Dominion Defamation Suit Against Fox News (1 Viewer)

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    MT15

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    The newest court filing is a true bombshell. Fox Executives’ and hosts’ texts and emails portray a consensus that the stories about the 2020 election being stolen were bunk, completely false, and yet they made a conscious decision to highlight them anyway.

    There is so much coming out that this can use its own thread, as suggested.
     
    CNN)Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims the 2020 election was stolen.
    The revelation is included in a new court filing made available Monday.
    Below is the transcript of the relevant part of the deposition:
    Q. You are aware now that Fox did more than simply host these guests and give them a platform; correct?


    A. I think you've shown me some material in support of that.


    Q. In fact, you are now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election?
    A. Not Fox, No. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria, as commentators.

    Q. We went through Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo, yes?
    A. Yes. C'mon

    Q. Fox host Jeanine Pirro?
    A. I think so.

    Q. Fox Business host Lou Dobbs?
    A. Oh, a lot.

    Q. Fox host Sean Hannity?
    A. A bit.

    Q. All were in that document; correct?
    A. Yes, they were.

    Q. About Fox endorsing the narrative of a stolen election; correct?
    A. No. Some of our commentators were endorsing it……

     

    A new filing in Dominion's mammoth defamation lawsuit against Fox News includes claims that network chief Rupert Murdoch gave former Trump advisor Jared Kushner confidential information about Joe Biden's strategic moves in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
     
    Gertz has a good thread about the filing that was released yesterday:

     
    A Feb. 16 filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit in Delaware against Fox News has kicked up a media firestorm: Outlet after outlet described how internal email and text messages quoted in the document, a filing for summary judgment, showed that network honchos knew that former president Donald Trump’s election-theft claims were lies — and allowed them to air anyhow.

    Yet the filing is filled with frustrating dead ends, the result of the network’s aggressive effort to prevent disclosure of many of the internal communications that came out of discovery in the case, Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News. The black passages in the document raise the questions: What is Fox News hiding? And will those passages ever be unredacted?

    As the Dominion filing makes clear, Fox News executives panicked in the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election. The network had called Arizona on election night for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, a move regarded as treason by the network’s MAGA crowd, which declared viewers would flee to the competition, especially conservative cable news outlet Newsmax.

    So, Fox News tried playing both sides — a little conspiracy-mongering here, a little factual injection there. Anything to hang on to its ratings preeminence.

    ne way the network competed with Newsmax was to host election-denying attorney Sidney Powell and her extravagant claims. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, who appeared multiple times in the Dominion filing, apparently commented on the situation, though the public, for now, doesn’t have the goods:

    1678129211217.png


    Impenetrable black expanses in the filing thwart a complete understanding of what was happening as Fox News faced down a ratings collapse. We do know what happened when White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a stolen election claim made by Trump: Host Tucker Carlson advocated for her firing. Similar tensions arose when anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference at which Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, was inveighing against the election.

    “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto said on air. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”

    At an actual news organization, that sort of quick thinking results in laudatory emails from the bosses. At Fox News, it set off more panic. And in the Dominion filing? A redaction:

    1678129265323.png

    All told, there are about 35 redacted passages in the opening narrative of Dominion’s Feb. 16 filing, a collection of anecdotes that launched a frenzy of negative press for Fox News. Though the redactions are in Dominion’s filing, they are a result of confidentiality designations made by lawyers for Fox News, according to a Dominion filing. Both parties are working under an order allowing them to protect certain discovery materials — sensitive, proprietary, commercially sensitive information, for example — from unrestricted public release. All filings containing such designated material must be filed under seal and appropriately redacted before public release................


     
    A the hits just keep on coming….

    More texts from Tucker Carlson:

    “I hate him passionately…I can’t handle much more of this”—referring to Trump

    “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump on most nights. I truly can’t wait.”

    “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest…but come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”—referring to “the last four years”
     
    So, it makes a bit more sense that Tucker has rushed out his Jan. 6 lies about the hours and hours of tape he got access to - everyone can see there are no bombshells and it’s a bunch of nothing. But he had to distract from the really damning stuff that he knew was coming out in the Dominion court filings.

    Also, there’s so much stuff coming out nearly every day, it’s hard to keep up. This lady hints about some interesting texts:



     
    This guy wrote a nice thread contrasting what Tucker was saying privately in texts and emails with what he was saying on air in the same time frame. Really highlights the hypocrisy.

     
    Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News have exchanged further barbs in the $1.6bn defamation case brought by the voting machine company against the rightwing US cable news network over its broadcast of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.

    In a court filing, Dominion asked a judge to decide the case in its favour because, it said, Fox News had “produced no evidence – none, zero – supporting those lies.

    “This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organisation to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion ‘stolen election’ story.”

    Executives from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, down and top hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have been shown to have derided Trump, his surrogates and the lies they pushed about the 2020 election but to have continued to give them air time, fearing viewers would desert to competing networks.

    In its response to Dominion on Wednesday, Fox News called the suit an “unprecedented effort to punish the press for covering and commenting on the most newsworthy story of the day” and an “effort to publicly smear a media organization just for having the temerity to cover and comment on allegations being pressed by the sitting president of the United States”.

    Fox also accused Dominion of “a blatant violation of the first amendment” to the US constitution, which guarantees press freedom.

    Dominion said Fox News was claiming “a first amendment license to knowingly spread lies” and said: “If Fox cared about the truth that it now acknowledges, Fox would have its top personalities reporting that truth to its audience.

    “Today. If not for Dominion’s sake, then for the sake of the significant percentage of Americans who still wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen – including so many of Fox’s own loyal viewers, who heard it over and over again on Fox’s airwaves.”

    Experts believe the case could prove severely costly for Fox News, even though defamation lawsuits are notoriously difficult to win……….

     
    Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News have exchanged further barbs in the $1.6bn defamation case brought by the voting machine company against the rightwing US cable news network over its broadcast of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.

    In a court filing, Dominion asked a judge to decide the case in its favour because, it said, Fox News had “produced no evidence – none, zero – supporting those lies.

    “This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organisation to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion ‘stolen election’ story.”

    Executives from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, down and top hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have been shown to have derided Trump, his surrogates and the lies they pushed about the 2020 election but to have continued to give them air time, fearing viewers would desert to competing networks.

    In its response to Dominion on Wednesday, Fox News called the suit an “unprecedented effort to punish the press for covering and commenting on the most newsworthy story of the day” and an “effort to publicly smear a media organization just for having the temerity to cover and comment on allegations being pressed by the sitting president of the United States”.

    Fox also accused Dominion of “a blatant violation of the first amendment” to the US constitution, which guarantees press freedom.

    Dominion said Fox News was claiming “a first amendment license to knowingly spread lies” and said: “If Fox cared about the truth that it now acknowledges, Fox would have its top personalities reporting that truth to its audience.

    “Today. If not for Dominion’s sake, then for the sake of the significant percentage of Americans who still wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen – including so many of Fox’s own loyal viewers, who heard it over and over again on Fox’s airwaves.”

    Experts believe the case could prove severely costly for Fox News, even though defamation lawsuits are notoriously difficult to win……….


    As I understand it, Fox's main defense is that they weren't lying to hurt Dominion. They were lying to boost ratings.

    "See!? No malice! We never gave fork one about Dominion!"
     
    Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News have exchanged further barbs in the $1.6bn defamation case brought by the voting machine company against the rightwing US cable news network over its broadcast of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.

    In a court filing, Dominion asked a judge to decide the case in its favour because, it said, Fox News had “produced no evidence – none, zero – supporting those lies.

    “This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organisation to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion ‘stolen election’ story.”

    Executives from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, down and top hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have been shown to have derided Trump, his surrogates and the lies they pushed about the 2020 election but to have continued to give them air time, fearing viewers would desert to competing networks.

    In its response to Dominion on Wednesday, Fox News called the suit an “unprecedented effort to punish the press for covering and commenting on the most newsworthy story of the day” and an “effort to publicly smear a media organization just for having the temerity to cover and comment on allegations being pressed by the sitting president of the United States”.

    Fox also accused Dominion of “a blatant violation of the first amendment” to the US constitution, which guarantees press freedom.

    Dominion said Fox News was claiming “a first amendment license to knowingly spread lies” and said: “If Fox cared about the truth that it now acknowledges, Fox would have its top personalities reporting that truth to its audience.

    “Today. If not for Dominion’s sake, then for the sake of the significant percentage of Americans who still wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen – including so many of Fox’s own loyal viewers, who heard it over and over again on Fox’s airwaves.”

    Experts believe the case could prove severely costly for Fox News, even though defamation lawsuits are notoriously difficult to win……….


    If Dominion doesn't win this lawsuit, then defamation laws are worthless and pointless.
     
    If Dominion doesn't win this lawsuit, then defamation laws are worthless and pointless.

    Yup, would like to get Chuck's thoughts.....it seems malice shouldn't be so difficult to prove as the defendants were caught red-handed knowingly lying and admitting they were lying because....ratings.....
     
    I don't know why the Democrats and the corporate media aren't paying attention the real American censorship going on here.

     

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