Mike Segar | Reuters
The media’s concern about losing its audience to false information is an understandable reaction. It makes less sense when the concern is caused by the transmission of true information. However, this was the prevailing opinion in the offices foxnews during the weeks after US presidential election 2020 and this was precisely its cause.
It was discovered in lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that provides part of the voting machine for the 2020 general election, which is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation. In the lawsuit, the tech company claims the network “proliferated and supported” part of the narrative promoted by Donald Trump about using its machines to help Joe Biden win the 2020 election.
The lawsuit led to the publication of a a series of conversations between star Fox News anchors and network executives in the days after the election. The exchange shows that the network knew the falseness of the Trump narrative they were feeding and was concerned about the appearance of Newsmax, a rival far-right TV channel dedicated to championing the cause of the election conspiracy.
During Trump’s presidency, the chain turned to support the former president and fed the personality cult created around him. So, when the network was the first to sing about the result from Arizona – the victory of Joe Biden – which in another era would have been a source of journalistic pride, it turned out that it was not what the audience wanted to hear. “Do the managers understand how much credibility and trust we have lost? We’re playing with fire,” Fox anchor Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about accurately predicting a Democratic victory in Arizona. Newsmax, could “be disastrous” for the network.
For Rupert Murdoch, the founder and owner of the network, the conspiracy launched by Trump was “a terrible thing that hurts the whole world,” as he wrote to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. In another message, he called Trump’s narrative “crazy stuff” and warned that it would be “very difficult to credibly argue that it was wrong.” Even so, as he recognized Murdoch under oath in court “Some of our commenters supported it.”
The defense of the information network believes that the basis of the lawsuit is “suspicious”. And that he “always considered the headlines he would generate more than his entity standing up to legal and factual scrutiny.”
Today, Fox found itself embroiled in yet another controversy after House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson an exclusive footage from Congressional security cameras during the attack on the Capitol January 6, 2021
Source: La Vozde Galicia
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
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