Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death
blow for Murdoch and Fox News?
The media mogul and Fox Corp are being sued for
allegedly broadcasting ‘lies’ about the voting machine company
Chris
McGreal
Sun 11 Dec
2022 07.00 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/dec/11/rupert-murdoch-fox-dominion-lawsuit-deposition
Rupert
Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his
hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News.
Its
conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to
the climate crisis and Covid-19 have been lapped up by Fox viewers and scorned
by much of the rest of America, and then the world moved on. But on Tuesday,
the 91-year-old billionaire media mogul will be obliged to answer difficult questions
under oath about the inner workings of Fox.
Dominion
Voting Systems is suing the cable news station and its Murdoch-owned parent
company, Fox Corp, for $1.6bn (£1.3bn) over repeated claims that it rigged its
voting machines as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election
from Donald Trump.
The suit
shines a spotlight on Fox News’ part in promoting Trump’s “stop the steal”
campaign and its hand in driving the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. But
legal experts say that Dominion, which supplied voting machines to 28 states,
appears to be building a wider case that Fox News has a long history of
misinformation and steamrolling facts that do not fit its editorial line.
Over the
past few months, Dominion’s lawyers have been working their way up the tree of
Fox News producers, executives and presenters with interrogations under oath
about the network’s work culture and its weeks of conspiratorial, and at times
outlandish, claims about Trump’s defeat. On Monday, lawyers deposed Murdoch’s
eldest son, presumed successor and Fox Corp CEO, Lachlan.
Now,
Dominion has reached the top of the tree. Months of accumulated testimony are
expected to put Murdoch, the chair of Fox Corp, in the difficult position of
either having to deny he has control over what happens at his most influential
US news operation or defend its campaign to promote the biggest lie in US
electoral history.
Murdoch is
already grappling with the costly legacy of phone hacking by British newspapers
the News of the World and the Sun. His UK company has paid more than £1bn
($1.2bn) over the past decade to keep the gruesome details from being heard in
open court with no end in sight after a high court judge earlier this year
refused to prevent the filing of new claims.
When
Murdoch was called to give evidence to a UK parliamentary hearing in 2011 about
News of the World hacking the phones of a murdered schoolgirl as well as hundreds
of politicians, celebrities and other public figures, he said that it was the
most humble day of his life. He also claimed to have known nothing about the
wrongdoing and said that he had been misled.
“I feel
that people I trusted … I’m not saying who … let me down and I think they
behaved disgracefully,” he told parliament. “And it’s time for them to pay.”
But he can
make no such claim about Fox News, where its misrepresentations were on full
display. So far, the only people to pay at the network are the ones who got it
right.
The trouble
started on election night after Fox called the key swing state of Arizona for
Joe Biden. The call drew Trump’s ire and unleashed a backlash against the
network from his supporters.
At that
point, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned against bowing to pressure to embrace
an alternate reality and reverse the Arizona call.
“We can’t
give the crazies an inch,” she said, according to court records.
As it
turned out, “the crazies” took a mile, as Fox News put a parade of Trump
lawyers, advisers and apologists front and centre over the following weeks to
promote a myriad of conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from
Trump, including by rigging the voting machines.
Alongside
them, some of Fox’s biggest names took up the cry of fraud. NPR revealed that
during the discovery process, Dominion acquired an email written by a Fox News
producer begging colleagues not to allow one of those presenters, Jeanine
Pirro, on the air because she was spreading conspiracy theories about the vote.
Pirro, a former district attorney and judge who is close to Trump, continued
broadcasting.
Lawyers
have also obtained rafts of internal messages that are “evidence that Fox knew
the lies it was broadcasting about Dominion were false” and part of a culture
of politically loaded reporting and broadcasts far from the network’s claim to
be “fair and balanced”.
Dominion
claims that without Fox, “these fictions” about electoral fraud would never
have gained the same traction among large number of Americans.
“Fox took a
small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” the company claims in its
lawsuit.
In August,
lawyers questioned another presenter, Sean Hannity, who has been described as
“part of Trump’s campaign apparatus”. He was grilled for more than seven hours
including about a broadcast two weeks after the presidential election in which
Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell was a guest.
Powell
claimed that Dominion “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from Trump and
awarded them to Biden”. She said the company “used the machines to inject and
add massive quantities of votes for Mr Biden”. Powell has also claimed that
Dominion used software developed to help the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez
steal elections.
Dominion
has said that it warned Fox News that such claims were false but that it
continued to air them in an attempt to assuage Trump supporters out of concern
they would move to other right-wing broadcasters.
“It’s an
orchestrated effort,” Dominion’s lawyer told a court hearing. “It’s not just on
the part of each host individually, but it’s across Fox News as a company.”
So far the
only Fox employees to pay a price for the debacle are those who got it right.
Weeks after the election, the network fired its political director, Chris
Stirewalt, who had infuriated Trump and other Republicans by refusing to back
down from calling Arizona for Biden. The Washington managing editor, Bill
Sammon, who supported Stirewalt’s decision, took retirement.
Fox argues
that Hannity and the other presenters are protected by journalistic privilege
but that position has been complicated by the Fox host’s own description of his
role.
In
defending his overt bias in favour of Trump and Republicans, Hannity has more
than once said he is not a journalist but a talk show host, and so does not
have to adhere to the profession’s ethical standards. He took the same position
earlier this year after the January 6 congressional committee exposed dozens of
his messages to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, offering advice and
seeking direction as the White House challenged the presidential election
result.
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