Fox News Hosts Knowingly Lied About 2020 Election

I have long referred to Fox News as "Faux News" because so much - I'd say a majority  - of the "news" it reports is false and aimed at either (i) pandering to its viewers prejudices, and/or (ii) airing Republican propaganda as fact. Indeed, the damage done to America by Fox News and its lying "news" hosts is incalcuable and is a major factor in the political right's embrace of lies, misogyny and conspiracy theories.  Now, as the Dominion Voting Systems 1.6 billion dollar libel suit based on Fox News' knowing and deliberate dissemination of Trump's lie that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him proceeds, based on internal communications and text messages, the likes of Tucker Carlson (a true blight on the nation) knew Trump's claims were false but chose to push them anyway to stay in Trump's good graces and to not upset the MAGA base that is the core of its viewers.  Pieces in the Washington Post and The Hill look at what Fox anchors were saying to each other and the callous and cynical decision to continue to disseminate falsehoods. To this day these individuals have yet to call out Trump and his sycophants for the iars that they are.  One can only hope that Dominion prevails and a strong message is sent to other outlets that traffic in lies and misinformation because it is clear that Fox News cared only about ratings and cared nothing about the truth.  First these highlights from the Post:

News organizations rarely look good when their internal emails and text messages surface in the public square. A filing Thursday from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News is not only no exception, it’s a watershed of journalistic misdeeds.

The network’s prime-time stars — Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, along with other top names — care about ratings first, second and third, a consideration that eclipses the truth and other principles of journalism. “Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote on Nov. 16, 2020, to a producer about President Donald Trump’s lawyer, who played a leading role in pushing far-out theories about election theft. The Dominion filing makes clear that the stars and Fox executives knew there was no evidence behind the election-denial lies repeated on the network’s broadcasts — a bombshell that is likely to take Fox years to live down.

Even the generous protections of U.S. libel might not save Fox News in this case. “Fox, one of the most powerful media companies in the United States, gave life to a manufactured storyline about election fraud that cast a then-little-known voting machine company called Dominion as the villain,” reads Dominion’s March 2021 complaint. The company argues that Fox News defamed its work across jurisdictions in 28 states in the 2020 elections and is seeking summary judgment from a Delaware court. The programming in question spanned the November 2020 presidential election and the tumult of January 2021, a time when Fox News found itself in an audience dogfight with other conservative cable networks — Newsmax and One America News (OAN) — for pro-Trump viewers eager to hear that their candidate had been cheated out of a second term.

Panic over audience desertion got going early at Fox News, correspondence cited in Thursday’s filing shows. On election night, Fox News was the first news outlet to call Arizona for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a decision that infuriated the Trump campaign. Disenchantment trickled down to the Trump faithful. “We worked really hard to build what we have,” Carlson wrote to a producer, according to the Dominion filing. “Those f---ers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

[A]s the prime-time opinion stars sought to keep MAGA viewers happy while news-siders provided more fact-based analysis. Bret Baier, anchor of the weeknight program “Special Report,” expressed incredulity that Powell had gone on Lou Dobbs’s evening program three days after the election to discuss a far-out theory on voter fraud.

Fearing an all-out ratings crisis, Fox News executives “made an explicit decision to push narratives to entice their audience back,” the Dominion filing says. Journalism wasn’t one of those narratives. On Nov. 9, Neil Cavuto, an afternoon host known for his affability and independence, cut away from unsupported remarks by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this,” Cavuto said on air. That moment triggered a notification from an executive at parent company Fox Corp. about the “Brand Threat” from Cavuto’s actions. An email from Fox News Media chief executive Suzanne Scott to other executives following the incident is redacted from the filing.

Collegiality followed journalistic principles out the window on Nov. 12, when reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted out a fact check of Trump, who had cited reporting by Hannity and Dobbs (whose eponymous Fox program was canceled in 2021) and mentioned Dominion. Election officials, Heinrich pointed out, claim there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” . . . . Carlson told Hannity via text, “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the f---? I’m actually shocked … It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Hannity took his concerns to Scott, who apprised other colleagues: “Sean texted me—he’s standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.”

Think about that statement — the top official at Fox News choosing falsehood over fact, for the sake of ratings. Fox News viewers, the correspondence confirms, get “disgusted” when their favorite network stops feeding them conspiracy theories.

Yes, we know: The internal correspondence and testimony Dominion cites are part of a filing in a defamation case relating to “actual malice,” damages and so on. There will be time to evaluate those matters, which are scheduled to go before a jury in mid-April. For the moment, let’s pause on how effectively a well-crafted lawsuit has pierced one of the country’s most powerful, and opaque, media organizations.

The piece in The Hill likewise underscores that the Fox News achors knew they were lying but put pleasing viewers ahead of truth and responsible reporting:

A filing in Delaware state court by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the company’s blockbuster lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company contains never-before-revealed vignettes from inside the network in the days that followed the 2020 election. 

Text messages, emails and testimony contained in the filing show the outlet’s top executives and hosts casting doubt on former President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, and worrying about how fact-checking those assertions on the air might be received by the conservative media outlet’s massive audience. 

Carlson at one point allegedly confronted Powell directly about her claims, saying, “You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon. You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.” 

Dominion’s case against Fox hinges on its ability to prove that the network acted with “actual malice,” or reckless disregard for the truth, a legal precedent that has been a high bar to clear for parties suing media companies and other publishers in recent years.