Fox's Murdoch called election fraud claims a 'Trump myth,'

After Fox News called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, and through to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Fox News and right-wing broadcasters Newsmax and OANN broadcast a series of claims from surrogates of Donald Trump regarding the company's voting machines that were never supported by fact.

Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News and falsely claimed Dominion software may have manipulated vote counts in favour of Biden. Wild claims about the company's origin story, connecting it to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, were also made.

Dominion alleges, citing some of the Fox messages, that the network wanted to keep up with the likes of Newsmax and OANN on the electoral fraud claims in order not to lose viewers to those other two networks.

Dominion says it didn't stand by idly at the time, pointing to "over 3,600 separate communications to Fox with at least a dozen separate and widely circulated fact-check emails — each pointing to verifiable third-party information debunking the claims."

Dominion's filing includes dozens of emails and statements in which Murdoch and Fox executives and hosts say that the claims made about Dominion on-air were false.

"Sidney Powell is lying," host Tucker Carlson said to his producer on Nov. 16, 2020, while host Sean Hannity referred to Giuliani as "acting like an insane person" around the same time.

Carlson also lashed out a female Fox reporter who tweeted a fact-check on Trump fraud claims, saying it was "measurably hurting the company" and that she should be fired. The tweet by the reporter was deleted within hours.

Murdoch expressed his concerns for several weeks, telling an executive on Nov. 6, "if Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially and others don't sound the same." The very next day, the Murdoch-owned New York Post editorial board argued that Trump needed to "stop the 'stolen election' rhetoric" and for his advisers to "Get Rudy Giuliani off TV," but Fox didn't follow suit.

The day before the Capitol riot, Rupert Murdoch told FOX News CEO Suzanne Scott, "It's been suggested our prime time three [Carlson, Hannity, Laura Ingraham] should independently or together say something like, 'the election is over and Joe Biden won.'"

It would "go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen," Murdoch wrote. No such statement aired.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/fox-dominion-defamation-suit-1.6752030