“This is not a press conference,” Davis said during Monday’s brief hearing. “I don’t do that.”
A trial would force Fox to answer for its actions in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election and litigate denial about the outcome of the race in general. The case centers on whether Fox defamed Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems by spreading false claims that the company rigged the election against then-President Donald Trump.
A settlement is certainly a possibility in a trial that carries risks for both sides. Fox already has been embarrassed by revelations that some of its executives and on-air personalities did not believe fraud claims that the network spread on the air, and it doesn’t want to see 92-year-old founder Rupert Murdoch testify. Dominion could miss a big payday if a jury rules against it.
Not everyone wants the case to go away quietly, however.
“PLEASE Dominion — Do not settle with Fox! You’re about to prove something very big,” tweeted Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox anchor whose accusations of sexual misconduct by former Fox chief Roger Ailes led to his downfall in 2016.
Fox, meanwhile, paid for a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on Monday headlined “Trusted Now. More Than Ever.”
Dozens of journalists gathered at the courthouse in downtown Wilmington, some before dawn, for a hearing that lasted about five minutes. The courtyard in front of the court building was full of TV crews ready to do live shots.
Besides its implications for Fox, the case is being watched carefully by journalists for what it could mean for libel law. Defamation is generally hard to prove, since it requires a finding that journalists published information they knew to be false, or with a reckless disregard for the truth.
Some First Amendment lawyers say Dominion’s lawsuit presents a powerful case, given the doubt expressed within Fox about the fraud allegations. Fox says Dominion can’t prove that the people with such doubts were in position to affect what was said on the air about the company.
Even before a jury hears the case, Davis has made some rulings in Dominion’s favor, including stating that the allegations of election fraud made against the company were clearly false. That means the issue will not have to be litigated in the trial.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Claire Bischoff, a Dominion spokesperson, said the company would have no comment on the trial delay. Representatives for Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., the entities Dominion is suing, did not immediately return requests for comment. In his statement, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said only that the trial, including jury selection, would be continued until Tuesday and that he would announce the delay in court on Monday.
That’s when Fox News executives and the network’s star hosts were scheduled to begin answering for their role in spreading doubt about the 2020 presidential election and creating the gaping wound that remains in America’s democracy.
Jurors hearing the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems would have to answer a specific question: Did Fox defame the voting machine company by airing bogus stories alleging that the election was rigged against then-President Donald Trump, even as many at the network privately doubted the false claims being pushed by Trump and his allies?
Yet the broader context looms large. A trial would test press freedom and the reputation of conservatives’ favorite news source. It also would illuminate the flow of misinformation that helped spark the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and continues to fuel Trump’s hopes to regain power in 2024.
Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and founder Rupert Murdoch are among the people who had been expected to testify.
Barring a settlement, opening statements are now scheduled for Tuesday.
“This is Christmas Eve for defamation scholars,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor.
If the trial were a sporting event, Fox News would be taking the field on a losing streak, with key players injured and having just alienated the referee. Pretrial court rulings and embarrassing revelations about its biggest names have Fox on its heels.
Court papers released over the past two months show Fox executives, producers and personalities privately disbelieved Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election. But Dominion says Fox News was afraid of alienating its audience with the truth, particularly after many viewers were angered by the network’s decision to declare Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Arizona on election night in November 2020.
Some rulings by the judge have eased Dominion’s path. In a summary judgment, Davis said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that fraud allegations against the company were false. That means trial time won’t have to be spent disproving them at a time when millions of Republicans continue to doubt the 2020 results.
Davis said it also is clear that Dominion’s reputation was damaged, but that it would be up to a jury to decide whether Fox acted with “actual malice” — the legal standard — and, if so, what that’s worth financially.
Fox witnesses would likely testify that they thought the allegations against Dominion were newsworthy, but Davis made it clear that’s not a defense against defamation.
New York law protects news outlets from defamation for expressions of opinion. But Davis methodically went through 20 different times on Fox when allegations against Dominion were discussed, ruling that all of them were fully or partly considered statements of fact, and fair game for a potential libel finding.
“A lawsuit is a little bit like hitting a home run,” said Cary Coglianese, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have to go through all of the bases to get there.” The judge’s rulings “basically give Dominion a spot at third base, and all they have to do is come home to win it.”
Both Fox and Dominion are incorporated in Delaware, though Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.
Fox angered Davis this past week when the judge said the network’s lawyers delayed producing evidence and were not forthcoming in revealing Murdoch’s role at Fox News. A Fox lawyer, Blake Rohrbacher, sent a letter of apology to Davis on Friday, saying it was a misunderstanding and not an intention to deceive.
It’s not clear whether that would affect a trial. But it’s generally not wise to have a judge wonder at the outset of a trial whether your side is telling the truth, particularly when truth is the central point of the case, Jones said.
The lawsuit essentially comes down to whether Dominion can prove Fox acted with actual malice by putting something on the air knowing that it was false or acting with a “reckless disregard” for whether it was true. In most libel cases, that is the most difficult hurdle for plaintiffs to get past.
Dominion can point to many examples where Fox figures didn’t believe the charges being made by Trump allies such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. But Fox says many of those disbelievers were not in a position to decide when to air those allegations.
“We think it’s essential for them to connect those dots,” Fox lawyer Erin Murphy said.
If the case goes to trial, the jury will determine whether a powerful figure like Murdoch — who testified in a deposition that he didn’t believe the election-fraud charges — had the influence to keep the accusations off the air.
“Credibility is always important in any trial in any case. But it’s going to be really important in this case,” said Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and the Law at the University of Minnesota.
Kirtley is concerned that the suit may eventually advance to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could use it as a pretext to weaken the actual malice standard that was set in a 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. That, she feels, would be disastrous for journalists.
Dominion’s lawsuit is being closely watched by another voting-technology company with a separate but similar case against Fox News. Florida-based Smartmatic has looked to some rulings and evidence in the Dominion case to try to enhance its own $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit in New York. The Smartmatic case isn’t yet ready for trial but has survived Fox News’ effort to get it tossed out.
Many experts are surprised Fox and Dominion have not reached an out-of-court settlement, though they can at any time. There’s presumably a wide financial gulf. In court papers, Fox contends the $1.6 billion damages claim is a wild overestimate.
Dominion’s motivation may also be to inflict maximum embarrassment on Fox with the peek into the network’s internal communications following the election. Text messages from January 2021 revealed Carlson telling a friend that he passionately hated Trump and couldn’t wait to move on.
Dominion may also seek an apology.
The trial has had no apparent effect on Fox News’ viewership; it remains the top-rated cable network. And there is little indication that the case has changed Fox’s editorial direction. Fox has embraced Trump once again in recent weeks following the former president’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, and Carlson presented an alternate history of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, based on tapes given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Many top Republicans are convinced that the debates — what format they take, who is allowed to participate and how they are designed — will play an outsize role in determining who wins the primary. They may also winnow down the field: Party officials say they are likely to implement thresholds in order for candidates to qualify for the debates; participation in the first debate could include standards like somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 donors and to be averaging at least 1 percent in polls. Those thresholds could increase in subsequent debates, potentially squeezing out lower-performing contenders.
Businessman and author Vivek Ramaswamy, a lower-polling candidate who is heavily self-funding his campaign, expressed confidence during a recent interview with POLITICO that he would make the debate stage, but said he was uncertain whether some others in the race would.
“I think it’s going to be hard for some of the other candidates, especially if they didn’t have an existing captive base to this race and I think we’re not gonna be the ones scraping the edge of the bottom of the criteria,” said Ramaswamy, who is waging his first campaign for elected office.
Another wrinkle is that debate participants will be required to pledge their support for whoever wins the party’s nomination. Trump has refused to do so in the current race, though he did end up saying he would support the eventual nominee during the 2016 contest. It could also prove tricky for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a prospective Trump rival who has said he will never support Trump again, even if he wins the nomination.
“Why would we host a debate stage without every candidate saying, ‘I’m going to support whoever the voters choose’?” McDaniel said during a Wednesday morning appearance on Fox News, where she announced that the network would be hosting the first debate. “It’s about beating Joe Biden, it’s about beating what’s happening with this country right now, and we can only do that united, so we want every candidate to pledge that heading into this process.”
The RNC faces a number of complicated variables as it goes about deciding not just the qualifications for the debate but who should host them and when. And the prospect that mainstream outlets — such as CNN, whose chief executive officer, Chris Licht, has pitched the RNC — could be awarded debates has rankled some in the conservative media world. In recent years, CNN has emerged as a favorite punching bag for Trump and other Republicans, many of whom argue that the network’s coverage has been skewed against them.
Among those weighing in has been Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Scott, who on Wednesday launched a presidential exploratory committee, recently shared an article on Twitter that called for only conservative-leaning outlets to be awarded debates.
“I’m calling for conservatives to hear from our leaders without the media’s biased filter,” Scott wrote.
And Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator and head of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, tweeted after the Fox News debate was announced on Wednesday that he had been “told that CNN and NBC” were “getting multiple RNC debates.”
“Hope that isn’t true!” he added. “But wouldn’t surprise me.”
A person familiar with the debate planning, however, said no decisions about other hosts have yet been made.
Those familiar with the debate process say they expect television outlets to be paired with conservative online platforms as debate co-hosts. For the inaugural debate, viewers will be able to tune in on the conservative streaming platform Rumble. The event will also be co-hosted by Young America’s Foundation, an organization overseen by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. It is not yet clear which moderators will be chosen.
One other element the committee must grapple with is Trump, who has emerged as the primary’s strong frontrunner. During the Fox News-hosted debate in 2015, the former president famously sparred with then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. Trump has had a chilly relationship with the network in recent months, believing that it has given him less-than-favorable coverage while taking steps to promote his likely rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Recently, however, Trump has sat down with Fox News’ evening hosts, most recently Tucker Carlson.
A Trump spokesperson declined to comment on the decision to give Fox News the first debate.
But Trump advisers have privately raised concerns about the August date, with some arguing that it’s too far in advance of the first nominating contests, which are expected to take place in Feb. 2024.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Fox Corp. had asserted since Dominion filed its lawsuit in 2021 that Rupert Murdoch had no official role at Fox News. In its filings, it had listed Fox News officers as Suzanne Scott, Jay Wallace and Joe Dorrego.
But on Easter Sunday, Fox disclosed to Dominion’s attorneys that Murdoch also is “executive chair” at Fox News. The disclosure came after Superior Court Judge Eric Davis wondered aloud during a status conference last week who Fox News’ officers were.
Davis was clearly disturbed by the disclosure, coming on the eve of the trial.
“My problem is that it has been represented to me more than once that he is not an officer,” the judge said.
Davis suggested that had he known of Murdoch’s dual role at Fox Corp. and Fox News, he might have reached different conclusions in a summary judgment ruling he issued last month. In that ruling, the judge said there was no dispute that the statements aired by Fox were false, but that a jury would have to decide whether Fox News acted with actual malice and whether Fox Corp. directly participated in airing the statements.
To Fox attorney Matthew Carter, Davis said: “You have a credibility problem.”
In response, Carter said he believed Murdoch’s title at Fox News was only “honorific.”
“I’m not mad at you,” the judge later told Carter. “I’m mad at the situation I’m in.”
In a statement issued after Tuesday’s pretrial hearing, Fox said, “Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of Fox News in our SEC filings since 2019 and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition.”
It’s unclear whether the judge will take any action in response to the late disclosure. But an attorney for Dominion said he wanted Fox to further explain Murdoch’s role with the network, indicating the issue could come up when the pretrial hearing continues Wednesday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
It was a detente of sorts for some on Fox News — who had shown an eagerness to move on from Trump since his presidency ended. And while it illustrated the circling of the wagons that appears to be in motion in the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision, it also underscores another element of the early 2024 race: Trump’s re-engagement with and re-acceptance among the political press.
Days before the indictment came down, Trump returned to Fox News for an interview with host Sean Hannity after several months away from the network. Prior to then, his campaign had been inviting on his plane some mainstream outlets that Trump routinely castigated as enemies of the people.
All three of the major networks, plus CNN, have traveled with Trump on campaign trips, as have other outlets like Bloomberg, POLITICO, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Axios. Photojournalists from the New York Times and AP have documented Trump’s trips. The former president calls local radio stations in early voting and Super Tuesday states regularly. There have been discussions about interviews with major TV networks. And his team has set up off-the-record dinners with the owners and editors of some mainstream outlets. On at least one swing, he spoke off the record twice with the assembled reporters.
“I think President Trump has completely changed the presidency and even running for president where Americans and the media are accustomed to having elected officials and political leaders who are accessible and transparent and willing to tell the voters what they’re thinking in real time,” said Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump. “You can’t just walk out to a podium, give remarks and walk back into the next room. That’s not how the presidency works.”
Trump has long been obsessed with his media coverage and at times has been known to call reporters to break news about an upcoming event. He has a love-hate relationship with some reporters, calling them “fake news” from the podium and then making pleasantries on his plane, at Mar-a-lago, or in interviews.
But his current blitz is a calculation that a press corps that has pledged to apply a more rigorous editorial lens to him will give him something akin to classic horse race coverage. It’s also a bet that the playbook he used in 2016 can work once more.
Back then, Trump saw media ubiquity as a way to win his party’s nomination. Once more, his campaign sees an upside to giving a broad spectrum of outlets opportunities to ask questions and cover events. Trump gets wall-to-wall coverage and, at times, coverage his advisers view as more fair than some of the negative headlines Trump has received over the years.
That bet had been somewhat complicated by Fox News and Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. The high profile opinion voices at his media companies were critical of Trump around his campaign announcement and seemed poised to cast their lot with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during the GOP primary. The conservative-leaning editorial boards at the Wall Street Journal and New York Post had soured on Trump, and Trump even pointed out he did not appear to be getting the same kind of attention as his likely rival, DeSantis, on T.V.
Trump’s team had also taken note of the frequency with which DeSantis has mostly snubbed mainstream outlets and how he has been extremely selective with interviews. They also said they were aware of some of the behind the scenes groans from the press covering DeSantis about the lack of access they’d received.
But on Thursday evening, Trump allies were pleased with the wave of support and skepticism of the indictment coming from outlets like Fox News, and even from some commentators on CNN.
“There is a lot of sympathy for Trump in the party right now. Fox reflects its viewers’ opinions,” said a Republican operative working on Trump’s re-election effort. “The WSJ ed board and [Steve] Bannon are in agreement — that’s the whole party there.”
There are disadvantages to opening all the windows of Trump world to the public. Trump posts non-stop on Truth Social, where he has made threats of “death and destruction” if he were to be arrested, and has pushed around unverified oppo research on DeSantis. Some aides said they felt a sigh of relief when Trump did not have access to social media, because he wasn’t able to comment on everything going on and remind people of why they grew exhausted by his presidential personality. But for Trump’s followers, the extreme language is the acceptable feature, not the bug.
“If he didn’t, he wouldn’t get enough attention, and people pay attention because of that — even the people who don’t like what he’s saying,” said Louise Negry from Lometa, Texas at Trump’s Waco rally. “They have to listen.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Some uncertainty remained about who at Fox authorized specific broadcasts and what those people knew or believed at the time, Davis continued.
“The Court does not weigh the evidence to determine who may have been responsible for publication and if such people acted with actual malice – these are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” the judge wrote in his 81-page ruling.
Fox reacted to the ruling by insisting that the company is standing up for free-speech principles.
“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” the company said.
A spokesperson for Dominion welcomed Davis’ ruling. “We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” the firm said.
Davis has set jury selection for April 13 and the trial to begin in April 17 in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, assuming that the sides don’t reach a financial settlement in the meantime.
The trial is expected to feature testimony from top Fox personalities including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others. The pre-trial litigation has already uncovered documents showing that the hosts and anchors did not believe many of the charges being leveled on their programs and that, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 race, the company was desperately looking for ways to keep its Trump-supporting viewers from defecting to rivals like Newsmax and One America News.
Dominion filed the suit in 2021, contending that Fox gravely damaged the voting company’s reputation by repeatedly airing false charges about it even after being given details about the misstatements.
In recent court filings, Fox’s attorneys argued that the network wasn’t endorsing the claims leveled by Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but was simply conveying newsworthy statements being issued by important public figures. The judge rejected those arguments.
“Fox dedicates little to its argument on falsity. It claims that ‘[t]he question is whether the press reported the “true” fact that the President made those allegations,’” Davis wrote. “However, falsity refers to the content of the statement, not the act of republishing it. Therefore, the question of falsity is whether the content of the allegations was true, not whether Fox truthfully republished the allegations.”
Davis also said Fox’s reports and interviews often aired the claims without rebuttal or context, further undercutting the network’s arguments.
“The evidence does not support that FNN conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting….FNN’s failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates its reporting was not disinterested,” the judge wrote.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Trump has been ramping up attacks on the likely 2024 contender. On Wednesday, he posted three new videos on Truth Social, the social media company he helped found, criticizing the governor for both his past policy decisions and his falling poll numbers.
The Fox poll was one of a handful released in recent days that show the former president widening his lead over DeSantis. In a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Trump had the support of 47 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, well above DeSantis’ 33 percent. A Morning Consult survey from earlier this month showed Trump with a 54-to-26 percent lead over DeSantis among potential GOP primary voters.
Trump’s growing lead in the polls comes amid a flurry of news over a potential indictment of the former president in a case related to a $130,000 hush money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. Though an indictment appeared imminent earlier this month, it was reported Wednesday that the Manhattan grand jury investigating the allegations isn’t expected to hear additional evidence in the case for the next month.
In the Fox GOP poll, former Vice President Mike Pence drew 6 percent, followed by former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 3 percent each, with other Republicans trailing behind.
The poll also showed President Joe Biden with an approval rating of 44 percent, same as last month.
Fox polled 1,007 randomly selected registered voters from March 24 to March 27. The margin of error of the poll was plus or minus 3 percentage points, though that margin was slightly larger — plus or minus 4.5 percentage points — for the results of the Republican primary ballot.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”
There is no indication, at this juncture, that major Democratic entities are ready to halt their ad buys on Fox News, let alone its many affiliates. But that is partially because few Democratic campaigns or causes are currently spending ad money. In the interim, the Dominion lawsuit revelations have led to louder calls for the party to make a firm break from any involvement with the cable channel, whom they view as functionally a campaign arm for Republicans. Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum have even started calling on the White House Correspondents’ Association — the group of news reporters advocating for press access — to boot Fox News reporters from the briefing room.
“They are arguably the most important entity of the American right and the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, suggesting that The Associated Press include in its stylebook that Fox News is not a news organization. “There needs to be a serious conversation now about whether Fox can continue to be a member of the White House Correspondents Association. Keeping them there seems not to be OK.”
Even with its reputation for airing reliably conservative content, Fox News remains a major player in Democratic politics. More self-identified Democrats consistently watch the network than any other cable channel, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion. And a faction of Democrats sees value in both reaching those voters and trying to persuade the independents and Republican-leaning ones who tune into the channel.
In the 2020 campaign cycle, the network hosted a presidential debate, accepted some $7.4 million in advertising from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to Fox News, according to the tracking firm AdImpact, and held town halls with Democratic primary contenders. While Biden administration officials have selectively chosen to appear on Fox News for interviews, the president’s aides have also sought out opportunities to use the network as a cudgel against Republican lawmakers — whether on economic issues or matters of public safety.
White House officials, for their part, describe their relationship with Fox employees who cover them closely as combative but mostly cordial. But they also view the Dominion lawsuit revelations as a cover of sorts to treat Fox News with a bit more frostiness than other media outlets. Biden aides have privately bristled at news reporters who just weeks ago piled on criticism of the president for side stepping a customary Super Bowl interview with Fox.
“Regardless of any new revelations of media bias and hypocrisy during the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden won the most votes of any candidate in American history because of his vision for the middle class, his message, and his record,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “And anyone who is surprised by such revelations hasn’t been paying attention to — or watching — Fox News lately.”
Bates and others have been trolling Fox of late, including sending a statement to the network for inclusion in a story questioning whether viewers and readers should trust Fox News’ reporting on Biden, citing executives’ reported kid-glove treatment of Trump. The White House statement to Fox was reported by Semafor.
Fox, in turn, accused the White House of resorting to “junior varsity campaign style stunts.”
Other Democrats want the president and his party to react more aggressively. On the House floor, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) teed off on censorship legislation, arguing “it would still be strange to say that Fox News was censoring itself” when it knowingly amplified 2020 election lies. MoveOn, the liberal advocacy outfit, urged cable service chief executives to make Fox News optional. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee called for the White House Correspondents’ Association to remove Fox from the press pool.
Congress’ top two Democrats also weighed in, writing to Murdoch to urge his network to stop spreading false election narratives and “admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.”
Fox News has resisted covering the Dominion lawsuit. But in a statement, a Fox representative said, “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims.”
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
A Dominion spokesperson said in a statement: “The evidence will show that Dominion was a valuable, rapidly growing business that was executing on its plan to expand prior to the time that Fox began endorsing baseless lies about Dominion voting machines. Following Fox’s defamatory statements, Dominion’s business suffered enormously.”
A spokesperson for Fox News said it not only tops competitors combined in the ratings, “but has the most politically diverse audience with more Democrats and Independents watching than either CNN and MSNBC. This is another predictable attack by left-wing groups desperate for attention and relevancy.”
Intermittent lashings of Fox News from the left are not a new occurrence. Democratic politicians from the White House to statehouses have long weighed whether trying to reach the network’s coveted audience is worth the cost of appearing to legitimize the network. Those who advocate for engagement say it’s folly to imagine the channel will have less impact if the party ignores it. Those who call for a boycott argue it makes no sense to push the party’s agenda on daytime airwaves only to find it demonized at night. And increasingly, they think that whatever editorial line existed between its dayside hosts and its bombastic prime time names has become blurrier and blurrier.
As the debate starts anew, several top strategists and communications aides said they believe the Dominion revelations will spur legitimate news organizations to stop treating Fox as one of their own.
“Democrats reached a verdict on Fox News many years ago. The only open question is does the rest of the political media ecosystem treat them as legitimate or not?” asked Eric Schultz, a deputy press secretary under former President Barack Obama. “The latest revelations mostly call into question everybody else’s long-standing defense of the network.”
But even those, like Schultz, who argue that Fox News’ reputation should be permanently tainted by the Dominion suit are reluctant to call for Democrats to completely shut out the network.
“It would be like unilaterally not engaging on Facebook — in many ways a toxic platform but where millions of people get their information,” he said.
James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, said there was no reason to approach the network differently now because of the Dominion lawsuit revelations.
“They get viewers only because they tell viewers what they want to hear or see,” he said. “They want to be brainwashed. They show up at the front door of the cleaners. They leave their brain there — ‘wash and fold and I’ll pick it up.’”
Instead, Carville offered that there was a utility to having the network as a foil, noting that Biden’s White House hasn’t suffered from having Fox News in the briefing room, led by network scion Peter Doocy.
“Sites on the left love when they smack Peter Doocy back,” he said. “And usually, for more than half the people who see it, it’s Fox that looks stupid.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In the trial of voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of parent company News Corp., has admitted that “some of our commentators” have “reinforced” the stolen election narrative. Jeanine Pirro did that, Murdoch said, as did Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo “maybe” and Sean Hannity “a little bit.” The broadcaster itself, said Murdoch, did not confirm these statements.
They thought it was nonsense and yet spread it
Fox News is accused by Dominion of spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud after the lost 2020 presidential election by manipulating Dominion voting machines, thereby damaging the voting machine maker’s reputation.
In short messages and e-mails published in court last week, it became clear that Murdoch and other senior officials as well as the station’s talk show hosts believed the story of election fraud to be nonsense – and yet, in front of the cameras, the crude theses that Trump made and his attorneys, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, continued to gain momentum so as not to lose viewers who would rather not face the truth.
“We treated this as news”
His station has tried to “walk the tightrope between spewing conspiracy theories and clarifying that they are in fact false,” Murdoch said, according to publications at a media tycoon-under-oath hearing last month. “We treated this as the news that the President and his attorneys said so,” Murdoch said.
Pretty best friends: Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. :
Image: Laif
The question before the court is whether Fox News spread this misinformation against its better judgment. According to American law, in the case of a lawsuit against the media for damage to reputation, it must be proven that this was done in bad faith – “with actual malice”. The trial begins on April 17, and the documents that have now been published serve to clarify the evidence.
When asked by a Dominion attorney if Murdoch could have prevented Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani from spreading the false claims on camera, he said, “I could have done that. But I didn’t do it.” Murdoch said it was a “mistake” to invite Trump friend and entrepreneur Mike Lindell to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson show, where he continued to spread the theses about election fraud permit. “In retrospect, we should have criticized that more,” Murdoch said.
Did Murdoch have doubts? “Oh yeah.”
Murdoch’s concessions provide another glimpse into the cynical behind-the-scenes decisions of the network, which had made itself unpopular with its viewers by becoming the first news organization to declare the important state of Arizona for Joe Biden – correctly, as it turned out. Murdoch said he did not bow to pressure from Trump associates, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, to retract the Arizona forecast. When asked if Murdoch’s assessment of the allegations of massive voter fraud was correct, a Dominion lawyer said, “Oh yes.”
Murdoch’s comments contradict Fox News lawyers’ claims that the network never reinforced the voter fraud allegations that Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani made, mostly unchallenged, on the Dobbs, Bartiromo and Hannity shows. Fox News also claimed that the hosts themselves were unaware that the claims made by their guests were false – a fact that has been refuted by the release of numerous text messages and emails in which Hannity and Carlson, for example, questioned these claims and called them “crazy “ designated. Media attorney Lee Levine told the New York Times that this proved to be “a pretty compelling argument that Fox has corroborated the veracity of what was said.”
Murdoch admitted that in a conversation with his son Lachlan, who owns Fox Corp. and Fox News boss Suzanne Scott debated the “direction Fox should be taking” after viewers appeared to have migrated to smaller channels. According to the documents, broadcaster Suzanne Scott said that “we have to be careful not to annoy viewers.”
Trump’s son-in-law received information
Murdoch also admitted to providing Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with confidential information about Biden campaign ads and debate strategies. The documents disclosed in court also show the close cooperation between Fox News and the Trump campaign. Among other things, Trump’s decision to finally remove Sidney Powell from his team was fueled by severe criticism from Fox circles – behind the scenes.
Fox argues that his employees’ skepticism about the propositions put forward by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell was not enough to show bad faith and thereby clear the legal hurdle of a libel suit. Dominion’s lawsuit aims to prevent journalists from reporting on the statements of a sitting president. It violated the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press.
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( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
Paolo Fox horoscope today | Tuesday February 28, 2023 | Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces
PAOLO FOX HOROSCOPE TODAY – Every day there are many Italians who go in search of Paolo Fox’s horoscope predictions, considered a real authority in the field of astrology. Fox proposes his forecasts on TV (in Rai broadcasts such as I fatti tue) or on the radio (on LatteMiele) which are then reported online. But what do the stars predict? Below are the forecasts ofPaolo Fox’s horoscope todayTuesday February 28, 2023, for the signs of Libra, Scorpio,Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius And Fish present online:
BALANCE
Dear Libra, in these hours of late February you have a favorable Moon so take advantage of it to experience emotions to the fullest. As far as work is concerned, there may be an obstacle to overcome but you will be able to do it well. You have all the cards in order.
SCORPIO
Dear Scorpios, according to Paolo Fox’s horoscope for today (Tuesday 28 February 2023), the month is ending and tiredness will make itself felt, with increasing stress at work you may suffer a drop in concentration. Don’t let yourself be discouraged and even love will be ready to smile at you. Courage!
THE TABLE TO CALCULATE THE ASCENDENT
SAGITTARIUS
Dear Sagittarius, it’s time to unfurl the sails of pulling your all out. The closing of the month is ready to give you emotions regarding the sentimental sphere. Excellent period for work too, the time has come to catch up, to recover something unsolved that you have been dragging on for too long.
CAPRICORN
Dear Capricorns, love is booming right now and you will soon have to make important choices for your life but the planets are with you. Take advantage of this excellent transit, but then it’s up to you to give your best and get great satisfaction. Courage, get busy!
ACQUARIUM
Dear Aquarius, according to Paolo Fox’s horoscope today (Tuesday 28 February 2023), the ascent continues, the moment is very positive and the sentimental sphere will go great and will continue to improve. Work? The workplace is also growing sharply, continue to take advantage of the positive flow.
COUPLE AFFINITIES FOR ALL ZODIAC SIGNS
FISH
Dear Pisces, the planets are still on your side, ready to open up new opportunities for you as long as you know how to weigh them. Don’t make hasty decisions. With the Sun and Jupiter in your sign, the time has come to move on and welcome new loves. Great loves.
PAUL FOX’S HOROSCOPE 2023
THE LUCKY SIGN TODAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2023, ACCORDING TO PAOLO FOX
The sign the luckiest among you, according to Paolo Fox’s horoscope today, is that of Capricorn: love is great and it shows. The planets are assisting you, it’s up to you to make the most of this positive moment.
TODAY’S FORECAST FOR ARIES, TAURUS, GEMINI, CANCER, LEO AND VIRGO
THE HOROSCOPE OF THE WEEK: FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 5, 2023
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#Paolo #Fox #horoscope #today #Tuesday #February #Libra #Pisces
( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
