The voting machine company Dominion is taking Fox News to court. The TV station claimed in the 2020 presidential election that their computers had been manipulated. The false thesis that ex-President Trump would actually win the election was also spread – deliberately, as broadcaster Murdoch now admits.
The owner of conservative US news network Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, has admitted that some of its anchormen knowingly spread lies about the 2020 presidential election. According to US media, this emerges from court documents that reflect sworn statements by the 91-year-old from the beginning of February.
“Some of our commentators agreed,” the media mogul said, referring to false claims that the election was stolen from then-incumbent Donald Trump. However, he himself had serious doubts about these claims, explained Murdoch. He could have stopped appearances by defeated Trump supporters spreading the lie about voter fraud on Fox after the election, Murdoch said. “But I didn’t do it,” he admitted.
The statement is part of a defamation lawsuit brought against Fox News by voting machine manufacturer Dominion. Dominion is seeking around $1.6 billion in damages in the lawsuit because Fox News disseminated reports of alleged tampering with the voting machines. The TV station’s management invokes freedom of the press and insists that it legitimately treated and reproduced Trump’s and his lawyers’ version as news.
In the trial in a federal court in Delaware, Dominion wants to prove that Fox News intentionally broadcast false news. Fox News is the number one cable news channel in the United States. One of the most popular shows is the evening show by the opinionated conservative moderator Tucker Carlson, who occasionally instigates right-wing conspiracy theories with his theses. In January, his show saw an average of more than three million people per issue.
The court documents show that Fox anchors feared losing viewers’ favor if they didn’t endorse Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. To this day, the Republican untruthfully claims that fraud robbed him of his election victory. A US Congressional inquiry last year made serious allegations against Trump of inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and called for criminal prosecution.
