In recent weeks, evidence has emerged from court filings revealing a split screen between what Fox was portraying to its viewers about the false claims of election fraud and what hosts and executives were saying about them behind the scenes.
, Murdoch argued that Fox as a network did not endorse the claims, but that some of its commentators — Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times did.claims made by Trump and his allies that widespread fraud cost him reelection.
In his deposition, Murdoch said he could have prevented guests who were spouting conspiracies from going on the air, but didn't. “One of the defenses is that even false speech about public figures is protected so long as it is believed by the speaker,” First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said. “But no one at Fox appears ready to say that he or she did believe the assertions ... and there now appears to be substantial evidence that no one there at Fox did so. It's a major blow.”, according to court papers. Laura Ingraham, in a text to Carlson, called her a “nut.” In a deposition, Hannity said he did not believe her theories “for one second.” Nevertheless, Powell was interviewed on Fox 11 times between Nov. 8 and Dec. 10, 2020, according to court papers. Dominion’s lawyers say Fox is arguing that it has no legal responsibility for broadcasting even the most horrible allegations, knowing they are false, as long as they are deemed newsworthy. Fox said Dominion is presenting an extreme view of defamation, one in which the network had a duty not to report the allegations but to suppress them or denounce them as false. “Under Dominion's approach, if the president falsely accused the vice president of plotting to assassinate him, the press would be liable for reporting the newsworthy allegations so long as someone in the newsroom thought it was ludicrous,” Fox lawyers said in court papers.There's a high bar for proving libel — and that's deliberate, First Amendment attorney Lee Levine said. Dominion has to show that a reasonable audience could conclude that someone at Fox was making these allegations, not just the interview subjects, he said. Still, Levine said, Dominion has the strongest defamation case he's seen in 40 years of being involved in the topic. George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, said Fox should cite a lesser-known “neutral reportage” standard that dates back to a court case from the 1970s. It holds that news organizations should not be discouraged from reporting something newsworthy even if there are serious doubts about the truth, as long as that information comes from responsible and prominent sources. But the U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in on that argument, and a number of lower courts have rejected it. It's also not clear that the defense would be legally applicable in the Dominion case against Fox. There is sentiment in Republican circles that the Sullivan standard goes too far in protecting news organizations. DeSantis last month urged the Supreme Court to revisit libel laws, saying they are used to smear politicians and discourage people from running for office. A bill being considered in the Florida Legislature would significantly weaken standards in the state. Trump said last year that the court should consider his own defamationSome media law advocates that the University of Minnesota’s Kirtley has talked to privately, people who are usually eager to support the press in libel cases, are queasy about publicly backing Fox in the voting machine lawsuit. Many see the case as a surrogate to hold Fox and Trump supporters accountable for what happened after the 2020 election, she said. “I don’t think a libel suit is the vehicle to deal with this, and you have to think about what damage could be done to libel law if Dominion wins,” she said.
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