When Dominion Voting Systems filed its defamation case against Fox News, the political world may not have been fully prepared for the significance of the revelations. To a very real degree, some observers, many of whom were already inclined to believe the worst about the controversial network, weren’t quite cynical enough about what the public might learn.
Now we know better.
To briefly recap, a recent court filing presented evidence that suggested Fox News promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false, on purpose, in order to placate its audience and make money. We also learned that News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged under oath that some prominent Fox News hosts “endorsed” baseless claims the network knew to be wrong.
And while Fox News has denied all wrongdoing and is vigorously contesting the lawsuit, the hits just keep on coming. NBC News reported overnight, for example, on a series of internal Fox communications, including a text from Jan. 4, 2021, in which Tucker Carlson said he “passionately” hated Donald Trump, even as the host delivered a very different message to his viewers.
The revelation is in hundreds of pages of testimony, private text messages and emails from top Fox News journalists and executives that were made public Tuesday, adding to the trove of documents that show a network in crisis after it alienated core viewers by reporting accurately on the results of the 2020 presidential election. … The messages are blunt and, at times, profane, as hosts and top executives panicked about how to boost their ratings as Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat. The depositions, meanwhile, offer the broadest picture yet of how executives including Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch allowed baseless conspiracy theories to flourish on air.
The materials reached the public late yesterday afternoon, after a judge unsealed the documents, along with parts of some employee depositions.
It’s difficult not to marvel at the disconnect between what people at Fox News were telling each other as opposed to what Fox News viewers were seeing and hearing from the network. Executives and hosts not only rejected Republican conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election as “crazy” and “insane,” they also derided Trump and those around him personally. In a Nov. 19, 2020, email, Rupert Murdoch, for example, appeared to describe Trump and Rudy Giuliani as “both increasingly mad.”
The same communications showed a network divided against itself, with assorted Fox personalities furious with some reporters at the network daring to tell their audience the truth about the election results, even as network lawyers voiced concerns about on-air hosts. Two days after the 2020 election, for example, Fox Corp. lawyer Viet Dinh wrote in an email to other top executives, “Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight.”
It was around the same time that Fox executives made no effort to obscure their support and allegiance to the Republican ticket.
Stepping back, there are a handful of angles to keep in mind. The first is that it’s amazing to see Fox News hosts continue to do what they do, pretending that this scandal isn’t unfolding in the background. It seems difficult to imagine the cognitive dissonance necessary to pull that off, but it’s happening anyway. Second, I’ve seen some questions about whether the network’s audience might rebel in response to revelations like these, but as sensible as that might seem, the truth remains that Fox viewers may not even know about the Dominion suit and the disclosures. Fox isn’t covering the story, and many other conservative media outlets are choosing to look the other way. Third, whether Fox’s viewers care or not, the unfolding controversy is causing problems for the network, raising a question I’d love to know the answer to: Shouldn’t Fox settle this case in the hopes of making it go away? Update: A Fox News spokesperson emailed me this statement: “Dominion has been caught red handed again using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press. We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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