Fox News is set to go to trial in a lawsuit brought by voting machine-maker Dominion that could lead to embarrassing new revelations for the conservative-leaning TV network.
Opening arguments are expected Monday in the $1.6 billion defamation trial over baseless accusations that Dominion somehow rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Donald Trump.
Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch could be forced to take the witness stand in a Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom to explain why he didn’t pull the plug on the conspiracy theories spouted by Donald Trump acolytes such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Top-rated hosts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo could also be headed for stints on the stand.
The A-list stars and C-suite media executives will likely have to explain why they led millions of viewers to believe Trump’s claims while admitting in private texts that they were all lies.
What did Fox do and why?
Starting a couple of days after Election Day 2020, the nation’s most-watched cable network started airing intense coverage of Trump’s unfounded claims that he was robbed of victory by a wide-ranging voter fraud scheme.
A key aspect of Trump’s "Big Lie" was — and still is — the claim that Democrats used voting machines, including many supplied by Dominion, to change votes to favor Joe Biden.
The avalanche of falsehoods continued for weeks with Giuliani, Powell and others making claims about the Dominion machines that Fox editors derided as “kooky” and worse.
The network presented the claims as legitimate assertions even though there was no evidence to back them up and courts repeatedly rejected them.
As Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis noted in a scathing pretrial ruling, it is “CRYSTAL clear” that there was never any truth to any of the wild claims.
Senior Fox executives pushed for continued coverage of the lies, noting that the network hoped to stop pro-Trump viewers from dumping Fox in favor of more right-wing outlets like Newsmax and One America News Network.
Is that bad journalism — or illegal?
It’s not against the law to be wrong or even to report lies.
But it’s defamation to publish falsehoods with “actual malice” against someone or a company.
What did Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity know?
Fox’s popular prime-time hosts played a key role in continuing to spread the conspiracy theories, repeatedly hosting the Trump mouthpieces for mostly fawning interviews.
Yet messages handed over by Fox during pretrial discovery revealed that the hosts and their staffs knew the claims were all lies.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote of the Trump lawyer in a November 2020 text to fellow host Laura Ingraham.“It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
“Rudy (Giuliani) is acting like an insane person,” Hannity said.
Anchor Bret Baier simply wrote: “There is NO evidence of fraud.”
Why didn’t Rupert Murdoch stop the lies?
Murdoch admitted in a deposition that he could have ordered Fox to shut down the campaign to promote Trump’s lies, perhaps the single most damaging admission for the network so far.
He also told fellow executives that it was important to avoid antagonizing Trump and his army of loyal supporters, statements that appear to have been a green light to put ratings over the truth.
Now the Australian media mogul will likely have to explain his actions on the witness stand under the glare of global media coverage.
Is Trump involved in the case?
The former president is not a party to the case, although he also repeatedly spouted the lies about Dominion and other voting machines.
How’s the case going for Fox?
So far, the Fox team has not exactly wrapped itself in glory.
Davis has repeatedly dealt Fox procedural setbacks, rejecting the argument that its actions are covered by the First Amendment and barring it from claiming that its reports were legal because they were newsworthy.
Davis angrily warned Fox lawyers after they apparently concealed damaging taped conversations between Bartiromo and Giuliani that should have been handed over to Dominion.
Still, it’s anyone’s guess how a jury may look at the case, especially the enormous damages Dominion is demanding, which Fox claims is far more than the value of the entire company.
Did the lies hurt Dominion?
Dominion says millions of Americans now believe the company’s machines are untrustworthy, dealing a hammer blow to its brand and growth prospects.
There is scant evidence of actual financial harm, however, as the company’s bottom line is healthy.
Only one jurisdiction, a conservative rural California county, has actually ditched the company’s machines over the false stolen election claims.
Why didn’t Fox settle?
That’s the $1.6 billion question.
Fox would appear to have every reason to want to avoid a trial at which the reputations of its chairman and top on-air talent could be further tarnished.
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