SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
dominion lawsuit
NYC Pension Funds and State of Oregon Sue Fox Over Election Lies
"Defendants chose to invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News," the lawsuit reads in part.
Sep 13, 2023
The state of Oregon and New York City's pension funds filed a lawsuit against Fox Corporation Tuesday, arguing that the company allowed its Fox News channel to air falsehoods surrounding the 2020 election that put shareholders' investments at risk.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery, is the most important shareholder action against the company since it settled a defamation suit for a record $787.5 million with Dominion Voting Systems in April. It also comes as experts had long warned the corporation it was leaving itself vulnerable to exactly these kinds of lawsuits by spreading lies that could lead to defamation claims, CNN reported.
"The board of Fox Corporation took a massive risk in pursuing profits by perpetuating and peddling known falsehoods," Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement. "The directors' choices exposed themselves and the company to liability and exposed their shareholders to significant risks. That is the crux of our lawsuit, and we look forward to making our case in court."
"Fox's board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation."
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, both guests and hosts on Fox News repeated the false claim that former President Donald Trump had truly won the election and circulated conspiracy theories justifying this view, such as the lie that Dominion voting machines had swapped Trump votes to votes for President Joe Biden. The lawsuit argues that by catering to the desires of pro-Trump viewers, it failed in its duty to shareholders.
"Defendants chose to invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News," the lawsuit reads in part, according to The Associated Press.
Both New York City's pension funds and the state of Oregon have significant investments in Fox Corporation. The city pension funds had $28.1 million worth of shares at the end of July, while the state of Oregon had shares worth $5.2 million as of August 31, its Department of Justice said.
Neither plaintiff has specified an amount of damages, but New York City Comptroller and pension fund manager Brad Lander told The New York Times the city needed to "make the shareholders whole."
"Fox's board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation," Lander said in a statement reported by CNN. "A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox's reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability."
Fox leadership did not comment to any major outlets on the lawsuit.
In addition to the Dominion suit, Fox has faced several other defamation claims, including an upcoming $2.7 billion lawsuit from election technology company Smartmatic and another from Ray Epps, a man from Arizona at the center of a conspiracy theory alleging he ran an FBI plan to instigate the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Some groups argue that Fox News should face consequences beyond lawsuits. On July 3, the Media and Democracy project filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to not renew the broadcast license for FOX 29 Philadelphia (WTXF-TV).
"As an FCC broadcast licensee FOX is bound to broadcast in the public interest, convenience, and necessity," the petitioners wrote. "Instead, it has repeatedly aired false information about election fraud, sowing discord in the country and contributing to harmful and dangerous acts on January 6, 2021."
Media experts and activists Steve Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk argued in a column that appeared at Common Dreams last week that the petition had merit.
"Although stripping an established TV station of its broadcast license may seem like an extreme measure," they said, "the Fox Corporation's record of malfeasance and its repeated betrayal of the public trust justifies the action in this case."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Poetic Justice: On the Departure of Fox Hatemonger Tucker Carlson
The lifting of the veil on Carlson's true views of Trump and the MAGA movement is a major outcome of the Dominion settlement.
Apr 28, 2023
Things seemed hopeless for those wondering if Tucker Carlson of Fox News—who used his show to promote white supremacist hoaxes (Independent, 7/20/22) and degrading statements about immigrants (The Hill, 9/23/21)—would ever be held accountable for spewing hate on air. An advertiser exodus (New York Times, 6/18/20) and calls for his deplatforming from mainstream organizations (Anti-Defamation League, 5/25/22) seemed only to solidify the frozen-dinner heir's position as cable news' top-rated host. Last year, Carlson's show "averaged 3.32 million viewers, nabbing the biggest audience in cable news among viewers ages 25 to 54," according to the New York Post (4/24/23).
"He's the tent pole of the entire prime time line-up," said Reece Peck, author of Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class. "He helps the other shows, people stay to watch after Tucker and before Tucker."
And in a flash, he was gone (NBC, 4/24/23). After Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million over the network's repeated lies about the company fixing the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, I noted (FAIR.org, 4/20/23) that the last-minute agreement was still a form of accountability for the network, even if the settlement sum was half of what Dominion sought. (Carlson's departure took $700 million from Fox's stock value in the 30 minutes after it was announced. The stock recovered somewhat, but was still down half a billion dollars at the closing bell.)
Done in by Dominion?
Indeed, the damaging discovery process preceding the trial date might have done Carlson in. The Washington Post (4/24/23) reported that "it was Carlson's comments about Fox management, as revealed in the Dominion case, that played a role in his departure from Fox, a person familiar with the company's thinking told the Post."
Dominion said Carlson's departure was not a condition of the settlement, according to the LA Times (4/24/23), but the paper did say that Carlson's comments "that turned up in the discovery process for the case may have also played a role in" his departure.
The LA Times also said that sources within Fox said that Carlson's departure is related to a separate, hostile work environment lawsuit brought by his former head of booking, Abby Grossberg, who alleges "that male producers regularly used vulgarities to describe women and frequently made antisemitic jokes" (New York Times, 4/24/23).
The texts exposed Carlson for who he is, a pompous, rich media elitist who gives not one single damn about MAGA voters and hates their king.
The discovery process of the Dominion case revealed numerous texts from Carlson—whose entire persona at Fox News rests on the wave of the Make America Great Again movement—showing his intense dislike of Donald Trump (New York Times, 3/8/23). "What [Trump is] good at is destroying things" was among one of the key texts, but everyone's favorite, of course, is Carlson saying of Trump, "I hate him passionately."
No, Carlson's on-air racism (Independent, 4/13/21; ADL, 4/22/21), transphobia (New York Post, 12/28/22), xenophobia (Washington Post, 12/15/18), admiration for authoritarians (FAIR.org, 8/3/21, 10/20/21), and flirtations with antisemitism (Daily Beast, 10/11/22, 12/23/22) were never the problem for Fox News. If The Washington Post's report that the Dominion texts were definitive is true, it's poetic justice: The texts exposed Carlson for who he is, a pompous, rich media elitist who gives not one single damn about MAGA voters and hates their king, only cynically using Trump's political popularity for his own media grift. That lifting of the veil, the end of the conceit for a corporation whose entire modus operandi is disguising its ruling-class politics to sell faux populism to its viewers, is a major outcome of the Dominion settlement.
Off to the gold mine
But what is to become of Carlson? Surely he won't drift quietly off into obscurity. The right-wing media machine, with its growing community of news sites, podcasts, and Substack newsletters, is a gold mine for anyone who can draft a sentence linking any conservative grievance to the word "wokeness." Carlson sold his stake in the Daily Caller (New York Times, 6/10/20), the news site he helped found, but the possibilities for rehabilitation are seemingly endless.
Bill O'Reilly once reigned as the star of Fox News until his ouster due to sexual harassment accusations (New York Times, 4/19/17), and today he is but a mere afterthought. But he was an aging relic before an explosion in Trump-fueled media. Today, a fresh-faced Carlson, still an emblem of MAGA rage, has the world as his oyster where he could perform untethered by corporate restraints, although without as much reach as cable news.
"His star will never shine as bright as it did at Fox."
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility that he could reinvent himself, but I think Fox is center stage, everything flows from its framing, from its agenda-setting, and it has the most influence over Republican politicians," Peck said. "Even with Newsmax and [One America News Network], it's really hard to match the respectability you get from being on a cable dial."
"His star will never shine as bright as it did at Fox," he said.
Fox is going to survive, valuing the audience that made the network what it is today, even if a little less hate is going to be pumped onto the mainstream American airwaves at primetime. "Fox has survived the loss of its biggest stars before," Peck said.
But Carlson's departure is a reminder that while the fight against Fox's worst hatemonger often seemed fruitless, the Goliaths are, in fact, vulnerable.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Democracy Lost: Dominion v. Fox
While Dominion walked away with $787.5 million, Fox preserved a lucrative business model based on telling people the lies they want to hear.
Apr 26, 2023
Both parties to the litigation won.
Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private-equity firm, is in the business of maximizing the return on its clients' investments. In 2018, it bought a 76% interest in Dominion Voting Systems for $38.3 million. Five years later, Fox's $787.5 million payout represented a staggering gain.
Fox News makes money by telling its audience what it wants to hear, even if Fox knows it's a lie. The settlement preserves its lucrative business model.
Democracy lost.
Panic at the Top
In the run-up to the election, Fox enjoyed historic ratings and revenues. But a momentous election night decision put everything at risk. A small sample of Fox's internal communications tells the story–and the public probably hasn't seen the most damning ones.
November 3, 2020, 11:20 pm: Fox became the first network to announce that Joe Biden had won Arizona–a disastrous development for Donald Trump's re-election prospects. The Trump campaign was livid. On behalf of Bill Sammon's Decision Desk team, Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt went on live television, defending the call to skeptical on-air hosts Tucker Carlson and Bret Baier.
Fox soon began hemorrhaging viewers in the far-right audience it had cultivated for decades.
November 11: Raj Shah, Fox Corp.'s senior vice president and Trump's former White House deputy press secretary, warned company leaders that "bold, clear, and decisive action is needed for us to begin to regain the trust that we're losing with our core audience." Two days later, he wrote to Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan, that "Fox News is facing a brand crisis" and "open revolt… precipitous decline in Fox's favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon."
In another email, Shah told colleagues that the network's brand was "under heavy fire from our customer base." In yet another, he wrote, "We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network …."
Lying as a Corporate Strategy
November 12: Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet that referred to Fox's broadcasts. She said that there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion voting machines. In a text chain with Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson wrote, "Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke."
November 13: The "Brain Room"–Fox's fact-checking and research division–concluded that claims about Dominion voting machines were "100% false. Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities, as well [as] fact-checkers, have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process."
Fox on-air hosts ignored it.
November 16: In a Zoom meeting, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said, "Listen, it's one of the sad realities: If we hadn't called Arizona those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger. The mystery would have been still hanging out there."
Fox could not afford a similar misstep in the upcoming Georgia runoff for control of the U.S. Senate. Scott decided to push out Sammon and Stirewalt.
Elevating Lies and Eliminating Truth-Tellers
November 18: In an email exchange with Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson complained about Trump attorney Sidney Powell, whose on-air election lies had pervaded Fox programs since November 8:
"Sidney Powell is lying by the way," Carlson wrote. "I caught her. It's insane."
"Sidney is a complete nut," Ingraham answered. "No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy."
"Our viewers are good people and they believe it," Carlson said, making clear that he did not.
But Fox hosts did continue working with Powell and Rudy, promoting repeatedly what the judge in the Dominion case later ruled were "CRYSTAL clear" lies.
November 19: Giuliani held his infamous "dripping hair dye" press conference. Internally, Rupert Murdoch called it "Really crazy stuff. And damaging." And he told Suzanne Scott, "Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us too." Likewise, Shah texted that Giuliani sounded "SO F*CKING CRAZY."
But when Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, fact-checked Giuliani on-air immediately following the conference, her boss complained:
"He expressed his great unhappiness with my live shot. He emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it. And he told me that I needed to do a better job of respect—this is a quote—'respecting our audience.'" Fisher thought she had respected the audience by telling it truth.
Likewise, Shah recoiled at Fisher's fact-checking: "This is the kinda shit that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism."
"What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff."
November 20: Rupert Murdoch emailed Suzanne Scott, "Maybe best to let Bill [Sammon] go right away and make acting appointment. Also the other guy… be a big message with Trump people."
"We were going to do Stirewalt next," Scott responded.
Early December: "This has to stop now," Scott wrote in an email to a network vice-president, referring to anchor Eric Shawn's fact-checking of Trump's bogus voter-fraud claim. "This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business."
December 2: Bill Sammon wrote to Chris Stirewalt: "More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we're still focused solely on supposed election fraud—a month after the election. It's remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things. In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I've seen to an existential crisis—at least journalistically."
Stirewalt responded: "What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff."
January 2021: Sammon announced his retirement. Fox laid off Stirewalt in what it called a "post-election restructuring."
Protecting Rupert Murdoch
Less than two weeks before trial, the judge in the case ruled that Dominion could force Rupert Murdoch to testify at trial. Dominion planned to call him as its second witness. His internal communications about Giuliani, as well as Sammon and Stirewalt, were devastating.
But there were more:
January 12, 2021: In an email exchange with Fox board member and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Murdoch said that the January 6 insurrection was a "[w]ake up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers!"
"Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime."
January 20: Murdoch mused about the impact of Trump's lying: "The more I think about McConnell's remarks or complaint, the more I agree. Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up January 6th."
January 21: Murdoch sent a message to Suzanne Scott: "Is it 'unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6 an important chance to have the result overturned'? Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far… All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump … but what did he tell his viewers?"
Fox executives responded with 50 examples of the "high profile Fox voices" that had fed Trump's Big Lie.
Fox's Predicament Worsened
A week after Murdoch was ordered to testify at trial, Fox had a new problem. Its attorneys had repeatedly misrepresented his status. They had told the court that he was not an officer of Fox News when, in fact, he was its executive chairman. The judge said that he would sanction Fox News and launch an investigation into what other material it had failed to disclose.
Now Fox's lawyers had skin in the game too.
What had Fox withheld? We'll never know. But during Dominion's opening statement to the jury, it planned to present additional internal Fox communications publicly for the first time.
Dominion Won Too
As discovery in Dominion's defamation case against Fox proceeded, its claims became surprisingly strong, but significant obstacles to any recovery remained. Juries can produce unexpected results; damages are always a question mark; appeals can drag on for years. Declining a certain $787.5 million would have been like trading a winning Powerball ticket worth the sixth largest jackpot in history for a future one that might be worthless.
Democracy Lost
Dominion's attorney suggested that the settlement benefited the public: "Trust matters. Lies have consequences… Today's settlement of $787.5 million represents vindication and accountability."
Then Fox issued a public statement that proved him wrong. It sounded like doublespeak from George Orwell's 1984: "This settlement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards."
The only lesson Fox learned is that when it knowingly pushes lies, their employees shouldn't create an electronic trail proving it. The settlement is just another cost of doing business–less than 20% of Fox Corp.'s cash on hand and less than half of its net income for 2022. And it's tax-deductible! Fox plans a massive increase in cable and satellite provider fees that will more than offset the payment.
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government."
Fox's business model is antithetical to Jefferson's vision. It makes billions by challenging the nation with an existential question:
Can democracy die from too many lies?
Keep ReadingShow Less
Has Fox News 'Found Religion' by Firing Tucker Carlson?
If Fox News has seen any kind of light in jettisoning its most hateful voice, it’s the light of the almighty dollar.
Apr 25, 2023
Tucker Carlson got fired!
Many liberals are celebrating, calling it a reckoning—a win for racial justice and decency. With this bombshell revelation, some might even believe that Fox News has finally gotten religion and seen the error of its ways. It's better late than never, they say. Salvation is always possible.
But if Fox did find religion, why did it take so long? Religion is not something that is found overnight. It is a conversion that moves us when it takes hold at the core of our being. It's hard to believe that Fox has suddenly seen the light and come to the conclusion that the blatant racism, hatred, and xenophobia that the network has trafficked in for so long is not something they want to continue. Does Fox News want us to believe that it has seen the light and knelt at the altar of repentance because it finally jettisoned the leading and most incendiary voice of racial hatred?
Why now?
True religion requires clear directional change. Repentance requires amends.
Why has the network at this moment felt a need to jettison Tucker Carlson from his throne? Fox had no problem previously with the racism, xenophobia, replacement theories, conspiracy theories, and the blatantly white supremacist tropes spewing from his mouth each evening. The network not only did not have a problem with Carlson's lies, half-truths, and propagandist rhetoric, it benefited enormously and from what was the cornerstone of ratings and advertising dollars. If Fox suddenly found religion, it was a different religion than the voice Paul heard on the road to Damascus that caused a radical change of heart. It was a different religion than the bright light of revelation from heaven that makes one turn away from one's complacency and complicity—from slavery, Jim Crow, unabashed and unchecked capitalism, and patriarchy.
At best, the kind of religion Fox found was the $787.5 million judgment agreement kind of spirit. It was not the fear of fire and brimstone and souls burning in hell. It was not the inability to live in one's own skin and sleep at night while doing nothing to stop the extrajudicial execution of Black and Brown in their own homes and neighborhoods or to stop refugee children from being separated from their parents and held in concentration camps at the U.S.-Mexico border. At best, the payout of nearly $1 billion to Dominion Voting Systems, and the other legal threats looming, is Fox's interpretation of dangling over the fires of hell.
If Fox has seen the light, even just the light of financial salvation, then it will purge itself not just of Carlson, but of all of the minions of hell that continue to pollute its airwaves with the filth of hatred, racism, and white supremacy. Why fire Carlson but continue to offer airtime to white supremacist ideologues like Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo, who have each engaged in the same distortions that Carlson is guilty of? Why exchange one divisive and hateful personality for another? True religion requires clear directional change. Repentance requires amends.
Can you imagine if it had been a Black or Brown person on the air spewing anti-white rhetoric, embracing hate-filled divisive ideologies, and fanning historical flames of the country's tendencies towards violence? How long will they be allowed on the air?
The very same day that Fox ousted Carson, CNN fired Don Lemon. Was the exact same day timing of the firings—weeks after Lemon said that Nikki Haley was "not in her prime" and CNN sent him to sensitivity training—a coincidence? Perhaps it was a joint sacrifice to the Gods of ratings, the almighty God of the dollar by networks who claim to be arch-enemies but are part of the same system.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Fox's Settlement With Dominion Shows That 'Lies Have Consequences'
The largest known media company defamation settlement in U.S. history proves that press freedom isn't incompaitable with accountability.
Apr 21, 2023
When was the last time you forked over nearly $800 million?
Really think. There must have been some moment, some dispute where you decided to reach deep within your checking account to find the better part of a billion dollars—a dispute where you weren't wrong, but you wanted to end things the easy way.
Well, Fox News knows the feeling. While the United States braced to watch a sure-to-be-fascinating defamation trial between Rupert Murdoch's prized cable news channel and Dominion Voting Systems—which alleged that Fox had repeatedly aired false claims that it fixed the 2020 presidential race for Joe Biden—the two parties reached a settlement. The $787.5 million is about half of the $1.6 billion the election technology company demanded.
"Fox News' $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company."
Nevertheless, as CNN (4/18/23) reported, "Fox News' $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company." It amounts to 5.5% of total revenue of the Fox Corporation, Fox News' parent company, for all of 2022.
It's still less than what Alex Jones of Infowars was forced to pay after a court found that he had repeatedly defamed the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims for faking the massacre (Independent, 9/15/22; AP, 10/12/22). And this wasn't Dominion's first settlement regarding false election claims: Newsmax, a network that's sort of like Fox News on crystal meth, settled a similar lawsuit with Dominion two years ago (Business Insider, 4/20/21).
Fox's critics are disappointed; the network gets to keep its dirty laundry out of the light, and it still retains its place as the go-to right-wing cable news source (Atlantic, 4/19/23). On the other hand, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson (Deadline, 4/18/23) told reporters: "The truth matters. Lies have consequences," and that the settlement "represents vindication and accountability."
Tough legal road
On the face of it, Fox had one big thing on its side going into the trial. The 1964 Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan holds that a plaintiff who's a public figure must show "actual malice" in order to prove libel, which means the defendant must have known that the defamatory statement was false, or else showed "reckless disregard for the truth." This is a tough standard to meet in court, and one that we've defended at FAIR (3/26/21, 2/25/22, 3/1/23, 3/10/23) against conservative calls to overturn the decision.
But it does not seem to have been too tough for Dominion to meet. It appears that the Fox lawyers, taking a look at the jury, smelling the wooden air of the courtroom, and looking at all the discovery documents showing that Fox hosts knew what they were airing was bunk, said to themselves, "We're not going to win this one."
They had good reason to be nervous. At the beginning of the trial, the network apologized to Judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the case, after he said the network "made misrepresentations to the court and delayed turning over evidence" (ABC, 4/15/23). Fox News host Howard Kurtz tweeted (4/16/23): "Judge knocks down some of [Fox's] key defenses, sanctions the network and suggests an investigation."
Observers forecast a tough legal road for Fox. The New York Times (4/6/23) said that "a number of well-regarded First Amendment lawyers have called the Dominion case among the strongest they have ever seen," because
the documents produced in discovery go far in establishing that people on virtually every level of the company knew that the allegations about Dominion were wrong yet for weeks did nothing to cut them off.
LA Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman (2/21/23) wrote that Dominion's case was "unusually strong." "Defamation suits often concern the work of careless or sensationalist reporters slipping past fact-checking safeguards," he noted. However, the allegations in this case had threatened to "lay bare a deliberate corporate decision to ignore the truth and publish lies."
At Bloomberg (3/18/23), Noah Feldman balanced the necessity of protecting press freedom and holding press outlets accountable, saying that courts should strive to "preserve the core idea behind the law of libel: that no one, not even the media speaking about a public figure on a newsworthy topic, may knowingly repeat defamatory lies as statements of fact." Feldman added that if
we abandon that basic idea, we will launch public discourse into a fully fact-free zone. Donald Trump has already done his best to put us there. The courts and the Constitution should not give him an after-the-fact victory.
In-house cheering squad
And yet Murdoch's empire, as well as some other conservative journalists, had spoken publicly in the network's defense, seemingly convinced of Fox's blamelessness. William Barr, former attorney general under George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump, assured readers of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal (3/23/23) that the case against Fox, before the trial, was weak, because "it isn't defamatory for journalists to report on newsworthy allegations made by others, even when those allegations turn out to be false." (In fact, reporters who repeat defamatory falsehoods are often committing libel, though there are exceptions to this general rule—Volokh Conspiracy, 11/7/18.)
Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple noted that Fox even publicly scoffed at the lawsuit last year in its annual report (Twitter, 4/19/23).
The idea that it's been proven that Fox aired false accusations "is virtually gospel among American liberals," complained Glenn Greenwald (System Update, 3/3/23), a frequent guest on Fox's Tucker Carlson Tonight. "As usual, these corporate media outlets"—as though Fox were somehow not corporate, or not a media outlet—"along with Democratic Party leaders, are marching in total lockstep, and none has aired any skepticism or questioning of this accusatory framework."
The Murdoch-owned New York Post editorial board (4/17/23) pulled an "I know you are but what am I?" routine in regards to the Dominion case, saying that the New York Times ran "endless Russia, Russia, Russia stories" about 2016 election interference (AP, 4/21/20), as well as the 1619 Project (8/14/19), which it called a
Pulitzer-winning disinfo push hawking the factually inaccurate idea that the American Revolution was undertaken primarily to preserve the slaveholding rights of Southern colonies.
There's some difference between allegations of defamation and a controversial interpretation of U.S. history. Who does the Post think should sue the Times for damages over the 1619 Project, the ghost of James Madison?
The Post went on, "How many internal emails from the Times' own newsroom would express private concerns over coverage, even as bogus stories are rushed into print to juice subscription revenues?" That's actually a fair question, especially when you consider the Times' coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq War (FAIR.org, 3/22/23). However, that still doesn't vindicate Fox.
No need to weaken press protection
These defenses seem laughable now that Fox has decided to part with the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Samoa in order to keep its dirty laundry out of the public eye. Interestingly, though, Barr's defense of Fox got one thing right when he said, "Conservatives shouldn't try to weaken the actual-malice standard"—which is something, as mentioned earlier, many conservatives want to do.
In fact, some right-wing outlets are already warning the Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' effort to challenge Sullivan could backfire, because, as the New York Times (4/3/23) put it, it "would affect right-wing reporters and commentators, not just the mainstream outlets that have become punching bags for Republican politicians."
But what Barr, and the other Fox defenders, didn't quite understand is that there can be some measure of accountability for victims of defamation by right-wing rage machines like Fox without sacrificing free press rights. Because this settlement showed just that.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Not Surprised, But Disgusted': Fox Avoids Trial by Settling With Dominion for $787.5 Million
"There better be whole bunch of broadcast apologies in this settlement."
Apr 18, 2023
Moments before Fox News was set to face a jury regarding the false claims repeatedly made on air about Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 election, the right-wing media corporation announced it had reached a settlement with the company.
The settlement amounted to $787.5 million and Dominion CEO John Poulos said in a press conference outside the courtroom in New York that "Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion," but critics said the financial agreement robbed the public of a trial that would have exposed the news network's lies about fraud during the 2020 election and its behind-the-scenes operations.
"The trial would've exposed the underpinnings of a corporation that has spent almost three decades radicalizing middle-age and older white people with lies, fear, hatred, and white supremacy," said Ashtin Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press.
Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox in 2021, challenging repeated baseless claims by guests and hosts of the network that former President Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election and that Dominion's voting machines had changed votes in President Joe Biden's favor. Private messages between hosts and producers at the network have since been exposed, showing many believed the lies to be "reckless" and "absurd" even as Fox continued to spread them.
If Fox truly admitted wrongdoing, said a number of critics, it should be required to do so on-air and not just in a private settlement.
Though the settlement means there will not be a public airing of Fox News' lies about Dominion, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said the company has still "been completely exposed as a partisan propaganda outlet that is willing to do anything for profit and power."
"The stain this leaves on Fox can't be wiped out with money," he said. "Fox News lied about the 2020 election; they all knew it was a lie, right up to the Murdochs themselves. What the Dominion trial offered was a keyhole view into the day-to-day industrial-scale deceit that takes place at Fox. It helped illustrate why the company is such a uniquely destructive force."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Tucker Carlson-Led Effort to Whitewash the History of January 6 Will Fail
This effort must be seen for what it is: a disgrace.
Mar 11, 2023
Dominion Voting Systems has provided a public service for the American people.
As a result of its pending defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion has laid bare the extraordinary con game that Fox carried out in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and that continues today.
Fox elevated and affirmed for their millions of viewers former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him by giving airtime to Trump’s team. But even as they put them on the air, Fox hosts and executives admitted privately that they knew they were airing lies and “insane” conspiracy theories.
The big three Fox propagandists, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham privately complained about their lying guests. But they never bothered to tell this to their viewers. Their texts, obtained by Dominion as part of the lawsuit, also reveal that some worried they would lose viewers if they actually told the truth.
Today, Trump continues to peddle his Big Lie — and so does Fox News.
Carlson, gifted with exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of internal Capitol footage from the January 6 riot by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is attempting to persuade people they should not believe what they saw with their own eyes. He has been airing cherry-picked portions of the January 6 videos to absurdly argue that the insurrectionist mob attack that led to the death and injury of Capitol police officers was little more than a “peaceful” protest of “sightseers.”
According to The New York Times, more than 150 officers from the Capitol Police, the Washington, DC Police Department, and other agencies suffered injuries as a result of the violence. A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people, including three police officers, lost their lives in connection with the attack.
A number of Senate Republicans have called Carlson out this week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the way Carlson portrayed the insurrection, Minority Whip John Thune described January 6 as “an attack on the Capitol,” and Sen. Thom Tillis called Carlson’s claims “bulls — -.”
Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.
Many House Republicans, however, are supporting Carlson’s revisionist history. They include the Republican leaders: House Speaker McCarthy, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.
In his Dominion deposition, Fox head Rupert Murdoch said he believed the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen. Yet, Murdoch never pulled Fox back from promoting the Trump Big Lie. And, he currently silently sits by as Carlson tries to sell the lie that January 6 was a peaceful protest.
Hypocrisy abounds at Fox News. And, they are joined by Speaker McCarthy.
Shortly after January 6, McCarthy called the attackers “un-American,” and said that anyone who participated in the mob attack should go to jail. “You don’t understand what was transpiring at that moment and that time,” McCarthy told reporters shortly after the Capitol attack. “People brought ropes. When I got back into my building, I found the straps that they had. I don’t know if they’d come [to] try to kidnap somebody or whatever. But they were well planned for it.”
McCarthy knew perfectly well that Carlson would use his show to present an untrue version of what happened on January 6.
Carlson had earlier called January 6 a “footnote” in history and “forgettably minor.” Yet, that didn’t stop McCarthy from knowingly giving Carlson the opportunity to further a false narrative that is the complete opposite of what McCarthy described in 2021.
Meanwhile, the effort to rewrite history goes on.
McCarthy ally Rep. Barry Loudermilk is preparing to investigate the Jan. 6 investigators as part of a new House subcommittee, and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are planning to visit some of the January 6 rioters in jail.
House Republicans will fail.
Fox News and Carlson’s efforts to whitewash the January 6 insurrection will also fail and will go down in history as a national disgrace.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Dominion, Tucker Carlson, and the Very Big and More Dangerous Lie
The lying about Dominion is symptomatic of much bigger, deeper, and more insidious Big Lies.
Mar 10, 2023
The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News has gotten a great deal of attention, and rightly so, for it raises fundamental questions about democracy in the U.S. and the ways that it is profoundly corrupted and seriously endangered by an alliance of right-wing media and the Republican Party. And yet beneath the lying exposed in the case are the more dangerous lies at the heart of MAGA ideology. And whether or not the notorious liars at Fox News Corp. believed anything they were saying about Dominion, there is no doubt that the deeper lies remain articles of faith for Fox and the Republican party.
The facts of the case are pretty straightforward.
Dominion Voting Systems Corporation is a privately owned company that produces and sells electronic voting hardware and software, including electronic voting machines. Its technology has been used extensively by many U.S. states. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Trump and many of his supporters promoted the claim—the lie—that Dominion was part of a wide conspiracy to "rig" the election for Biden, exaggerating Biden votes and hiding Trump votes. This claim was persistently and deliberately promoted and amplified by Fox News anchors, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Dominion is suing Fox News Corp. for defamation and damages related to its promotion of false conspiracy theories that have serious harmed the reputation and the revenues of the company.
As information about witness testimony, along with redacted and unredacted documents, has been made public, it seems clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Dominion's core allegation is true: Fox News officials and news anchors actively promoted lies about a Dominion-based conspiracy while knowing that there was no evidence to support these lies, and that its principal sources were Trump fanatics, like Sydney Powell, who lacked any credibility whatsoever. Most notoriously, both Rupert Murdoch and Carlson repeatedly made disparaging remarks about Trump, with Carlson also saying that the Dominion "software shit is absurd."
The revelations, which continue, reveal a shocking cynicism on the part of Murdoch, the Fox corporation leadership, and the principal Fox anchors, especially Carlson, about the importance of the corporate bottom line and about the gullibility of Fox viewers. As long as the viewers are willing to tune in, Fox is willing to supply them with the conspiracy theories they demand, crazy ideas they have been primed to believe by Fox itself—"supply and demand" in action.
It is too simplistic, and too politically comforting, to imagine that we are dealing with a simple question of some manipulative people deliberately telling lies to gullible others.
This cynicism of Fox News Corp. about "news" is incredibly disturbing. It reflects horribly on Fox. It also severely undermines the veracity of the false and crazy things that many millions of Trump supporters believe about the election and about the reliability of those "news" anchors who they have so credulously trusted.
If the accurate news about the lying of "Fox News" is widely publicized, it should play some role in delegitimizing the craziest claims made about "election fraud" in 2020. That would be a good thing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Trump supporters are likely to learn little about this, and to disbelieve what they hear. For they have already been corrupted by years of exposure to Fox and more recently to its even farther-right competitors, Newsmax and One America News (OAN), and they are firmly ensconced in the reactionary media bubble.
Regardless, a focus on the intentional lying of Carlson et al, while important, is politically misleading, in the same way that the House January 6 Committee's focus on whether Trump knew he was telling lies was misleading.
The reason: it is too simplistic, and too politically comforting, to imagine that we are dealing with a simple question of some manipulative people deliberately telling lies to gullible others. Because the MAGA ideology runs much deeper than the most outlandish election machine conspiracy theories exposed by the Dominion case, for its consumers but even for its producers. And for those in the grip of MAGA ideology, all empirical evidence is filtered through a distorted frame.
Carlson et al might have privately believed in early January of 2021 that Trump, Powell, Giuliani and their circle were crazy, and that their desperate lying was a problem for Fox, for the Republican Party, and perhaps even for their twisted view of "law and order."
But "The Big Lie" has never been reducible to the most hysterical and desperate claims being made by Trump and his cronies in the aftermath of the November 2020 election.
Behind those hysterical and arguably insane claims was a deeper claim that has always been central to The Big Lie, a claim not about ballot box tampering on Election Day but about a Democratic Party intent on mobilizing millions of people who either do not have the right to vote (dangerous "illegals") or whose right to vote is suspect, because of their lack of "proper" identification, or their (alleged) criminal history, or simply because they require purportedly "special advantages" like mail-in balloting and drop boxes. (Or, let's face it, because they are simply the "wrong kinds" of people, "bad hombres" who hate "American Greatness".)
In short, The Big Lie draws on a range of long-standing Republican tropes about Democratic "voting fraud" and the need for more restrictive voting laws, tropes that have been amplified by Trump and Fox since long before 2016.
Insane conspiracy theories and lies about Dominion machines and foreign vote harvesting (and Jewish space lasers?), and the willingness of people like Carlson and Murdoch and Trump and Giuliani to lie about such craziness, and the willingness of their followers to believe these lies—this lying is one very disturbing thing.
But whatever Carlson and Murdoch and Trump himself actually believed about ballot box fraud on election day, nothing revealed in the Dominion case suggests that any of them doubted the broader and deeper lie—that the Democratic Party is a nefarious group of radicals long committed to violating "election integrity" and to "flooding the polls" with people who do not deserve to be there, to the detriment of those "real Americans" whose popular sovereignty alone matters.
This Big Lie has been and continues to be a staple of Republican rhetoric independent of Trump and his fate, a fate which, to any rational observer, was not worth betting on in early January, 2021—though Kevin McCarthy and his followers managed to regain their Trumpist footing in record time.
And indeed, behind the Big Lie about long-term Democratic "rigging" of elections is the even Bigger Lie that is the true heart of the MAGA message, one regularly disseminated to scores of millions of supporters, and well stated here:
"You are the loyal defenders of our heritage, our liberty, our culture, our Constitution, and our God-given rights. You never stop fighting for America, and I will never, ever stop fighting for you. So as we gather tonight, our country is being destroyed more from the inside than out. America is on the edge of an abyss. And our movement is the only force on Earth that can save it. This movement right here. What we do in the next few months and the next few years will determine whether American civilization will collapse or fail, or whether it will triumph and thrive, frankly like never before. This is no time for complacency. We cannot be complacent. We have to seize this opportunity to deal with the radical left socialist lunatics and fascists. And we have to hit them very, very hard. Has to be a crippling defeat, because our country cannot take it. . . .
Our country is now a cesspool of crime like it's never been before. They've never seen anything like it. Other countries are talking about it. We're talking about democracy. Isn't it great? Then they say, " You had seven people killed in Chicago this weekend. You had 68 people shot." That's not democracy. That's not what we stand for. Savage criminals are being released on cashless bail to continue their violent rampages against the United States of America. Entire communities are being torn to shreds with stabbings, shootings, strangling, rapes, and murders. . . . The streets of our Democrat-run cities are drenched with the blood of innocent victims, gun battles rage between blood thirsty street gangs, bullets tear into crowds at random killing wonderful, beautiful little children that never even had a chance. They're struck and they're killed, and carjackers lay in wait like predators hunting their prey. . . . Our country is being invaded just like a military force was pouring in. . .
As we take power out of Washington, we also need to take power back from the left wing lunatics who are indoctrinating our youth. We have to finally and completely smash the radical lefts corrupt education establishment. The current system is sick. It's sick. We have the lowest scores almost in the world and we spend more per pupil than any other nation. School prayer is banned, but drag shows are allowed to permeate the whole place. It's okay. You can't teach the Bible, but you can teach children that America is evil and that men are able to get pregnant. Whatever it takes, conservatives must liberate America's children from the captivity of these Marxist teachers unions. . . Across the country, we need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate, racial, sexual, and political material to America's school children in any form whatsoever. And if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.
. . . no matter how big or powerful the corrupt radicals we are fighting against may be, no matter how menacing they appear, we must never forget that this nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage. This is your country that your American ancestors won with their own courage, defended with their own blood and built with their own hands . . . "
Those words, of course, came from the mouth of Donald J. Trump, speaking at last week's CPAC conference in a DC suburb.
And the sentiments expressed, traceable to Pat Buchanan and George Wallace before him, have been staples of the Republican party, and of its Fox propaganda arm, since Trump's ascendance in 2016.
They are Trump's sentiments, but not only Trump's.
And while much has been made of Ron DeSantis's absence from the recent Trump-worshipping CPAC event, DeSantis has been proclaiming the same MAGA sentiments for years, during star turns at prior CPAC conferences, and from the bully pulpit of the Florida Governor's office, where he is doing his best to translate the sentiments into extremely dangerous laws and policies.
And while much has been made about the fact that Tucker Carlson said he "hates Trump passionately" back in January, 2021, this surely does not mean that he hated Trump earlier or that he hates him now. At this moment Carlson might be partial to DeSantis. More likely he will jump on the bandwagon of whichever right-wing Republican seems most likely to win. But his messaging has for years been consistent, and it is the messaging of MAGA pure and simple: that an evil left hates White, Christian, American "Greatness," and this left must be eradicated. And so this supposed "hater" of Trump is right now using his nightly Fox show to represent—literally re-present—the events of January 6 as not an insurrection but a manifestation of civic pride by decent Americans seeking to "take their country back" and to "support their President." And the supposedly "hated" Trump is now congratulating Carlson for having accomplished "one of the biggest scoops for a reporter in U.S. history," and for exposing the "Criminal Fabricators" of the House January 6 Committee.
We are now in the domain of magical thinking of the worst kind—the magical thinking of political actors in service of authoritarian ideologies, willing to abrogate norms and laws, and do whatever it takes to defeat their "enemies."
Is Carlson now lying on behalf of Trump again? Most assuredly he is. But, again, in a deeper sense it is not quite that simple. For he is serving a supposedly "higher truth," the MAGA "truth" that Democrats and liberals hate America, and so what they say cannot be true, and so it is necessary to reframe what took place and to furnish a more authentic, more patriotic counter-narrative which by definition is true or at least true enough. From this vantage point, the representation of January 6 as a moment of patriotic glory is not a lie—they were carrying American flags and chanting "Make America Great Again," right? But even if this framing ignores obvious evidence or shades the truth, this is all done in a noble cause, in service to a more essential "truth."
This readiness to play fast and loose with truth has long been a central feature of Trumpism, most notoriously associated with outrageous claims made on different occasions by Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Rudy Giuliani, whose breathless "truth is not truth" is now the hook of an MSNBC series. It is sometimes described by commentators as "Orwellian," and with good reason, for Orwell's novel 1984 was a classic account of authoritarian, indeed totalitarian, disinformation, and domination. But perhaps it is one of Orwell's contemporaries, Arthur Koestler, best known as the author of the deservedly acclaimed Darkness at Noon, who best identified the logic in play.
Describing his experience as a young militant of the German Communist Party in the years before Hitler's rise to power in The God That Failed, Koestler recalled a piece of party propaganda in many ways similar to that now purveyed by Fox News. The Socialist party then in power, anathematized by the Communists as a "social fascist" party soft on Nazism, had ordered a police raid on Nazi headquarters and proposed a ban on the wearing of the Nazi uniform. When the Communist press ignored these moves and continued to sneer about Socialist "social fascism," young Koestler was confused, a confusion only intensified when his party superior explained:
"He explained that the party's attitude to the Social Democrats was a set, long-term policy which could not be reversed by a small incident. 'But every word on the front page is contradicted by the facts,' I objected. Edgar gave me a tolerant smile. 'You still have the mechanistic outlook,' he said, and then proceeded to give me a dialectical interpretation of the facts. The action of the police was merely a feint to cover up their complicity; even if some Socialist leaders were subjectively anti-Fascist in their outlook, objectively the Socialist Party was a tool of Nazism; in fact, the Socialists were the main enemy . . . Gradually I learned to distrust my mechanistic preoccupation with facts and to regard the world around me in the light of dialectic interpretation . . . "
For an activist of a party or movement that claims to understand a "higher" or "deeper" truth, beyond common sense and the evident facts of experience, any particular facts can be ignored or reinterpreted to serve what is considered more fundamental. Thus Dominion voting machines were corrupted in 2020, but even if they weren't, the Democrats are responsible for a more fundamental electoral and even civilizational corruption, and so the election was corrupted, and the outcome "rigged," and if so, can we really believe all of the evidence that Dominion machines were not corrupt? And if we really can't trust the evidence, then why treat it as dispositive? Why not just repeat the claims which, even if they can't be proven, can't be disproven in any final sense. Indeed, by constantly repeating the claims, we might make them for all intents and purposes "true." And anyway, the battle against liberal evil is more important than any "small incident" or any particular facts.
The lying of Fox News and its damages to Dominion are significant. But the real damage is much deeper and more dangerous.
We are now in the domain of magical thinking of the worst kind—the magical thinking of political actors in service of authoritarian ideologies, willing to abrogate norms and laws, and do whatever it takes to defeat their "enemies."
What does Tucker Carlson really believe? To what extent is he a liar, and to what extent merely a propagandist in the thrall of a "dialectical reasoning" that he helped to create?
The lying about Dominion is symptomatic of much bigger, deeper, and more insidious Big Lies. However much the facts might seem to call these lies into question, Carlson and his collaborators will continue to repeat them and many millions of their followers will continue to accept them and to act on them. Does anyone really believe all the lies? We can't know. What we can know is that Presidential candidates and Governors and the current Speaker of the House of Representatives and almost his entire two hundred-plus caucus, and millions of their followers, all act as though they believe them. And in doing so, they are destroying the political institutions and the civic culture of America's increasingly fragile liberal democracy.
The lying of Fox News and its damages to Dominion are significant.
But the real damage is much deeper and more dangerous. And no lawsuit—not even manifold legitimate indictments of Donald Trump—can stop it. Only the decisive defeat of the Republican Party, and a Democratic Party empowered and committed to addressing the real problems plaguing American democracy, can stop it.
That is a very tall order. And everything hangs in the balance.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'I Did Not Believe It For One Second,' Hannity Says of Trump's Big Lie While Under Oath
One public policy expert called sworn depositions from Sean Hannity and other Fox personnel the "strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false."
Dec 22, 2022
Sean Hannity, the Fox News opinion host and erstwhile purveyor of Donald Trump's "Big Lie," did not believe the disgraced former president's 2020 election fraud claims "for one second," details from a sworn deposition revealed Wednesday.
Hannity, who was deposed as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, was asked under oath if he believed claims by conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, amplified on his show, that the Colorado-based company was part of a plot to rig its voting machines to switch large numbers of votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.
"I did not believe it for one second," Hannity testified, Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford Jr. said Wednesday in a Delaware Superior Court hearing, according to NPR.
"And yet he pushed these lies anyway," tweeted Rantt Media co-founder Ahmed Baba. "Fox News hosts knowingly lie to their viewers and admit it. This should be a bigger scandal."
Hannity's admission echoed sworn testimony from other Fox News personnel, including opinion host Tucker Carlson and executive vice president Meade Cooper, who "confirmed under oath she never believed the lies about Dominion," Shackelford said.
"Tucker Carlson, he tried to squirm out of it at his deposition," the lawyer added before the judge cut him off.
Public policy expert Maya Contreras called the depositions the "strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy