A defamation lawsuit against Fox News, the great media mouthpiece of the Republicans, is bringing to light the true state of opinion of the workers of the television network, the leader in prime time, regarding the accusations of electoral fraud propagated without foundation by Donald Trump in 2020. The bad loss of the former Republican president dragged the right-wing media banner beyond good and evil or, at least, above fact-checking. From the statements of magnate Rupert Murdoch, owner of the chain, it is inferred that many of the Fox News spokespersons knowingly spread Trump’s lies, although they later lamented in private, like Tucker Carlson, the star televangelist, who on five occasions he transmitted negative messages about the Republican (“I passionately hate him,” he wrote in a message one of the times). Murdoch has even wondered if the network didn’t go too far in its election coverage.
The Trump affiliation splashes throughout the chain, in a controversy also increased by the exclusive granted by the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Republican Kevin McCarthy, to Carlson, to whom he provided more than 41,000 hours of unpublished recordings of the Capitol cameras during the assault by a horde of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. The broadcast of the first videos, at the beginning of the week, has once again put Carlson on the trigger.
Court documents from the lawsuit filed in 2021 by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News describe nerves within a struggling newsroom dealing with Trump’s claims that the election was stolen. The result is a deep fissure between presenters and opinionologists -in many cases both profiles coincide in the same person- and staff deeply skeptical of Trump’s accusations and even of the misinformation that the chain would have incurred by assuming some dubious facts as true.
In a private text message exchange two weeks after Election Day, Tucker Carlson and his fellow television hosts prime time Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity expressed their discomfort that the network was the first to concede the victory in Arizona to Joe Biden on the same election night, a decision that angered part of the very conservative audience. “We dedicated our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and the fucking Leland Vittert will tear it apart,” Carlson wrote, referring to information provided that same night by two colleagues who are no longer part of the company. Another former worker, who was head of the Washington office on election day, has defined what happened those days as an “existential crisis” of the chain. “In the 22 years that I’ve been linked to Fox, this is the closest I’ve seen to an existential crisis, at least journalistically,” the journalist said during the investigation.
Murdoch himself has been self-deprecating, wondering aloud whether Ingraham and Hannity perhaps “went too far” in their coverage of alleged voter fraud, according to another email included in the exhibits in the defamation lawsuit, for which Dominion is seeking 1.6 billion dollars. The voting record company considered its prestige in question due to statements made by Fox News about the alleged manipulation of its devices to favor Biden.
unpublished images
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
“Is indisputable that leading voices at Fox fed the story that the election was stolen and on January 6, a significant opportunity to overturn the result? maybe they are [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] they went too far too far. It’s great that Sean told you that he was desperate for Trump, but what did he tell viewers about him?” Murdoch rhetorically asked in an email.
The 6,600 pages of court documents released Tuesday show how boiling the Fox News engine room reached on election night on November 8, 2020: for example, the rush to award states to one of the candidates, such as the decisive Arizona, which Biden ultimately took by a difference of about 10,000 votes. The documents show a chorus of voices, from top executives to producers, sharing their doubts about the credibility of the voter fraud allegations. Also on the effect that the assumption of the same would have on the reputation of the chain.
To further fuel the controversy, Fox News aired earlier this week some of the previously unpublished videos of the Capitol assault that spokesman McCarthy provided to Carlson. The Fox News star presenter is a “non-credible” news source, said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, picking up criticism from the Capitol Police themselves about the “misleading and adulterated” image broadcast by the Fox of what happened on January 6, 2021. The department has also warned of the problems for the security of the headquarters of Congress that these leaks could cause.
Jean-Pierre has also echoed previous criticism launched from within the news network itself, in which it is pointed out that Carlson’s programs “are not credible sources of information.” The Democratic Party has gone further, accusing him of diving “into the depths of conspiracy waters” to make the public believe the Capitol storming was not violent, and also targeting McCarthy for sharing those images, which have been requested. in vain by a good number of American media. Fox will continue to broadcast the unpublished material over the next few days.
Subscribe here to newsletter from EL PAÍS America and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region
#Murdoch #believes #Fox #News #covering #Trumps #voter #fraud #theory