It’s too soon to say whether Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News will succeed in the courts, but it’s already succeeding in doing extraordinary political harm to the network. The first set of revelations, from nearly two weeks ago, painted a picture of a media outlet that deliberately promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false.
According to the court filing, this happened in the aftermath of the 2020 elections, not because Fox News was sloppy or careless, but because it felt a financial need to pander to its core audience: Telling viewers the truth risked pushing them away, so the network promoted ridiculous claims and promoted ridiculous voices in order to profit.
Late yesterday, a second shoe dropped. NBC News reported:
News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch declined to rein in Fox News hosts who spread false claims of widespread voter fraud in the days after the 2020 election despite privately expressing that he had seen little evidence for then-President Donald Trump’s claims and that he found half of them “bulls— and damaging,” according to court documents unsealed Monday.
As part of his sworn testimony, Murdoch conceded that some Fox News hosts — including prominent voices such as Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Maria Bartiromo — “endorsed” baseless claims that Fox knew to be wrong, and the News Corp. executive chose not to stop them. Asked during his deposition about allowing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make outlandish claims on the air, Murdoch added, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”
Though Fox News continues to characterize the defamation case as “baseless,” it’s comments like this one from Murdoch that reinforce the impression that the network prioritized money over truth.
NBC News’ report also added this previously unknown claim:
The filing also offered new insight into the relationship between Murdoch and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, asserting that Murdoch provided…
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