There's an awful lot going on at the moment, with Gary Lineker, the BBC, and the government's cruel asylum seeker plans as well as the Northern Ireland protocol at the top of the list. But not much further down is Rupert Murdoch and his mass media US News channel Fox. If you haven’t been following the story, they’re being sued for defamation by two voting machine manufacturers about lies and mad conspiracy theories that his network spread after the 2020 presidential election. America is famous for litigation and he is no stranger to controversy but these two cases have the potential to cost him billions and blow his reputation apart.
Dominion Voting Inc (DVI) is suing Fox News Network (FNN) for defamation in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that reaches court in Delaware later this month. When the presiding judge refused to dismiss the case in December, DVI was able to obtain emails and messages that went between Fox executives, producers, and programme hosts around the time of the ‘stolen’ 2020 presidential election.
A law professor at Rutgers University, David Folkenflik, has said, “How often do you get ‘smoking gun’ emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?”
In addition, DVI's lawyers were also permitted to question Fox employees, including Murdoch under oath and their testimony has now been published. All of this is now available on a website Read the Filings, published by Media Matters, a media watchdog, cited as a trusted source of information by Fox News' "Brain Room."
I don't suggest you go away and read it all because there are literally hundreds of pages and most of them absolutely damning. It is clear that Murdoch, a friend of Donald Trump for 30 years, and Fox News were pushing the insane narrative about voting machines being used to defraud Trump supporters and shift their votes to Biden. It is just crazy.
Worse, while FNN were broadcasting this nonsense, DVI and election officials were providing plenty of incontrovertible evidence that none of the claims were true, but Fox ignored them even as they continued to give prime-time platforms to mad conspiracy theorists. Hosts like Sean Hannity were endorsing the claims.
Remember, Fox News’ strap line was ‘fair and balanced’ and in polling, they have regularly been found to be America’s most trusted news source. The lawsuit blows a hole in that. The latest filing includes this:
"In short, Fox spread and endorsed one of the most damaging lies in this country’s history:that Dominion was complicit in a massive fraud that rigged the 2020 Presidential Election. Direct evidence demonstrates that Fox knew it was false yet kept airing the allegations even in the face of thousands of communications by Dominion pointing out their falsity and multiple credible sources debunking the allegations in real-time. If this case does not qualify as defamation, then defamation has lost all meaning. This Court should grant summary judgment to Dominion on each element of liability."
That I think sums it up.
But a few things come out of the documents filed so far. In 2020 Murdoch was locked down at home in the UK and unusually, was firing off emails to Fox executives offering his ‘advice’ on editorial lines to take. Normally, he liked to do this in person in which case there would be no written record. What these emails reveal is the way he personally micro-managed his news outlets. I think we can assume he was doing the same here in Britain with The Sun and The Times.
Murdoch is not an 'arm's length' proprietor.
Another website Press Watch looks at the issue of whether or not Fox should be considered a news organisation at all. Journalism's first obligation, they say, is the pursuit of the truth with loyalty to the readers and citizens of the state in which they work as the next highest objective. Fox is clearly none of these things.
Press Watch argues that FNN is something else entirely. They link to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show who said, "Fox News doesn’t believe a word they say ― and neither should you, and neither should the White House Correspondents’ Association."
And on the topic of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), they point out that this body is not controlled by the White House but by the political correspondents themselves. The WHCA should kick Fox out and not sit alongside other honest journalists as an equal, and certainly not as a superior. It would be a big blow.
A Republican political consultant Cheri Jacobus apparently wrote in a New York Daily News opinion column that not only should Fox be stripped of its seat in the WH briefing room – “the chair once held by revered legendary Helen Thomas,” she noted – but should also have its credentials rescinded by the House and Senate Press Galleries.
The Senate Press Gallery usually denies correspondents who are "engaged in any lobbying or paid advocacy, advertising, publicity or promotion work for any individual, political party, corporation, organization, or agency of the U.S. Government."
The court filings also revealed that Murdoch provided Trump’s campaign team with advanced notice of Biden’s ads running on Fox, which looks absolutely terrible for Fox's reputation.
Murdoch’s legal team is struggling to come up with any sort of defence. They have tried something called the doctrine of 'neutral reportage' giving them the right to repeat defamatory claims with impunity but appear to have dropped that. They now argue that the conspiracy lies pedaled mainly by Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell was ‘newsworthy’ and that somehow made it all OK.
DVI says arguing that publishing “newsworthy allegations” is “not defamatory” as a matter of law, defies precedent and logic, and would overturn decades of defamation law.
Murdoch's problem is that he also owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post which were both able to report the bizarre claims of election fraud without defaming either Dominion or SmartMatic - the other company suing him this time for $2.7 billion. At one point in November 2020, Murdoch Senior was emailing Col Allan the NYP’s editor with suggested edits - including correcting minor typos in an editorial.
The editorial eventually appeared under the headline “President Trump, your legacy is secure — stop the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric.” It was clear he knew then it was wrong but FNN continued to broadcast the ridiculous claims for the next two months and all to shore up its MAGA audience which had been falling since Fox correctly declared the state of Arizona for Biden early on election night.
Biden once described Murdoch as the world’s most dangerous man. Nobody has poisoned the journalistic well or done so much damage to democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Most legal experts seem to think he is going to lose badly.
This isn't going to ruin him financially. Fox Corporation in the USA reported revenues of $3 billion for just one quarter last year. The Fox News and Fox Sports part of his empire reported a net income of $308 million for the quarter ending June 30. He can easily afford a few hundred million in damages but the cost to the 92-year-old's reputation will be incalculable.
Bounce back loans
When Tory MPs suggest the Labour Party is cavalier with taxpayer money, it might be helpful to remind them about Rishi Sunak’s scheme to help ‘save’ businesses in danger of going bust during covid.
This item buried on the BBC is fascinating as a detective story but it tells you a lot about the way the government handled billions of pounds. One gang laundered as much as £70m with just £181,600 of the money being recovered.
It's an amazing story.
