Fox News Hypocrisy Exposed Over Donal Trump Presidency

[RAMROD 85,982]

A $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News has pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of the powerful conservative cable network in the days after the 2020 US presidential election. 

Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine manufacturer, alleges that Fox knowingly aired false allegations that their devices helped Joe Biden and the Democrats "steal" the election. 

To make their case, the company has called dozens of Fox executives and journalists to testify in depositions and subpoenaed thousands of pages of their text messages and emails. 

They show the often heated, and sometimes profane, conversations that took place behind closed doors as Fox News, from chairman Rupert Murdoch on down, grappled with Donald Trump's ultimately futile attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

Fox News has had a complicated relationship with Mr Trump over the years. He clashed with the network regularly during the early days of his 2016 presidential bid, but once he won the White House the network's coverage was largely positive - particularly on its evening opinion shows hosted by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others.

In the days after his 2020 presidential defeat, however, it's emerged that many Fox executives and presenters disparaged him.

Mr Murdoch, the Fox News chairman, wrote in an email that the then-US president - and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani - were going "increasingly mad" after election day. 

Mr Carlson, host of the network's top-rated programme, said he hated Mr Trump "passionately" and that his presidency had been a disaster. He predicted that soon his show would be able to ignore the soon-to-be former president.

He also mocked the former president's business enterprises. "All of them fail," he said in a text to his show's producer.

It's the kind of view echoed by Mr Trump's critics - many of whom have frequently been the target of Mr Carlson's ire on his evening programme.

While Fox News presenters were giving Mr Trump and his supporters a platform to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election results, behind the scenes many on the network were dismissing the validity of the allegations and lamenting how the network covered the story.

In November, Mr Murdoch told New York Post editor Col Allan that half of what Mr Trump was saying after the election was both untrue and damaging. 

It was a view echoed by others in the network, including some of the prominent evening opinion hosts who have been publicly outspoken in their support of Mr Trump. Mr Hannity, for instance, said in a deposition he did not believe the election claims by Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell "for one second".

Mr Carlson, in a text message to fellow Fox evening hosts, wrote that her claim that Dominion voting machines stole the election "seems insane to me", adding that Ms Powell was "making everyone paranoid and crazy, including me". 

These parallel opinions - critical in private, tolerant or even supportive in public - has opened Fox News up not only to legal jeopardy, but also to charges of hypocrisy.

Two years after Mr Carlson's documented comments, during a programme that presented new footage from the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, he claimed that "the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy" and that "no honest person can deny it". 

His claims about 6 January prompted derision from the White House and outrage from some congressional Republicans.

The bar for proving a defamation case under US law is quite high. Dominion will have to prove that Fox News knew the election claims were false and that it caused meaningful damage to its reputation and business interests.

This is why what Fox executives and journalists were saying about the network's coverage in private texts and emails - what they believed to be the truth versus what their aired publicly - is so pivotal.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64895964

[Ronald Allen 347]

karma  ....

[ALGAYDO 21,861]

1 hour ago, Ronald Allen said:

karma  ....

Is not Fox News’ boyfriend 

[Guillaume Hamon 4,779]

Isn't it this channel's boss who said it was more about entertainment than real information years ago?

Or I mix it with other BS networks lol?

[SpadesToStart 1,340]

$1.6 billion doesn’t even begin to cover it. All these people should be in jail. 

[A Real Panda 859]

Finally! I once caught my mom watching Fox News and I had to explain to her that it isnt reliable. Its about damn time this fake news channel that only incites hatred and panic get what they deserve.