Plenty of people have tagged News Corp’s sibling, Fox News, as the propaganda arm of the political right. Suddenly, with new legal documents out of the US, we’ve discovered plenty of people inside Fox see it that way too.
While journalism ethics codes (like Australia’s own) urge “respect for truth and the public’s right to know”, it looks like Fox had its own internal lodestar: “Respect for the audience”. Translation: “Truth be damned! Let’s tell the rubes what will keep them coming back!”
That’s the insight from last week’s release of legal filings in the high-profile $2.3 billion defamation case brought against Fox by election technology provider Dominion Voting Systems, which, as The New York Times delicately put it last week, “poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network”.
At heart, it’s a fight about journalistic practice: what should a news organisation do with unproven (and strongly denied) claims made by inherently unreliable bad-faith actors?
According to Fox, “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.” Fox News was, its lawyers say, “reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud”.
Trouble is, says Dominion, Fox and its senior news decision-makers knew the claims were bullshit.
“I did not believe it for one second,” star talk show host Sean Hannity said in a deposition. “[Trump lawyer] Sidney Powell is lying,” fellow television presenter Tucker Carlson is quoted as saying at the time. “Really crazy stuff!” Rupert Murdoch texted Fox managers about a Rudy Giuliani press conference in November 2020.
But internal memos also show Fox management considered the network was on a “war-footing” with ever further right-wing cable news and digital media company Newsmax.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” as Fox’s Washington bureau managing editor Bill Sammon said in evidence. (Sammon would be retired the following January.)
The “bad things”, says Dominion, was dressed up as “respect” for Fox’s fraud-believing audience.
Carlson rhetorically texted his producer in the days after the election: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” as a result of the Fox Decision Desk’s election-night call to predict a Biden win in Arizona.
The following Monday, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox Corporation CEO and executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch exchanged texts:
Scott: Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.
Murdoch: Yes. But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.
Scott: Yes, today is day one and it’s a process.
Down the line, “respecting” viewers seemed to have meant pulling punches on fact-checking. When, on the same day, Fox presenter Neil Cavuto pulled away from a White House press briefing that was repeating fraud claims with a “Whoa, whoa” and “unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this”, Fox managers fretted about the “brand damage” being done.
Dominion says that from about November 8, it became the villain in the false fraud narrative, due to its contracts with election officials in four swing states won by Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020: Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan.
It’s suing over 20 separate broadcasts it says repeated or amplified one or more of four linked lies: that it committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 US presidential election (the fraud lie); that its software and algorithms manipulated vote counts (the algorithm lie); that it was owned by a Venezuelan company linked to Hugo Chavez (the Venezuela lie); and that it paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines (the kickbacks lie).
The case is due to go before a jury in April, to be decided on the nuances of American defamation law and its interaction with the First Amendment on freedom of the press. So, who knows?
But the evidence that the network’s management and stars knew the allegations were false even as they amplified them has shaken the US mainstream media. Brian Stelter, a former CNN presenter and author of Hoax, headlined his Atlantic piece with “I never truly understood Fox News until now”. In The Washington Post, Erik Wemple headlined his: “Fox News is worse than you thought.”
It’s all about the brand: forced to choose between MAGA and news, Fox opted for MAGA. What do you call that sort of choice again?
