Fox News Embedding of Them in the Wild: The Case for a Dirty Candidate Who Swore to Become a Senator

Besieged by angry viewers, denounced by then-President Trump, questioned by some of its own stars, Fox News found itself in a near-impossible spot on Election Night 2020 after its election analysis team announced before any other network that Joe Biden would win the pivotal swing state of Arizona.

According to the spokesman for Fox News, the lawsuit was more about generating headlines than legal and factual scrutiny.

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.

The network rebuffed Trump because “it would be irresponsible to put him on the air” and “could impact a lot of people in a negative way,” according to Fox Business Network President Lauren Petterson, whose testimony was cited by Dominion in the new filing.

Keller spoke about a host or producer who is pre-scripting material for the show, but who is tethered to a channel’s broadcast and network executive.

Executives at Fox were so worried about their audience protesting the channel that Scott, the network chief executive, even made an overture to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a prominent Fox News advertiser and election conspiracy theorist.

Nelson cited a document obtained from Fox that said that the daily editorial meeting was discussed, and that almost all of the executives were being looked at.

If the jury believed the accusations against Dominion were made because of Fox’s economic interests in retaining Trump viewers, the argument would probably be thrown out.

Fox has to prove actual malice in order to win a defamation case. Doing so with reckless disregard for the truth or broadcasting false and damaging information is what it means.

The fear that Fox News’ audience would abandon it for good also appeared to drive programming decisions. Alex Pfeiffer told the host that viewers were upset that Carlson did not cover election fraud. It’s all the attention of our viewers right now.

Asked by a Dominion attorney whether “Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” Murdoch demurred, saying, “Not Fox, no. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators.”

In December of 2020, Dobbs said on air that Trump’s opponents within the government had committed “treason,” and suggested that Republican officeholders might have been involved in subverting Biden’s victory. His departure from the network was hastily announced the day after another election software company, Smartmatic, filed its own $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox for defamation surrounding similarly false accusations of fraud. That case is not as far along in the process.

Dominion’s legal team asked the court to compel additional testimony from Pirro late last month, arguing that after Fox invoked a reporter’s privilege to shield her from some questions during her deposition. The decision on whether or not to return for questioning has not been made public.

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” Fox News said in a statement today. “The core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”

Murdoch rejected that Fox News, as an entity, endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. But Murdoch conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest being stolen.

In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. The site has had to pay out for critical commentary before, and it intends to use the suit as a test case for the recent changes in libel law in that country. Media outlets have less legal cover in Australia than they do here in the U.S.

The fate of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News lies, for the moment, in the hands of a plainspoken judge known for his unflinching poker face.

Davis, who was appointed by a Democratic governor to the Delaware bench in 2010, had some tough questions for Fox News’ lawyers on Tuesday. He challenged some of their legal theories, but he also warned court-watchers not to predict his ruling based on the rigor of his questioning

“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. He never shows emotion in court, that’s a good thing.

The New York State Circuit Court Judgment Rescinds Smartmatic’s Defamation Against Fox and Newsmax, A Legal Privilege the First Amendment is not Unlimited

Smartmatic is one of the voting technology companies that has filed a defamation case against Fox and Newsmax.

Like Dominion, Smartmatic was the subject of false claims that its software had switched Trump votes to Joe Biden. Newsmax and other TV channels broadcast 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.

“It seems pretty clear to me that [the judge] was not having any of the Newsmax arguments – and nor should he have, by the way,” says John Culhane, a professor at Delaware Law School.

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.”

In its defense against Dominion, Fox News’ legal team argues the network simply relayed stark claims about national elections, either as “questions to a newsmaker on newsworthy subjects” or by “accurately report[ing] on pending allegations.” As the sitting U.S. president, Trump was among the most newsworthy people imaginable, Fox and Newsmax attorneys each argue.

Smartmatic also has sued Fox for $2.7 billion, but that suit is not as far along as Dominion’s. 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 ruling dismissed claims against parent company Fox Corp, saying no cause was stated.

Connolly said it would amend the complaint to include more details about the Murdochs’ involvement.

Much like Fox’s lawyers in New York and Delaware, Newsmax’s attorneys similarly cite a legal privilege, known as neutral reportage, allowing it to present “unprecedented allegations without adopting them as true, so that the public could draw its own conclusions” about “a news story of extraordinary public interest.”

While he notes the First Amendment protects reporters in order to guarantee a “robust and unintimidated press,” he also states 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.”

The stakes could hardly be greater in the two cases. Davis doesn’t aspire to amplify his profile. The court didn’t make a photo of him available for this story. The Delaware legal bar is known for an air of comity around the proceedings.

Davis apologized to the rival legal teams during a February court hearing in the case, saying he had been surprised to read an email in which he did not like what the other teams were saying.

He pinned it on his use of a pat phrase. “You know that typical sarcastic thing that judges say?” Davis wanted to know if the person asked. “‘Tell me if I’m wrong…’ Which means, don’t tell me I’m wrong. It means that I’m making some kind of statement. But that wasn’t why I was doing it.”

The messages, included in a legal filing as part of Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked lies being pushed by former President Donald Trump’s camp asserting that the election was rigged.

In one text, Carlson said that Sidney Powell, an attorney representing the Trump campaign, was lying and that he had caught her doing so. Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.

The legal filing also underscored how worried Fox News executives and hosts were in the immediate aftermath of the election of losing its viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.

The lawsuit is about protecting public discourse, and protecting the public from deliberate falsehoods, said the lawyer.

Fox News Abandoned After the Arizona Call: Corrupt Campaigns against Voting Fraud and Pseudo-Democracy

Yet a panic set in as pro-Trump viewers abandoned Fox News following the Arizona call. And when hosts scrambled to promote Trump’s false claims of fraud, Fox News executives seized on it as a valuable strategy, according to the evidence presented by Dominion, even as at least two of Fox’s corporate directors and a top corporate official took exception.

Murdoch acknowledged last month that some of the most prominent Fox News hosts supported false claims that the election was stolen.

A person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that Heinrich was not aware of the attempts to get her fired until she read the legal filing.

A team led by then-Fox Corp senior vice president Raj Shah, formerly a White House aide to Trump, warned other top corporate leaders of a “Brand Threat” after Cavuto’s refusal to air McEnany’s White House press briefing on baseless claims of voter fraud.

The next day, Lachlan Murdoch warned Scott that a Fox News anchor’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally was “[s]mug and obnoxious”; Scott responded that she was “calling now” to remedy. Leland Vittert left Fox in January 2021 to become an anchor for the cable news outlet NewsNation.

Slaven Vlasic is attached to, other than the following: Carolyn Kaster/AP; Alex Brandon/AP; Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket.

Off the air, the network’s stars, producers and executives expressed contempt for those same conspiracies, calling them “mind-blowingly nuts,” “totally off the rails” and “completely bs” – often in far earthier terms.

Murdoch vs Fox News: Reply to the Senate Select Committee on the Apologiation of the Fox News Post-U.S. Capitol Controversy

Murdoch’s company is responsible for Fox News. The amplification of political hate on Fox News has been the biggest part in the split in American politics. I would challenge anyone … to nominate which individual alive today has done more to undermine American democracy than Rupert Murdoch.”

In a separate filing, also released to the public on Thursday, the cable network’s attorneys say Dominion’s ten-figure request for damages is designed to “generate headlines” and to enrich the company’s controlling owner, the private equity fund Staple Street Capital Partners.

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. None. There are allegations and stories. Twitter. Bulls—.”

Sammon has declined to comment on his departure from Fox News, citing the terms of his departure.

According to court documents, Donald Trump tried to call in to Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol, but they wouldn’t put him on the air.

A source familiar with the work of the House select committee said the panel didn’t know that Trump made the call.

The panel sought to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements, actions and phone calls on that day. A call to Fox News shows some of the gaps in the record due to the committee trying to get things done.

According to the legal brief, then-President Trump called into the Lou Dobbs show trying to get on air after the Capitol came under attack.

“But Fox executives objected to that decision,” the filing continued. Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 is an important day in the calendar. Donald Trump was not only the President but he was the main player that day.

Despite acknowledging that the situation is real, the network did not stop the lies from taking hold of it’s air because executives were terrified that telling the truth would cause a big audience to tune out.

Fox News executives and their hosts were not in good spirits. Newsmax had a surge that Fox News president Jay Wallace called troubling and the network needed to be on war footing.

Lachlan Murdoch, Scott and a top deputy were warned that he was close to the line with his commentary and guests. The next day, Rupert Murdoch warned that if Trump refused to concede graciously, “we should watch Sean especially and others don’t sound the same.”

When Lindell appeared on Newsmax and criticized Fox News, executives at Fox News “exchanged worried emails about alienating him,” the legal filing said. The filing added that Scott then sent him a handwritten note along with a gift.

The core engine of America’s democracy, our ability to peacefully and legitimate transfer of power, was a problem that Fox had to address in order to hold their audience and boost their stock.

The story of Haley, the elephant in the room: Fox News’s defamation challenge to the president’s campaign on First Amendment grounds

I didn’t know that Haley had a good story to tell, but she was the daughter of Indian immigrants and had been a successful governor of South Carolina. Her mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi, and after immigrating to South Carolina, earned a master’s degree in education and became a local public-school teacher. Her father was a biology professor at the college for 29 years after earning a doctorate from the University of British Columbia. They opened a clothing boutique on the side.

The recent revelations put Fox in a more precarious position in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds, said renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, who spoke about the motion for a summary judgment.

“When damages get into the billions, with a B, that can be an existential threat to a journalistic organization — even one as lucrative as as Fox,” said Lyrissa Lidsky, a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor and media law scholar at the University of Utah, described the evidence as “pretty voluminous” and said that she too had never seen evidence like it collected in a high-profile defamation case against an outlet as enormous as Fox.

Tushnet has been practicing and teaching law for almost 50 years and she said that she had never seen evidence like that before a defamation trial. Tushnet said that he didn’t recall anything like this. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.”

David Korzenik, an attorney who teaches First Amendment law and represents a number of media organizations, said that the filing showed Dominion’s case against Fox News has serious teeth.

Jones said that it was a pretty staggering brief. “Dominion’s filing here is unique not just as to the amount of evidence but also as to the timing of the evidence, and this is something that doesn’t happen in other places.”

“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” he said, when asked about the hosts’ on-air positions about the election. I would have liked us to be stronger in condemning it.

In his deposition, Mr. Dinh, when asked if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, said: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”

► Murdoch wrote an email to the New York Post saying that election lies werebulls**t and damaging.

► Murdoch gave Jared Kushner “confidential information” about then-candidate Joe Biden’s ads “along with debate strategy” in 2020, the filing said, offering Trump’s son-in-law “a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.” At most news organizations, this type of action would result in an investigation and disciplinary measures.

The documents lay bare that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but rather on feeding them content — even dangerous conspiracy theories — that keeps viewers happy and watching.

Asked whether he could have told Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. Murdoch said he could have. “But I didn’t.”

Emails and other communications introduced into the case by Dominion reflect deep involvement by the Murdochs and other Fox Corp. senior figures in the network’s editorial path.

“I’m a journalist at heart,” the elder Murdoch, who is just two weeks shy of his 92nd birthday, said in his deposition. “I like to be involved in these things.”

He had been resolute about defending Fox News’ call of the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — Nov. 3, 2020. Murdoch testified that he heard Trump yelling as he was told the situation was bad.

Scott forwarded his recommendation to the top executive. She canceled the show because she and another executive believed that the guests were going to say that the election is being stolen and if she pushes back it will be just a token.

Raj Shah was advising Murdoch, Scott and Dinh of the “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox” that they were working on. He said that the positive impressions among viewers of Fox News fell to the lowest levels they’ve ever seen.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, an anti-Trump Republican, sits on Fox Corp.’s board of directors. He said he told the Murdochs “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” He testified that he told them that the post election period would be an important time for Fox to change its stance on Trump.

Tell her, that’s what he advised Lachlan. Fox News called the election and is now changing its narrative as quickly as possible. We have to lead our viewers which is [] not as easy as it might seem.”

Tucker Carlson had a guest on his show. Rupert Murdoch told Dominion’s attorneys he could stop taking money for MyPillow ads, “[B]ut I’m not about to.”

“This is one of the most devastating depositions that I’ve ever seen,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said Monday. “When you go beyond reporting and your chairman admits there was endorsement, then that opens you up to liability under the actual malice standard.”

The Delaware lawsuit alleged that the “concerted efforts and actions” from Fox’s legal team ultimately caused Grossberg to testify in a way that portrayed the facts “in a false light” in order to “shift culpability” away from senior Fox News executives and “away from Fox Corporation.”

Murdoch admitted that several of his tv shows promoted false claims that the presidential contest was being stolen.

Who is he? Rupert Murdoch is a media magnate and the Fox News Channel’s controlling owner (as well as one of the inspirations for the protagonist in HBO’s Succession).

Defaming Fox News and Murdoch: How Much Should We Really Care About the ‘Fox News’ Or The Misleading Claims?

Ronald Chen is a law professor at Rutgers University and he says that “how often do you get a’smoking gun’ email that shows that the accusation was false and also convincing emails that show the reason why Fox reported it?”

Top executives, including Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, told one another they could not bluntly confront their viewers with the facts because that could alienate them further.

Even with that record, set out with voluminous documentation, some media lawyers say Fox’s attorneys may be right in predicting that a loss would constrict the media’s freedoms.

“No matter how much I might personally deplore what Fox is alleged to have done, I worry a lot more about the longer term-ramifications,” says University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Brennan believes Americans should have the freedom to get things wrong about public officials and politics if they so choose in order to ensure free and robust debate.

Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have indicated that they would be open to making it simpler for people to prevail in defamation suits. A third, Elena Kagan, published her own musings years before she joined the court that the protections for the press might be too strong.

The idea of “actual malice,” Murphy says, requires Dominion to prove specific people directly involved with the broadcasts knew the statements they aired were wrong. For instance, Murdoch’s sworn statements that he had dismissed the claims of election fraud as bogus, and affirmed under oath that some of his star hosts had nonetheless endorsed them publicly, carries no legal weight, she says.

Regardless of whether the allegations will ever be proved, any news that the president and his lawyers were doing was significant. She invoked what journalists consider the safe ground of “neutral reporting” – just telling their audiences what others are saying.

The loss of viewers was a concern for Fox News anchor and Martha MacCallum, as well as for the New York Times and Dominion’s attorneys.

When news outlets do lose defamation cases, they often result in retractions or apologies and settlements while they’re still on appeal. The outcomes of the two most prominent defamation cases were different.

In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine settled separate cases filed by a University of Virginia dean and a campus fraternity after a collapse of standards in reporting on what turned out to be a source’s fabricated account of campus rape.

A year ago, The New York Times prevailed against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin after an editorial wrongly linked her advertisements from her political action committee to a mass shooting months later.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media

Is Tucker Carlson Tonight a Misogynist? An Alternative to the Dominion: Grossberg’s Suitcase

The general rule excludes strange cases such as the Dominion case, says Goodale. “Let us hope we don’t see such a bizarre case as this one again.”

In his lawsuits, Grossberg accused Fox of engaging in wrongful conduct as they prepared her for a deposition in the election technology company.

The lawsuits from Grossberg, who has since been placed on administrative leave by Fox, were filed in Delaware Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Fox News stated that the complaints only came after a critical performance review, but Grossberg and her attorney disagreed.

“Fox just does not care,” Grossberg added. “It summarizes everything perfectly. They don’t care about their employees and their viewers.

The lawsuit said that Grossberg had a sinking feeling in her stomach when she saw how many of the men at Tucker Carlson Tonight were objectified and misogynist.

When she first began work on Carlson’s show, she said the environment was horrible. On her first day, she learned that the show’s workspace was decorated with photos of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit.

Women were subjected to crude terms and jokes about Jewish people were made out in the open at Carlson’s show. Grossberg named Carlson and members of his staff in the lawsuit filed in New York.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/media/fox-news-producer-lawsuit/index.html

The CNN investigation into Fox News’s false accusations about Lou Dobbs and the TV personality of the 2020 presidential campaign: The case against Fox News

She said it was constant. The shows, the network, and the hosts all depend on ratings. It’s a business and that’s what drives coverage.”

The proceedings went longer than planned due to lengthy procedural arguments and will resume Wednesday morning. It is unclear when the judge will issue a ruling, and there is a high bar for either side to prevail at this stage.

“They made the decision to let it happen,” Nelson said, referring to the litany of baseless claims about the voting company that got airtime on Fox News in late 2020.

Lawyers for the right-wing network wrote on Monday that live testimony at trial would add nothing to the interest of the media. “But this is a trial, not a public relations campaign.”

He said one of Fox’s arguments was not intellectually honest. At another point, he openly questioned how Fox News could argue that former host Lou Dobbs had engaged in legally protected “neutral” reporting when he signed many of his tweets with a MAGA hashtag.

It could have been a bigger story if the President had lost an election and started making false accusations about widespread fraud, said Davis from the bench.

She told the judge that she did not provide viewers with the true fact that those allegations were being leveled by the siting President and his lawyers.

Dominion’s 1.6-Billion Losed Business Opportunities Are Not Claimed on a $U(1)2$-Dependent Scale

In previous court filings, Dominion has said that its calculation are proper. The company hired experts to evaluate its books and lost business opportunities, and that’s how they reached the $1.6 billion figure.