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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Ed Pilkington

Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of trouble

Rupert Murdoch’s admission that Fox News hosts knowingly ‘endorsed’ Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election could help prove the network used ‘actual malice’.
Rupert Murdoch’s admission that Fox News hosts knowingly ‘endorsed’ false claims of election fraud could help prove the network used ‘actual malice’. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In his 71 years as a media executive, Rupert Murdoch has proved himself to be a grand master in the arts of survival. He has weathered bruising battles with British trade unions, the phone hacking scandal, countless ratings wars and a volatile private life, all the while growing his News Corp empire into global colossus.

It was against this seven-decade backdrop of seeming invincibility that news of Murdoch’s deposition in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News Networks and its parent company Fox Corp dropped like a bomb. Not only did he admit that he knew that Fox News hosts spread lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, but he confessed that he had allowed them to keep on doing so on air to millions of viewers.

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