Dominion filed a suit against Fox News over the allegations that Joe Biden would win Arizona in the November 2016 presidential primary election: A comment on Fox News’s attorney Eric M. Davis
During the campaign, Fox News was denounced by angry viewers, questioned by some of its own stars, and had to find a way to stay afloat because it had been announced before anyone else that Joe Biden would win Arizona.
The lawyers for Fox call the suit from Dominion an attempt to penalize the network for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day. The network says it could dissuade journalists in the future from reporting allegations “inconvenient to Dominion—and other companies.”
In a ruling yesterday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis affirmed that Dominion should receive the contracts – the point of contention in Tuesday’s hearing.
On the air, Dobbs was among the most muscular proponents of Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. He was forced out of Fox the day after Smartmatic filed its own $2.7 billion defamation case against the network.
In his exchanges with the judge, Keller drew a line distinguishing between a host or producer “who are sometimes pre-scripting material for the show, that is going to be tethered to a specific channel’s telecast” and a network executive.
Senior journalists were eliminated by Fox News executives who were fixated on reflecting the facts, in a bid to keep viewers away from smaller right wing rivals. In a note to the network’s top publicity executive, Fox News CEO Scott denounced Sammon, the former Washington managing editor. Scott wrote that Sammon’s job was to protect the brand and that he did not understand the impact that projecting Arizona for Biden would have.
Nelson, the Dominion attorney, retorted by citing a document obtained from Fox that “talks about the daily editorial meeting that occurs, including almost all of these executives that we’re looking at right now.”
According to the court filings reviewed by NPR, the court is being asked to compel more testimony from Sean Hannity, who is a close adviser to Trump. Dominion’s attorneys are seeking to bar “improper assertions of reporter’s privilege,” arguing that Fox inappropriately asserted reporter’s privilege for Hannity during earlier questioning as well, though the full filing is sealed. He was deposed in late August, according to court records.
According to the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case involving The New York Times, Fox acted with malice because it knew or should have known that what it was broadcasting to the public was false.
Baier, the one who released a statement about how his objections were framed, was the only one who commented on the assertions of Baker and Glasser. One person inside Fox with direct knowledge of its election coverage told NPR the delay in calling the full White House win for Biden involved a technical glitch in a control room as one show transitioned to the next at the top of the hour.
In hosting Fox’s first post- election interview with Trump in November of that year, Bartiromo echoed the president’s allegations of electoral fraud and said they couldn’t allow America to be corrupted. An intel source told her in December that Trump had won the election. Bartiromo, officially designated as a news anchor, never returned to explain on what grounds the source made that statement. She had been a anchor for the news side of Fox but now she is an opinion host.
In December 2020, Dobbs contended on the air that Trump’s opponents within the government had committed “treason,” and later suggested any action by a Republican officeholder to uphold Biden’s victory might have been “criminal.” The day after Smartmatic filed a lawsuit against the Fox network for defamation related to false accusations of fraud, his departure from the network was announced. That case is not as far along in its journey as the other one.
The court filing also revealed that Fox News executives had criticized some of the network’s top talent behind the scenes. Jay Wallace, the network president, said that “the North Koreans” did a “more nuanced show” than then-host Lou Dobbs. Jerry Andrews, the executive producer of “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” referred to host Jeanine Pirro as “nuts.”
Fox News has invoked the importance of American free speech principles in order to defend its conduct, saying the Smartmatic and Dominion cases are attempts to chill independent reporting and commentary.
In Australia, where the Murdoch family lives, Lachlan Murdoch has taken a somewhat different stance than his boss at Fox Corp. A political columnist for the magazine Crikey accused the Murdochs of being “unindicted co-conspirators” in the insurrection at the U.S. Congress by Trump supporters because of the false fraud allegations and the hyper-charged rhetoric ahead of the planned rally.
Murdoch is accusing a smaller media outlet of defamation. He’s forced the site to pay out for commentary in the past, but they plan to use the case to test recent changes to the law in that country. In Australia, media outlets have less legal cover than in the U.S.
There is a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, and it is in the hands of a plainspoken judge.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, a 12-year veteran of the state’s bench and former corporate attorney, has often sought to temper emotions in the contentious proceedings between the broadcasting giant and Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-technology company. Each side repeatedly has accused the other of acting in bad faith.
“If he were to be given a name in culture, it would be Cool Hand Luke,” says Joseph Hurley, a criminal defense attorney based in Wilmington who has argued before Davis but has no involvement with the case. “In court, he never shows any emotion, and I mean that in a good way.”
The First Amendment and the Freedom of the Press: A High-Dimensional Court Judge’s View on Smartmatic Defamation
Davis is also overseeing a defamation case against Newsmax by another voting tech company called Smartmatic.
Smartmatic was the subject of false claims that it had switched Trump votes to Biden. Newsmax and Fox News broadcasted those claims.
“Newsmax either knew its statements regarding Smartmatic’s role in the election-fraud narrative were false, or at least it had a high degree of awareness that they were probably false,” the judge stated.
John Culhane, a professor at Delaware Law school, says it is obvious that the judge did not have any of the Newsmax arguments.
While Culhane, an authority on defamation law, cautions against drawing too strong a conclusion from the Newsmax ruling, he says Davis “is very clear and he’s very step-by-step when it comes to the law.”
Fox News said yesterday that there is nothing more important than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud. We are confident that we will prevail, as freedom of the press is a vital part of our democracy.
In addition to that lawsuit, Smartmatic has also sued Fox for over a billion dollars. On Tuesday, a New York state appellate court rejected Fox News’ motion to have the Smartmatic case against the network and several of its stars dismissed. The claims against Fox Corp were dismissed by the ruling.
Connolly said that it would file an amended complaint with details of Murdoch’s involvement.
Fox’s lawyers in New York and Delaware invoke a legal privilege called neutral reportage which allows it to present allegations without adopting them as true so that the public could draw its own conclusions about a news story.
He states that the First Amendment protects reporters in order to guarantee a “robust and unintimidated press.” However, he also says that the First Amendment is not unlimited. He said a neutral reportage principle does not protect a publisher who “deliberately distorts” statements to “launch a personal attack of [its] own on a public figure.”
There are two very important cases in which the stakes could hardly be greater. Davis doesn’t want to amplify his own profile. (Indeed, his court declined to make a photo of him available for this story.) And the judge has repeatedly sought to ensure an air of comity around the proceedings, a hallmark of the Delaware legal bar.
Davis told the court that he came off as a bit arrogant in an email he sent to the other legal teams.
He pinned it on his use of a pat phrase. “You know that typical sarcastic thing that judges say?” Davis asked. “‘Tell me if I’m wrong…’ Which means, don’t tell me I’m wrong. That is a statement that I’m making. That wasn’t the reason I was doing it.
Fox News and the Donald Trump Era: Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham vowed to stop Newsmax after the election of Donald Trump
The messages also revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, did not believe Trump’s election lies and even floated the idea of having Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election.
Ingraham called Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell “a bit nuts.” Carlson, who famously demanded evidence from Powell on the air, privately used a vulgar epithet for women to describe her. A top network programming executive wrote privately that he did not believe the shows of Carlson, Hannity and Jeanine Pirro were credible sources of news.
The legal filing reinforced how worried the Fox News executives were about losing viewers to Newsmax after the election of Donald Trump.
The network said that the case is still about freedom of the press and free speech and will cause a lot of noise and confusion.
After the election, a furious Trump attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax. They did that in the days and weeks following the presidential contest. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership.
Carlson told Hannity that he wanted her to be fired. “Seriously … what the f**k? I am shocked, and it needs to stop immediately. It’s measurably hurting the company.”
A person who has direct knowledge of the situation told CNN that Heinrich was not aware of the efforts to get her fired until she read the legal filing.
In another case, when host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press briefing where election misinformation was being promoted, senior Fox News leadership were told such a move presented a “brand threat.”
Scott exchanged messages with Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chief executive, and outlined a plan to win viewers back. Scott said the right-wing talk channel would “highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch responded that the brand needed “rebuilding without any missteps.”
The Fox News Stars False Claims: “The Real Thing” About the 2020 Network “Matter-Blowingly Nuts”
Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP, Slaven Vlasic and Michael Chuchstein are all from the same agency.
The same conspiracy was called “mind-blowingly nuts”, and ” totally off the rails” by the network’s stars, producers and executives.
Bill Sammon, the network’s Washington Managing Editor, privately wrote in December of 2020 how weak ratings make good journalists bad. The executives were angry over the hit to Fox News’ brand. Yet there was little apparent concern, other than some inquiries from Fox Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, over the journalistic values of fairness and accuracy.
According to a filing released to the public, Dominion’s request for damages is intended to enrich the private equity fund that owns the company.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157558299/fox-news-stars-false-claims-trump-election-2020
Baier Became the First Black Man in the House of Powers: Addressing a News Article by Bret Baier on Nov. 5, 2020
On Nov. 5, 2020, just days after the election, Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor texted a friend: “[T]here is NO evidence of fraud. There were none. Allegations – stories. Twitter. The Bulls.
His departure was called a retirement by Fox News, but Sammon declined to comment on that because of the terms of his departure.