Since Dominion sued in early 2021, it has argued that Fox selected rankings and revenue over its journalistic obligation to inform viewers the reality.
Using textual content messages and emails despatched by Fox workers and distinguished hosts like Mr. Hannity and Tucker Carlson within the weeks after the election, Dominion has pieced collectively a dramatic account from contained in the community, depicting a frantic scramble to woo again viewers after rankings collapsed.
On election evening, Fox News was the primary news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — successfully projecting that he would change into the subsequent president. With Mr. Trump refusing to concede that he had misplaced, he and his supporters turned in opposition to Fox, and the community’s rankings fell. Soon, most of the hottest hosts and reveals on Fox started selling the outlandish claims that Dominion machines had been an integral a part of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy to disclaim Mr. Trump a second time period.
The submitting on Monday additionally included a deposition by Viet Dinh, Fox’s chief authorized officer. After Mr. Hannity instructed his viewers on Nov. 5, 2020, that it might be “impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results,” Mr. Dinh stated, he remarked to Lachlan Murdoch; the chief govt of Fox News Media, Suzanne Scott; and Fox’s high communications officer, Irena Briganti: “Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight.”
In his deposition, Mr. Dinh, when requested if Fox executives had an obligation to cease hosts of reveals from broadcasting lies, stated: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”
Lawyers for Fox, which filed its response to Dominion in court docket on Monday, have argued that its broadcasts after the election didn’t quantity to defamation as a result of they had been protected beneath the First Amendment. In court docket filings, Fox has defended its commentary and reporting because the form of work that any journalistic outfit would do by masking occasions and newsmakers which can be indisputably newsworthy.
“A reasonable viewer would have readily understood that hosts were not espousing the President’s allegations themselves, but were providing a forum for the principal architects of those legal challenges,” Fox attorneys stated in a quick filed this month.