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Rupert Murdoch to be deposed in $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox



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Rupert Murdoch, the 91-year-old chairman of Fox News mum or dad firm Fox Corp, will be compelled to reply questions below oath subsequent week about his community’s protection of the 2020 presidential election.

Murdoch will be deposed on the mornings of Dec. 13 and Dec. 14 as a part of election expertise firm Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, in accordance to a submitting in Delaware’s Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that the community purposely aired false claims about Dominion’s function in the 2020 presidential election to enhance scores and battle off competitors from more-conservative-leaning tv networks.

According to the submitting, Murdoch’s deposition will be performed remotely, by way of videoconference.

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Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for $1.6 billion on March 26 for repeated false claims about election fraud that the community’s hosts and visitors made. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

Rupert Murdoch is the highest-profile particular person to be deposed by legal professionals for Dominion, which has spent the previous few months hauling in community executives, producers and hosts to reply questions on whether or not they knew that claims made about Dominion expertise on Fox’s airwaves had been false. Many of essentially the most egregious feedback had been made by unpaid visitors, together with Donald Trump-affiliated attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, although some had been echoed by Fox hosts together with Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, who now not works for the corporate.

On Monday, Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, sat for an in-person deposition at a regulation agency workplace in Los Angeles. Murdoch is the manager chair and CEO of Fox Corp, and is taken into account to be the doubtless successor to his media titan father. James Murdoch, who was as soon as chief govt of the then-Fox News mum or dad firm twenty first Century Fox however has since reduce ties with the household’s media entities, was deposed on Oct. 25.

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Dominion legal professionals have additionally deposed distinguished Fox hosts together with Sean Hannity, Pirro and Tucker Carlson, in addition to former on-air personalities, together with Shepard Smith. In doing so, legal professionals for the election expertise firm have tried to probe the interior tradition and reporting practices of the highest-rated cable news community. The firm has additionally obtained reams of inner communications despatched by Fox workers and executives.

Suzanne Scott, the chief govt of Fox News, was deposed on Nov. 1, whereas Fox News president Jay Wallace was deposed two weeks later.

Fox News stars questioned by election tech firm in defamation case

Hannity’s Aug. 31 deposition lasted greater than seven hours, in accordance to court docket information. He was requested particularly a couple of Nov. 30, 2020 episode in which Powell claimed that Dominion “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from Trump and awarded them to Biden” and “used the machines to inject and add massive quantities of votes for Mr. Biden.” Dominion had beforehand warned Fox reporters and producers that audits and evaluations had discovered no proof of fraud or miscounting of votes in the election. Hannity aired Powell’s assault on Dominion “despite knowing it was false, and knowing it was coming,” the corporate stated in one court docket submitting, whereas Pirro “hosted Powell and endorsed her statements.”

Fox News has argued that Dominion’s lawsuit is an affront to the ideas of press freedom and that the sum of money being demanded is “outrageous.” The firm’s legal professionals have stated that Fox merely coated newsworthy claims of election fraud made by a extremely public determine.

“There are very few events in the last 50 years in this country that I think are more newsworthy than our president alleging that our entire Democratic system was put on its head by a voting machine company stealing votes,” veteran trial lawyer Dan Webb, who’s representing Fox, informed The Washington Post in August.

“Instead of acting responsibly and showing remorse, Fox instead has doubled down,” a spokeswoman for Dominion stated in a press release Monday. “We’re focused on holding Fox accountable and are confident the truth will ultimately prevail.”

Fox has sought to defend each Hannity and Pirro from sharing “confidential sources and information,” arguing that it’s “a journalist’s right to maintain his confidences.” But Hannity has said in the past that he doesn’t take into account himself to be a journalist, and Dominion has argued that even when they do depend as journalists, there isn’t a such proper when the information is straight related to whether or not Fox acted with “actual malice.”

Neither facet in the case has instructed {that a} settlement in the case may be imminent. If an settlement isn’t reached, a five-week trial in Delaware Superior Court is ready to start on April 17. Fox News is asking for the case to be mixed with an “identical” go well with against Fox Corporation, saying Dominion “should not have two chances to drag Fox through massive, public trials.”



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