Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Murdoch’s remarks were made public in a legal filing as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News. While Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz says he’s been barred by his company from covering Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and he “strongly disagrees” with the decision. The Associated Press has the story:
Fox’s Kurtz disallowed to cover Dominion case
Newslooks- NEW YORK (AP)
Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz says he’s been barred by his company from covering Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and he “strongly disagrees” with the decision.
Kurtz made the announcement on his Sunday “Media Buzz” program, saying he was responding to people who wondered why he wasn’t covering the case.
“It’s absolutely a fair question,” Kurtz said. “I believe I should be covering it. It’s a major media story, given my role here at Fox, but the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about.”
He said he disagreed with the decision, “but as an employee, I have to abide by it.”
With the cancellation of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” last year, Kurtz’s “Media Buzz” is the only remaining cable news program devoted to journalism. Kurtz is a former reporter at The Washington Post and CNN.
Dominion accuses Fox of airing untrue allegations about it in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections, even though many of the news organization’s employees knew they weren’t accurate.
In his deposition, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, rejected that the right-wing talk network as an entity endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. But Murdoch conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted the falsehood about the presidential contest being stolen.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about the talk hosts’ on-air positions about the election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he added.
The filing also revealed that Murdoch referred to some of Trump’s 2020 election lies as “bulls**t and damaging.”
In a Monday statement, Fox News assailed Dominion.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the network said, “as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims.”
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the network added.
Fox says its obligation was to cover newsworthy remarks being made by then-President Donald Trump and his associates.
