Dominion Defamation Suit Against Fox News

[MT15]

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.

 

[MT15]

Chuck’s post was first about this, I think:

Thread:

 

[MT15]

If the WSJ is suppressing this story - which is a bombshell - they are damaging their credibility going forward.

 

[MT15]

Oh, and I cannot wait for Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald to weigh in on the dishonesty of Fox News. The unethical journalistic practices and the hypocrisy. They will have a field day…..

also:

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

Short thread:

 

[Optimus Prime]

I’ve wondered before here and on PDB over the years if they really believe what they are saying or just playing a role and feeding their base

Now we have a definitive answer

And in true right wing fashion whenever they are caught in a blatant lie or shocking hypocrisy Fox appears to be trying to “First Amendment!!” their way out of this

And if you were sentenced to prison for January 6th what are you thinking knowing that Trump and Fox both knew the election fraud claims were bullshirt?

 

[MT15]

I’ve wondered before here and on PDB over the years if they really believe what they are saying or just playing a role and feeding their base

Now we have a definitive answer

And in true right wing fashion whenever they are caught in a blatant lie or shocking hypocrisy Fox appears to be trying to “First Amendment!!” Their way out of this

And if you were sentenced to prison for January 6th what are you thinking knowing that Trump and Fix both knew the election fraud claims were bullshirt?

It wouldn’t surprise me if those people filed a class action lawsuit against Fox and NewsMax for damages. Surely that will happen.

 

[MT15]

And what was Fox thinking by not settling this before discovery?

 

[SFIDC3]

And what was Fox thinking by not settling this before discovery?

Similar to the party they serve, they are run by narcissistic pyschopaths that think they are above the law.....I sure hope they get what they deserve.....

 

[J-DONK]

And what was Fox thinking by not settling this before discovery?

There is a good chance Dominion refused to settle. A lot of times in these cases, moments like this one are what you want to repair your reputation.

Do all news anchors fixate on the stock price of their employer? Are they getting paid like those $1 salary CEO's who get 30 million in stock every year?

 

[MT15]

I looked at WSJ again today, although I only get it through Apple News, not a subscription. I couldn’t find any mention of the Dominion court finding with its damning texts and emails.

How can a major newspaper ignore this?

Just went to Washington Examiner site - zero mention of this as well. That’s terrible. They had space on their main page for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s response to what Gavin Newsom said about her. But no space for actual texts and emails showing how Fox News lied to their viewer deliberately.

I wonder - did WSJ and Examiner also run with those lies about Dominion?

Edit to add: I finally found a WSJ story, put out yesterday (17th) at 2 PM. Friday afternoon when you want the story to die a quick death, lol.

Fox News Hosts, Executives Raised Concerns About 2020 Election-Fraud Claims Made on the Air, Filing Shows — The Wall Street Journal

Communications from top Fox anchors and executives were made public as part of Dominion lawsuit

apple.news

 

[FullMonte]

I looked at WSJ again today, although I only get it through Apple News, not a subscription. I couldn’t find any mention of the Dominion court finding with its damning texts and emails.

How can a major newspaper ignore this?

Are you really asking how the Wall St Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch can ignore the filings making Fox News, which is also owned by Rupert Murdoch, look horrible?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is slamming his former employer following revelations made in newly-filed court documents stemming from a defamation lawsuit the conservative media giant is fighting.

“I’ll tell ya this, I would never have done what CNN and MSNBC did on Russian collusion or what Fox did on election fraud,” O’Reilly said Monday evening during an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show. “I would rather be fired, I would leave the job. … I am not going to sell out for ratings, ever. And I never have.”..........

MSN

 

[MT15]

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is slamming his former employer following revelations made in newly-filed court documents stemming from a defamation lawsuit the conservative media giant is fighting.

“I’ll tell ya this, I would never have done what CNN and MSNBC did on Russian collusion or what Fox did on election fraud,” O’Reilly said Monday evening during an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show. “I would rather be fired, I would leave the job. … I am not going to sell out for ratings, ever. And I never have.”..........

MSN

Notice the false equivalency? He’s a bum.

 

[Taurus]

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is slamming his former employer following revelations made in newly-filed court documents stemming from a defamation lawsuit the conservative media giant is fighting.

“I’ll tell ya this, I would never have done what CNN and MSNBC did on Russian collusion or what Fox did on election fraud,” O’Reilly said Monday evening during an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show. “I would rather be fired, I would leave the job. … I am not going to sell out for ratings, ever. And I never have.”..........

MSN

Did they laugh him out of the studio?

"Come on, Bill. You're just mad 'cause Tucker's still whoring in the spotlight and you aren't."

 

[Optimus Prime]

If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to how Fox News operates, the recent revelations from a legal filing come as no huge surprise.

From the moment it was founded in the mid-1990s, Fox has been a partisan outlet – very much by the design of its founder, Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and its founding chief executive, Roger Ailes.

It never was the “fair and balanced” news source that its motto claimed. Calling it “conservative” has always been putting things far too mildly; but for a time, it observed a modicum of journalistic standards.

But Fox became much more extreme over the years, moving well outside the journalistic mainstream and turning into a propaganda arm of the US right wing.

As it stoked outrage on immigration, race, vaccines and abortion, it dedicated itself to maximizing market share and seldom letting the truth get in the way.

Through a strange alchemy, it transformed polarization into profits and, in the process, harmed our democracy and culture.

But paradoxically, it is shocking to read the specific details that have emerged from a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems. (The complaint is that Fox allowed damaging lies to circulate about how the election was rigged, with Dominion supposedly flipping votes from Trump to Biden.)

The shock doesn’t come from what these details indicate about the network’s mission; that much we already knew.

But the volume, the specificity, the pervasiveness of how lies about the 2020 presidential election were not just tolerated but encouraged?

All of that would have been hard to believe if it weren’t right there in internal messages and in the deposition testimony that has now been made public.

“It’s a media defense lawyer’s worst nightmare,” author and US Naval Academy professor Jeff Kosseff, told me in an interview this week.

A former first amendment lawyer, Kosseff said he has never seen anything like these revelations and was startled by “the sheer barrage of acknowledgment, from the very top, that the things being said on the air were false”.

He also found it bizarre that such correspondence took place so blatantly and was retained so long in discoverable form……..

And although Fox’s defense attorneys claim such examples are handpicked to create a false impression, the cherry harvest certainly is abundant. (They also insist that the network merely was engaging in free speech, protected by the first amendment and codified in longstanding case law.)………

Will a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit finally stop Fox News from spreading lies? | Margaret Sullivan

Advertising boycotts don’t restrain the rightwing network, but the Dominion lawsuit may succeed in holding them to account

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Bolding mine

Add Fox News to the list

so in typical Trump fashion the only one facing any consequences for the things he's done are the people around him (saying/doing things for his benefit)

Billy Bush on the 'grab 'em by the Pursey' bus - "Trump said the thing, all i did was laugh at the thing - I get fired and my career is ruined and he gets elected president"

Michael Cohen - Crimes committed on behalf (and direction of) of individual A (guess who Individual A is)

His CFO - claims he embezzled millions from Trump but kept his job

100s of people sentenced for Jan 6th

Who knows how many more and now those who testified and lied in this case

===========================
Fox News is in serious hot water.

That’s what several legal experts told CNN this week following Dominion Voting Systems explosive legal filing against the right-wing talk channel, revealing the network’s executives and hosts privately blasted the election fraud claims being peddled by Donald Trump’s team, despite allowing lies about the 2020 contest to be promoted on its air.

While the legal experts cautioned that they would like to see Fox News’ formal legal response to the filing, they all indicated in no uncertain terms that the evidence compiled in Dominion’s legal filing represents a serious threat to the channel.

“It’s a major blow,” attorney Floyd Abrams of Pentagon Papers fame said, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put Fox in a more precarious situation” in defending against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” filing that “clearly lays out the difference between what Fox was saying publicly and what top people at Fox were privately admitting.”.........

Tushnet said that in all of her years practicing and teaching law, she had never seen such damning evidence collected in the pre-trial phase of a defamation suit. “I don’t recall anything comparable to this,” Tushnet said. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at generating unprecedented situations.”...........

‘It’s a major blow’: Dominion has uncovered ‘smoking gun’ evidence in case against Fox News, legal experts say