In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, as Donald Trump and too many of his allies began lying to the public about the results, Republicans directed a fair amount of attention at Dominion Voting Systems. Not surprisingly, the GOP’s conspiracy theories about the company and its voting equipment did not fare well under scrutiny.
But for Dominion, this was more than just an annoyance. In fact, the company decided to file defamation lawsuits, including one against Fox News, the results of which are starting to create a nightmare for the network. NBC News reported overnight on a newly unsealed court filing that appears to show that Fox News deliberately promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false.
The document, which pulls from a host of internal communications from Fox News employees involved in election coverage, includes comments and quotes revealing that producers, executives and stars of the network knew that the election wasn’t stolen and that many fraud claims were bogus. The communications suggest that Fox News zeroed in on fraud claims as a way to boost ratings and appease their conservative viewership, who some at the company believed abandoned them after President Joe Biden won in Arizona.
I want to briefly pause at this point to note that when it comes to Fox News and its work, I generally find it difficult to be surprised. I’ve kept an eye on the network and its role in Republican politics for many years, and as a result, I’ve arrived at certain assumptions about what to expect from the outlet. There’s no great mystery as to what Fox News is, what it does, and the role in plays in the larger political ecosystem, so I’m not easily astonished by controversies surrounding the network.
Having said that, I might be jaded, but I nevertheless find these new disclosures stunning.
In fact, though it’s difficult to even know where to start, I’ve found myself dwelling on what happened to a Fox reporter named Jacqui…
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