Analysis | Fox News and the Flight Drug
Even though Fox News executives knew Trump's stolen election was a lie, they remained addicted to this myth for fear of losing viewers.
Rupert Murdoch and his top aides at Fox News knew Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false. But faced with the fear of having their audience flee, their addiction to the ratings turned into an addiction to the lie of the stolen election.
That's according to information that has emerged in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.
The company, which manufactures machines that record votes during elections, intends to demonstrate that the leaders of the television channel have done everything to push the false theory of the stolen election in order not to lose viewers, even if they knew deep down that it was wrong.
It all starts in November 2020, as America eagerly awaits the final outcome of the presidential election. Against all odds, Fox News, media darling of the Republican Party and Trump supporters, is giving Arizona to Joe Biden in its projections. Which, mathematically, would confirm his victory over the outgoing president.
For the right, it's an earthquake, especially since Fox News is the only one of all the channels to give it Arizona. No other channel will follow suit before Saturday, November 7, the date of the effective victory of Joe Biden.
A series of political upheavals will follow, which will ultimately lead to the attack on the United States Capitol, fueled by the stolen election theory invented by Trump and his supporters.
Fox corporate honcho Rupert Murdoch contributed during his testimony in the Dominion lawsuit against his company, to reveal email exchanges between the management of the company.
Because basically, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Those who believe Trump won are either wrong, misled, or willfully ignoring the facts.
Still, when Fox announced Biden's victory in Arizona, Trumpists were distraught and disgusted by this betrayal of Rupert Murdoch's network. As a result, they abandon it and look elsewhere, on the side of continuous information channels like Newsmax and OANN, even more to the right. Fox News loses its feathers and falls to third place, losing its tag as the leader among all-news channels.
So Fox viewers who love Trump refuse to ;abandoning their defeated president, preferring to follow his election-rigged ravings rather than admit defeat.
Within the management of Fox, there is panic, because less audience means less advertising revenue. But the star hosts of the channel have scruples and doubt this theory of the rigged election peddled by Trump, but also by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyer for the former president.
Sidney Powell, Donald Trump's lawyer, built a stolen election thesis using Dominion Voting Systems voting machines.
For this former prosecutor, Dominion machines transformed votes for Donald Trump into votes for Joe Biden. During an interview with Fox News host Lou Dobbs, she put forward a theory that a secret CIA program called Hammer and Scorecard flipped ballots in favor of Biden, but this attempt to fomenting a scandal falls flat.
She then adds by arguing that Dominion Voting Systems would have exploited a special algorithm to manipulate the votes in favor of the Democratic candidate.
Behind the scenes of Fox News, his theories are reacting. We would later discover, for example, that Tucker Carlson, in exchanges with other employees, wrote: Sidney Powell is lying. It's crazy. And he's not the only one to think so, since his colleague, host Laura Ingraham, adds to it.
“Sidney Powell is absolutely crazy. No one will want to work with her. Ditto for Rudy Giuliani.
— Laura Ingraham, Fox News host
As for Sean Hannity, one of the headliners of the evening shows and close to Trump , he's no more convinced: This whole theory that Sidney was putting forward, I didn't believe for a second.
Yet Murdoch's network will become addicted to this drug of election theft. So as not to disappoint their viewers any further, these network heavyweights will try to stop the bleeding by promoting this wacky theory and inviting characters like Rudy Giuliani, ex-mayor of New York close to Trump and supporter of this thesis, as well as Sidney Powell, lawyer for the defeated president.
Their broadcasts will thus serve to fuel the thesis of an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the American democratic electoral system and that of the alleged harmful role of these famous machines used to record and count the votes of voters, manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. .
Fox News host Laura Ingraham during her weekend appearance at CPAC, a conservative right-wing rally where the stolen 2020 election theory led the way.
Evidence of what they say? None! The charade will last for weeks, going from appeal to appeal before courts, sometimes presided over by Republican judges, with however always the same answer: there is no proof of massive fraud as defended by Donald Trump and… the network Fox News.
These attacks prompted Dominion Voting Systems to sue the cable news channel and its Murdoch-owned parent company, Fox Corp, for $1.6 billion. She must counter these repeated claims that she rigged her machines as part of a conspiracy to steal the election from Donald Trump.
This famous lawsuit has lifted the veil on the behind-the-scenes decisions of the management of Fox News regarding this lie of the stolen election. The startling revelations contained in Dominion's legal filings are supported by internal emails, sworn testimony and text messages from Fox News executives and hosts.
Email exchanges between Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson lift the lid on the company's behind-the-scenes publicity over the stolen 2020 election theory.
When Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich, for example, does live fact-checking of a Trump tweet, which repeated Dominion and voter fraud fabrications, Tucker Carlson sends that text message to Sean Hannity.
“Please get her fired…seriously.” What the fuck? I'm really shocked… It has to stop immediately, like tonight. This significantly harms the business. The stock price is falling. This is not a joke.
— Sean Hannity
Through these revelations, we also learn that after the 2020 election, Murdoch finally decided to abandon Trump. We want to make Trump a non-person, the tycoon wrote via email to a former Fox executive, two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising.
But after the November 2020 election, Rupert Murdoch doesn't quite have a free hand. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott reminds him to be careful not to piss off viewers.
We have to guide them, which is not as easy as it looks,” Murdoch wrote to his son Lachlan in another email.
Most Fox News headliners fueled the spread of the lie of the stolen election.
In his deposition, Rupert Murdoch admitted that he had the power to block Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell from appearing on Fox News, to spread misinformation about this alleged voter fraud and falsely accused Dominion of using its machines to manipulate votes.
But when asked if he could have told the Fox News Media CEO and the network's hosts: Stop putting Rudy Giuliani on the air, Murdoch replies: I'm sorry. could have. But I didn't. Even though, behind the scenes, he and others knew that Trump's legal team was spreading lies and even questioning their common sense, according to the deposition.
Since these statements by Murdoch, Trump has launched unbridled attacks on Fox News and takes the opportunity to continue to spread the lie of the stolen election on his Truth Social network.
“Rupert Murdoch should apologize to his viewers and readers for his ridiculous defense of the 2020 presidential election. How many forms of cheating and rigging must he see? He should also apologize to presenters who got it right, and fire those who got it wrong, or who were afraid to speak up (and there were plenty of them!). It's time to get rid of the fake news and tell the tale!
—Donald Trump
More than two years after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump continues to spread his false thesis of the stolen election.
Fox has publicly denied the charges and complained in statements that Dominion attorneys selected citations to build their case. The defamation trial which is scheduled for next April promises to be fascinating, as it is expected to highlight a corporate culture where questionable ideologies are used to line a company's coffers.
This fear that certain facts said on the air would undermine the channel's economic model seems to have really animated a management that sought profit at all costs.
Because the trial will indeed take place because, surprisingly, neither Dominion nor Fox have signaled any public interest in an out-of-court settlement. This is unusual since in general the lawyers of media companies do not want to take the risk of bad publicity.
One of the machines from Dominion Voting Systems, the company that launched a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox.
In an interview with The Hill, Catherine Ross, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who specializes in First Amendment issues, says Fox doesn't seem to have a plausible defense, especially in light of what Dominion discovered.
She adds that you can cover a story like this without giving a platform to people like Sidney Powell. Because when you invite him on your show, you are responsible for his lies if you don't correct them in real time.
In any case, for a few days, CNN, MNSBC and others make these revelations their favorites. But what about the network airwaves at the center of this case that could cost the Murdoch family dearly if Dominion wins their case? It's the most total silence…
