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Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that he did not step in to prevent Fox News broadcast personalities from spreading baseless allegations from former president Donald Trump and his surrogates that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged.
It is according to excerpts from the deposition involving the chairman of Fox Corp unsealed on Friday as part of a defamation lawsuit against the cable news giant filed by Dominion Voting Systems, a company founded in Toronto.
The unsealed document includes excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked whether he knew that some of the network’s commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — sometimes endorsed claims of election fraud. Murdoch replied, “Yes. He agreed.”
Murdoch’s deposition is the latest filing in a defamation case to reveal concerns at the top network about its handling of Trump’s claims that its ratings plummeted after it called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.
Trump allies such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News and falsely claimed Dominion’s software may have rigged the vote count in favor of Biden. Wild claims about Dominion’s origin story, linking it to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, were also made.
Murdoch was asked at the deposition whether he could request that Powell and Giuliani not be aired.
“I could. But I didn’t,” he replied.
According to multiple U.S. media reports of unsealed depositions, Murdoch also shared an unaired Biden campaign ad with Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner.
Murdoch’s Post backtracks on fraudulent narrative
The filing earlier this month showed a gap between the stolen election narrative that networks aired in primetime and skepticism about the claims raised by stars and executives behind the scenes. In the filing, Murdoch called the internal message “Trump’s myth that the election was stolen.”
Other Murdoch-owned properties do not dispute Trump’s claims. On November 7, the New York Post editorial stated that Trump should “end the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric” and for his advisers to “Get Rudy Giuliani off TV,” but Fox did not follow through.
“If Fox was smart, they would have solved this case because it was a bad thing legally and journalistically,” journalism professor and associate dean of Syracuse’s Newhouse School Joel Kaplan told CBC News in an email interview earlier this month. “That said, they now have a great bond because once they settle down, after releasing damaging information, then they know what they’re doing is wrong.”
Court documents filed by Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuit against Fox News allege that Fox hosts and executives pushed election fraud claims about Dominion voting machines to boost ratings.
Dominion, which has its American headquarters in Colorado, sued Fox News Network and its parent company Fox Corp. for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion in damages.
In order to succeed in the trial, which is scheduled to begin in mid-April, Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that not only were the statements false, but that the Fox defendants acted with malice or disregard for the truth.
Many US defamation cases involving media organizations cannot go to trial because of the high bar for proving actual wrongdoing. Those who are not dismissed by the court are often defined by the accused before the trial, so as not to expose internal deliberations and sensitive company information to further scrutiny.
This happened in 2020, when Fox settled a lawsuit with the parents of Seth Rich after it aired or published a false conspiracy about the murder of a young Democratic organization staffer.
Murdoch’s authority was irrelevant, Fox’s lawyers argued
Dominion’s lawyers contend that executives in the “chain of command” at Fox News and Fox Corp. knowing that the network was spreading “lies it knew, had the power to stop, but chose to continue.”
Furthermore, Dominion said, the judgment in other cases set a precedent that publishers cannot hide behind the fact of false utterances made by non-employees.
Fox News said the statement made by the official representative of the president of the United States was newsworthy, and called the lawsuit an attack on the First Amendment.
Attorneys for Fox Corp. noted in Monday’s filing that Murdoch also testified that he never discussed Dominion or voter fraud with any of the accused Fox News hosts. He said Dominion had produced “zero evidentiary support” for its claim that high-level executives at Fox Corp.
Dominion’s claim that the company should be held liable because Murdoch may have the power to “have no basis in defamation law, would blur the distinction between a parent company and a subsidiary, and find no support in the evidence,” Fox’s attorneys said.
Dominion says the network doesn’t want to undermine its bottom line, as far-right networks like Newsmax and OANN faithfully broadcast claims of election fraud.
‘Stock prices down’
In a filing earlier this month, it was revealed that Fox host Tucker Carlson wanted a Fox reporter fired after he tweeted a fact-check about Trump’s fraud claims.
“It can destroy a company,” Carlson said. “Stock prices are down. No joke.”
Day 68:38 a.mDominion’s election lawsuit could be the ‘civil lawsuit of the century,’ a Washington Post media critic said
In the background of the January 6 Committee hearing, the $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News became a big issue. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for pushing false claims about election fraud that make Dominion the villain. This week, former attorney general William Barr was subpoenaed by the court — a sign that there is a “very serious direction,” according to Erik Wemple, a columnist and media critic for The Washington Post.
The tweet by the journalist was deleted within hours.
The now-dissolved House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol heard that many of Trump’s top advisers, including attorney general William Barr, repeatedly warned that the allegations against him about fraud were false.
Trump administration cybersecurity officials have called the vote “the most secure in American history,” and dozens of challenges to the result have been dismissed, including by several Trump-appointed federal judges.
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