the network still peddled those claims according to emails, text, and private messages included in a 200-page document filed as part of a $1.6 billion defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the news network.
“Fox knew,” the filing says. “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS.’ Yet, despite knowing the truth – or at a minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth – Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognized the lies as ‘crazy,’ ‘absurd’ and ‘shockingly reckless.’”
According to the documents, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch sent an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott about having three prominent Fox personalities - Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham - go on television, either independently or as a group, and say “something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won,” adding that it “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election was stolen.”
According to the lawsuit, Scott forwarded the email to Executive Vice President for Primetime Programming Meade Cooper, and said that the personalities were “there” but that they had to be careful that they don’t continue “pissing off the viewers,” something she felt they could handle.
One event that seemingly caused Fox News viewers to sour on the program was when the network declared Arizona for Biden before other news stations. According to the lawsuit, the call, though correct, infuriated viewers and the White House.
“We are taking major heat over the AZ call,” then Fox News Chief White House correspondent John Roberts said in an email to Senior Vice President and Managing Editor of the Washington Bureau and President Jay Wallace. “Our viewers are also chanting ‘Fox News sucks,’ something I have never heard before.”
On November 18, Carlson wrote to Ingraham: “Sidney Powell [A lawyer working with the Trump team that promised to 'release the Kraken' that would prove the election was stolen] is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”
Ingraham responded to Carlson: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
But it appears that Fox News was hesitant to discredit the conspiracies once they started losing viewers to rival far-right news outlets Newsmax and OAN. Large personalities at Fox even started admonishing their colleagues for saying what they appeared to know was true.
Following a tweet by Trump referring to Fox shows that mentioned Dominion, Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked the rumors and determined there was no evidence that Dominion committed voter fraud, a conclusion that then prompted Carlson to demand that the reporter be fired.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson wrote. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” The tweet was deleted the next morning.
In a motion for a summary judgment, Fox News said that its reporting was protected under the First Amendment. “[The] statements Dominion challenges are not actionable defamation because Fox News' coverage and commentary are not only not defamatory, but also protected by the First Amendment and New York doctrines emanating from it,” Fox said, referring to the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case.
Fox also casts doubt on the amount of damages Dominion is asking for. It notes that its majority shareholder, Staple Street Capital Partners, paid roughly $38 million for its 76% stake in the company in 2018, and that it has never evaluated its value as “anywhere near $1.6 billion.”
In a statement issued in response to the lawsuit, Fox News stood by its reporting and called the claims baseless. “FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”
Defamation suits are extremely hard to prove because the law gives a lot of leeway for media outlets to protect the First Amendment. Dominion not only has to prove what Fox said about them was false, but also that they knew it was false or were recklessly negligent when checking the accuracy of their reporting.
But RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah told The New York Times that the case has more merit than most defamation suits. “This filing argues a fire hose of direct evidence of knowing falsity,” he says. “It gives a powerful preview of one of the best-supported claims of actual malice we have seen in any major-media case.”
Multiple Fox executives and media personalities were deposed as part of the Dominion suit. While most major defamation suits are settled if they are not thrown out of court, both sides seem confident that they will prevail and are, publicly at least, appear ready to bring the case to trial.
A judge has scheduled jury selection for the case in mid-April.
