Former News Corp. executive and current Fox critic Preston Padden has filed a copy of a New York state court ruling to buttress the challenge to Fox Corp.'s ownership of WTXF Philadelphia. Padden, a longtime executive working for Fox chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch, called for designating the license renewal for hearing before an administrative law judge, given the court's ruling.
Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice David Cohen on Wednesday (January 24) refused Fox's petition that the court dismiss an amended complaint in voting machine company Smartmatic USA’s lawsuit against the company and Fox News Channel on-air figures Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, as well as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, surrogates for former President Donald Trump. Smartmatic accused Fox of spreading misinformation about its equipment and its role in the 2020 election.
Also Read: Ervin Duggan, Bill Kristol Back WTXF License Challenge
The court said the amended complaint was accepted because it sufficiently supported allegations that Fox employees “acted with malice by purposely and deliberating publishing knowingly false stories about plaintiffs [Smartmatic voting machines] in order to benefit Corp.’s financial interests.”
The Media & Democracy Project, citing Fox’s settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit over similar election misinformation, last year challenged the renewal of WTXF at the Federal Communications Commission — and, by extension, the company’s character qualifications for holding any TV station licenses at all.
Given the conduct of Fox News employees surrounding false claims about voting machine irregularities, it said Fox lacked the character to hold that license — and, by extension, all of its TV station licenses.
Losing those licenses would be a huge financial hit. By its own count, Fox owns 29 full-power TV stations, including in 14 of the top 15 biggest markets, and owns duopolies — two stations — in each of the top three markets in the country, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
In filing a copy of that court decision with the FCC, Padden pointed out that the malice allegation in the court decision was the same one Media & Democracy was making at the agency in its license-renewal challenge and argued for the regulator “at the very least” designating the license for hearing.
But there were two decisions from the court this week, News Corp. pointed out in an email. The court also dismissed a petition to dismiss Fox Corp's counterclaim.
That counterclaim is that plaintiff's request for $2.7 billion in damages from Fox was “calculated to chill defendants’ free speech rights” because the figure bore no relation to the company’s “actual worth and possible future profits.”
“Plaintiffs do not establish that there has already been a binding determination that their claims [against News Corp.] have a substantial basis in fact,” the court said, adding that News Corp.’s claims that the damages are “so extenuated from their actual lost profits that they were pleaded and/or sought in order to chill defendants’ free speech rights” has yet to be adjudicated in court.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,“ Fox said in a statement. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
