AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
Rupert Murdoch testified under oath that Fox News promoted election lies on air, despite a raft of evidence revealing that many hosts privately knew the claims made by then-President Donald Trump and his surrogates to be false.
Stunning new details emerged in more court documents released Monday afternoon in Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News. As chairman of Fox News, parent company of Fox Corporation, Murdoch is a central figure in the $1.6 billion damages claim against the cable news ratings giant.
According to a copy of the filing obtained by Mediaite, Murdoch admitted in a deposition last month that false election claims were promoted by top hosts at the cable news network.
“They endorsed,” Murdoch said. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight.”
Murdoch said “I think so” when asked if host Jeanine Pirro endorsed the claims. He said Lou Dobbs endorsed the claims “a lot,” and Sean Hannity did so “a bit.”
When asked if he could have told Fox to stop inviting Trump lawyers Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on the air, Murdoch replied: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
Also revealed? Murdoch helped the Trump campaign by providing Biden television ads to Jared Kushner before they were run on Fox News:
The documents allege that initially, Fox News was trying to tamp down election denialism:
But after things started to go south with traditional Fox News viewers unhappy with its coverage, Murdoch met with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch about how to win back viewers. No longer booking Democrats were allegedly part of the strategy:
Fox News released a statement roughly the same time these documents were released that reads:
Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
You can read the entire brief here.
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