A new court filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News revealed that the channel’s highest-ranking executives and most prominent stars privately ridiculed claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite allowing lies about the presidential contest to be promoted on air.
According to CNN, the messages included in the legal filing showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham openly mocked the lies being pushed by former President Donald Trump’s camp asserting that the election was rigged. Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, also did not believe Trump’s election lies and even floated the idea of having Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election.
The court document offers the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.
Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News alleges that the talk network “recklessly disregarded the truth” during the 2020 presidential election and pushed various pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories about the election technology company because “the lies were good for Fox’s business.” While Fox News has denied Dominion’s claims, the legal filing exposes the channel as a right-wing talk network lacking basic journalistic ethics. The legal filing also shows how worried Fox News executives and hosts were about losing viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.
In multiple instances, Fox News executives and hosts expressed worry over the matter and started to crack down on those at the network who fact-checked election lies. In one case, after White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet pushing election fraud, Carlson said he wanted her fired. Heinrich was blindsided reading the details in the legal filing and was not aware of the efforts by top hosts behind the scenes to get her fired.
In another case, when host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press briefing where election misinformation was being promoted, senior Fox News leadership were told such a move presented a “brand threat.”
Despite what appeared on air, Fox News executives and hosts privately criticized the Trump camp for pushing claims of election fraud. Hannity even said Giuliani was “acting like an insane person,” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.” The court filing also revealed that Fox News executives had criticized some of the network’s top talent behind the scenes.
