In the heat of the moment, right after Election Day 2020, media magnate Rupert Murdoch knew that the hosts on his prized Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud.
And he did nothing to intervene to stop it.
Instead, Murdoch, the network’s controlling owner, followed the lead of the network’s senior executives in sidestepping the truth for a pro-Trump audience angered when confronted by the facts.
Asked whether he could have told Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. “I could have,” Murdoch said. “But I didn’t.”
That’s the picture that emerges in evidence presented Monday by the voting-tech company Dominion Voting Systems in a blockbuster $1.6 billion defamation suit against both Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp.
Dominion’s legal team is presenting only the evidence it believes will propel its case; Fox Corp. is arguing that the parent company and its top executives are wrongly being held responsible for reporting on the baseless assertions of a president and his advisers.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” according to a statement released by a spokeswoman on behalf of Fox Corp. and Fox News.
The Fox statement called Dominion’s stance “extreme,” citing free speech concerns, and characterized the voting-tech company’s legal position as “a blatant violation of the First Amendment” that would “prevent journalists from basic reporting.”
To counter that defense,…
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