If anything could or should (at least in my view) bring down
FOX and their “unfair and unbalanced” and two-faced lying “news” hosts would be this story from Bloomberg News posted via Yahoo News with sworn and documented evidence concerning this
headline story:
“Fox News Pushed 2020 Election
Conspiracy Hosts Called Total BS”
(Bloomberg: February
17, 2023) – A slew of Fox News personalities and executives were aware the
2020 election conspiracy theory touted by former President Donald Trump and his
allies was bogus even as the network broadcast the claims over and over in the
weeks that followed, court records show.
Fox News host Dana
Perino described the theory in texts and emails at the time as: “Total BS,
insane, and nonsense,” (according to court documents made public).
Chris Stirewalt, who
was Fox News politics editor at the time, said in a sworn deposition that he
believed that within days of the election: “There was no way anybody could
think that Donald Trump had really won.”
Sean Hannity, one of
Fox’s biggest stars, sent a text message at the time saying the architect of
the conspiracy theory, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, as: “A f’ing lunatic,” according to the filing. Hannity later testified he “did not
believe it for one second.” (Powell repeatedly appeared on Fox anyway).
The details come from numerous depositions and thousands of
pages of evidence gathered by Dominion Voting Systems Inc., the voting-machine
company falsely accused of rigging the election against Trump. The company’s
$1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News and its parent Fox Corp. is set
to go to trial in April in Delaware.
Fox News said in a
statement that Dominion “mischaracterized the record and cherry-picked
quotes that were presented without key context.”
The vast conspiracy theory held that Dominion flipped millions of votes away from Trump in cooperation with corrupt Democrats, foreign hackers and software linked deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
The
claim then helped trigger the January 6 Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters and remains
part of the former president’s stump speeches as he makes a third run for the
White House.
They Were False.
Laura Ingraham’s
producer probed the claims about Dominion saying about 10 days after the
election: “They were false.”
Dominion retorted in
their filing: “Ingraham herself testified that she has no basis to believe
Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election or
that it is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo
Chavez.”
Dominion also said the internal Fox emails and text messages
support its claim that the network pivoted to coverage of the conspiracy theory
to retain and attract conservative viewers who were upset when Fox became the
first network on election night to call the vote count in Arizona for Biden.
1. Rupert Murdoch wrote to Fox News: “Getting creamed by CNN!”
2. CEO Suzanne Scott, according to the filing
said: “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”
3. Sean Hannity told Fox TV host Steve Doocy that
the network had created a “Major backlash” with the audience, stating: “You
don’t piss off the base.”
Losing Trust.
Fox said: “Dominion’s
court filing takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on
an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record. Dominion has failed
to prove it suffered any financial damages as a result of its coverage.”
According to
Dominion Tucker Carlson texted his producer with a warning about the potential
rise of right-wing competitor Newsmax after Fox News joined others in calling
the entire election for Biden saying: “Do the executives understand how
much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire,
for real .... an alternative like Newsmax
could be devastating to us.”
That’s when Maria
Bartiromo started hosting Powell. She did so despite getting emails from
Powell that cited just one source for her claims, someone who explained that Powell
gets her information from experiencing something “like time-travel in a
semi-conscious state,” allowing her to “see what others don’t see, and hear
what others don’t hear,” according to the filing.
Powell’s source said
in the email entitled: “The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe
it. Election Fraud Info.”
Dominion said in the
filing: “At her deposition, Bartiromo admitted that this email is “not
evidence for Powell’s claims, and indeed was nonsense and inherently
unreliable.”
Dangerous as Hell.
Carlson said in a text after the election that Powell was: “An unguided missile and dangerous as hell.”
Carlson also said privately: “Sidney Powell is lying about having evidence
for election fraud.”
Powell didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking
comment. Even so, Carlson would later host another well-known proponent of the
same conspiracy theory, MyPillow Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell. It
was all part of a pattern of allowing guests to make false claims to beef up ratings,
Dominion says.
This just in from The Hill: Mike Lindell has announced he is suing Kevin McCarthy
about granting Carlson access to about 41,000 hours of surveillance
footage around the time of the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
The DOJ and the
now-defunct House select committee investigating the January 6 attack both
previously expressed an interest in obtaining information from Lindell, who was
a key proponent of false claims that voting machines had been manipulated in
the 2020 election.
Democrats have slammed the decision as a potential security threat for the Capitol.
House Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: “The
apparent transfer of video footage represents an egregious security breach that
endangers the hardworking women and men of the United States Capitol Police,
who valiantly defended our democracy with their lives at risk on that fateful
day.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said: “McCarthy needlessly
exposed the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11. The
footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of
closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected and its
public release would compromise the safety of the Legislative Branch and allow
those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded.”
McCarthy has defended his decision, saying he
previously pledged to release the footage to the NY Times saying: “I promised
that. I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to
the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”
My 2 Cents on that part: McCarthy is flat out wrong – FOX and
especially Carlson have shown that they will edit the tapes to fit their agenda
and skip over the facts which is their SOP and that is wrong by any standard.
Back to main story:
Dominion said: “Privately,
Fox’s hosts and executives knew that Donald Trump lost the election and that he
needed to concede. But Fox viewers heard a different story — repeatedly.”
Murdoch weighed in on the conspiracy theory as he watched an
unhinged November 19, 2020, press conference by Powell and then-Trump attorney
Rudy Giuliani, who attempted to explain the alleged election scheme to
mainstream audiences.
Murdoch said in the
subject heading of an email, according to Dominion’s filing: “Watching
Giuliani! Really crazy stuff. And damaging.”
Murdoch on January 5,
2021, told CEO Suzanne Scott that there had been suggestions that the network’s
prime time coverage should indicate: “That the election is over and Joe
Biden won and that such a statement would go a long way to stop the Trump myth
that the election stolen.”
That didn’t happen.
The heavily redacted filing by Dominion — the so-called motion for summary judgment — asks the judge to grant victory to the company on its defamation claims without a trial based on the strength of the evidence.
Fox News also filed a redacted motion for summary judgment, saying the suit isn’t warranted because the network is protected by First Amendment and was covering valid news regardless.
(I insert: Not if it can be proven that FOX or any media
outlet knew they were lying or reporting false info which in this case seems
pretty clear to me).
* Cite this from my earlier post here: Under the New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) case, the Supreme
Court ruling that has guided libel and defamation claims for nearly 60 years, a
plaintiff like Dominion must show that a defendant like Fox published false
statements with: (“Actual malice: That it was done with knowledge that it was
false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”)
Fox said in their
filing about that reference: “Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform
fully and comment fairly. Some hosts viewed the President’s claims skeptically;
others viewed them hopefully; but all recognized them as profoundly
newsworthy.”
My 2 Cents: Regarding that
last FOX statement above, I give them a big fat “F” for failure, false, fake, foolish,
and fairytale fantasy. Case closed and FOX is going down.
More will follow I am sure
– stay tuned updates will be posted.
Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment