Rupert Murdoch admitted some Fox commentators ‘endorsed’ election lies
Murdoch’s sworn testimony was made public on Monday as part of a response by Dominion Voting Systems to Fox’s bid to have a judge throw out the election technology company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit. Dominion has alleged that Fox broadcast comments made by Donald Trump-affiliated lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani that defamed the voting company.
In a particularly explosive part of the filing, Dominion alleges that Murdoch provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with confidential network information about Joe Biden’s ads as well as debate strategy, citing an exhibit that remains under seal. A Murdoch spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegation.
In defense of Fox’s programming during the weeks after the election, the billionaire founder said in his deposition that his network was “trying to straddle the line between spewing conspiracy theories on one hand, yet calling out the fact that they are actually false on the other,” according to Monday’ filing.
“We were treating it as news that the president and his lawyers were saying this,” Murdoch is quoted as saying. But he also acknowledged some regret in Fox’s handling of the on-air claims. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he said.
A previous filing from Dominion made public on Feb. 16 contained evidence that Murdoch did not believe the allegations of voter fraud made by Trump’s attorneys on Fox programs. In the latest filing, Dominion cites Murdoch acknowledging that he doubted the claims from the beginning.
“I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up,” he said in his deposition. “I think that was shown when we announced Arizona,” referring to Fox’s election-night prediction that Joe Biden would win the highly contested state.
Murdoch acknowledged that he had a “long talk” with his son, Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch, and Fox News executive Suzanne Scott, about “the direction Fox should take” after the some once-loyal Fox viewers turned away after the Arizona call.
But Murdoch also described himself as standing up to pressure from the Trump team. When Kushner pushed for him to recant the Arizona call, Murdoch recounted in his deposition that he refused to do so, saying, “Well, the numbers are the numbers.”
In its own filings, Fox News has argued that it never endorsed election-fraud claims made by Powell and Giuliani on shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Sean Hannity, among others — and also insisted that the Fox hosts themselves did not know the claims to be untrue at the time they were made.
Fox argues that communications unearthed by Dominion showing that network executives were highly skeptical of Powell and Giuliani’s conspiracy theories do not suffice to prove that the company acted with “actual malice” — the high standard required to prove defamation — by airing them because those executives were not “responsible” for the baseless claims.
But in the filing on Monday, Murdoch is quoted saying that it was “wrong” to allow MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally, to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show in January 2021, during which he repeated allegations against Dominion. And he acknowledged that he could have stopped Giuliani from appearing on his network “but didn’t.”
The filings also suggest that former House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, a Fox Corp board member, tried to discourage the airing of election misinformation, telling both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch "that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”
Ryan, according to the filing, was “hopeful that the events of January 6 were so shocking that it would help the conservative movement and Fox News move on from Donald Trump” — a sentiment that appeared to have been partially shared by Murdoch.
In an email to Ryan, Murdoch wrote that Jan. 6 was a “wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.” And in an email to a former company executive, he wrote that Fox News was "very busy pivoting” after Jan. 6: “We want to make Trump a non person.”
A key hurdle in pivoting, though, was what the audience would accept. In an email to his son revealed in the filing, Murdoch wrote, "We have to lead our viewers, which is not as easy as it might seem.”
Fox was later than several other television networks to call the election for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, 2020. In a private message revealed by Dominion’s filing, Murdoch told his son, "We should and could have gone first but at least being second saves us a Trump explosion!”
Lachlan Murdoch responded that “I think good to be careful. Especially as we are still somewhat exposed on Arizona.”
The filing also includes an instance in which Lachlan Murdoch expressed displeasure with his news division’s coverage of a Nov. 14, 2020 rally in support of Trump, which he felt was excessively negative.
“News guys have to be careful how they cover this rally,” he told Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott. "So far some of the side comments are slightly anti, and they shouldn’t be. The narrative should be this is a huge celebration of the president.”
In a statement provided on Monday in response to Dominion’s latest brief, a Fox News spokesperson said that 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.”
This is a breaking story that will be updated.
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