In its lawsuit against Fox News, Dominion Voting Systems (DVS) included very damaging text message excerpts from the top of the organization that seem to clearly show Fox was more concerned with ratings than the truth of their reporting and presentations.
Here is what Google offers for details: Fox Dominion Lawsuit News
It is a big topic. Fox's response to the allegations is sealed until Feb. 27. Fox says context matters and Dominion cherry-picked stuff and omitted context in their court filing.
It should be a standard agreement that context does matter and their statement is valid. And, their context may dispute the 'malice' part of Dominion's claims.
But . . . what might be a context that mitigates the picture those texts paint: truth is secondary to ratings at Fox?
GA
Duck Duck Go is Google? Huh? Seems kind of a Fox News strategy to say it is this when really it is that. What is going on here? Talk about 'Truth'! Or, does context come into the conversation? Just playing around . . .
But, an interesting discovery. Both Duck Duck Go and Google searches revealed no Fox News article on the subject. Why?
On the serious side of answering the only question; "But . . . what might be a context that mitigates the picture those texts paint: truth is secondary to ratings at Fox?" I say 'Yes'!!
I thought about that DuckDuckGo thing. I use it as a search privacy tool and Google as a label for internet searches. DDG uses Bing for search.
Saying 'Google says . . .' is just a lazy habit ;-)
I didn't look hard, but I didn't see any conservative media articles either.
GA
Reading here and there for a few days now I see the complexity of the lawsuit regarding the free speech of the press, malice, and defamation. However, in regard to "truth is secondary to ratings at Fox?" I discovered one article discussing that. I quote below;
"Five days after the election, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch communicated to Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, that the channel was “getting creamed by CNN. Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it,” according to court papers.
Fox News tumbled from first to third in the news network ratings between the Nov. 3, 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, according to the Nielsen company. Meanwhile, thousands of Fox viewers flocked to the more conservative Newsmax, where prime-time viewership shot from 58,000 the week before the election to 568,000 the week after.
The change shook the foundations of a network that had consistently led in the news ratings for the better part of two decades.
Fox roared back into the lead by tacking more sharply to the right after Biden took office. But in the immediate aftermath of the election, there was genuine worry at its New York headquarters.
Almost immediately, the network went on “war footing,” Dominion said, quoting a Fox executive.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer, according to Dominion’s brief. “We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”
Dominion contends that Fox executives made the decision to push false narratives to entice their audience back, and points to claims made by Trump allies like attorney Sidney Powell on programs hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs."
For me food for thought . . .
The article is; "‘Weak ratings make good journalists do bad things’: Fox News panic over Trump’s loss doing bad numbers laid bare in court" by Fortune Magazine on Feb 18, 2023.
https://fortune.com/2023/02/18/fox-news … t-murdoch/
This suit is exactly what we need a return of The Fairness Doctrine, which required news organizations given access to the public airways to tell both or all side of an issue giving equal time to participants.
Thanks, Reagan, for opening the floodgates for what passes for "news" today.
I think the Fairness Doctrine should stay right where it is. But that's another topic.
GA
"A filing in Delaware state court by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the company’s blockbuster lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company contains never-before-revealed vignettes from inside the network in the days that followed the 2020 election.
Text messages, emails and testimony contained in the filing show the outlet’s top executives and hosts casting doubt on former President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, and worrying about how fact-checking those assertions on the air might be received by the conservative media outlet’s massive audience.
Dominion is suing Fox for defamation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages, alleging the network knowingly aired false information about its software based on competitive and political pressure. "
Fox made the decision to cover Trump's claims of election fraud and did report the many claims Trump and many of his associates were offering up.
From what I gleaned is that the talking heads (although emails show did not believe the claims) reported them. However, they seem to have covered themselves with the context in reporting the allegations --- using words such as allegations, and Fox is unable to substantiate. As well as, we put a call into Dominion, and have not received a callback.
Or the best cover ever, I received this from a source. Which we all know can and will be protected by journalists.
Were these journalists offered new reports that did not believe, and were told to push a narrative by Fox? Certainly looks that way. Can the hosts be sued for doing what the network told them to do?
I don't think so, due to the very careful context in reporting they used. Did they slip up and not cover their butts here or there? Perhaps. Can the network come out winning this case just due to the context that it was being carefully reported? Maybe, those hosts offered Trump news in a context that did not claim the allegations could be fully verified.
Was this ethical, IMO, no.
What might be a context that mitigates the picture those texts paint: truth is secondary to ratings at Fox?
They'll have a hard time with that one.
Freedom of the Press has always required the Fourth Estate to be self-correcting. Sometimes it is a slow process, especially when there are entities involved who make a living by playing fast and loose with established principles. And sometimes entities will only self-correct when litigation forces them to. This case, however it concludes, will be studied in journalism schools the same way Watergate and the Pentagon Papers were.
Just a bump to put this thread back in play.
I caught a few blurbs about Murdock's response to Dominion's claims. It doesn't look good for the Fox personalities.
GA
Yup. I'd say for the whole company.
"It was wrong... I could have (stopped it). But I didn't...It is not red or blue, it is green." - Murdoch
Murdoch even spoke to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before Trump supporters would storm the Capitol, about whether to push Hannity, Carlson and Laura Ingraham to say something to effect of "The election is over and Joe Biden won," according to the filing.
According to the filing, Scott told Murdoch that “privately they [the hosts] are all there” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.”
*Also, waiting for the outrage from the right...
Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, “confidential information about [President Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy” in 2020, “providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.
And,
" Fox News accused Dominion of trying to “generate headlines” in a statement provided to Rolling Stone.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, 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.”
On and on it goes . . .
Just to add some 'kick' to the discussion, I think the bones of Fox's 'Free speech' argument are valid. Even though most of the flesh of that argument is rotten, the bones are still right.
GA
Frankly, I don't know about the free speech issue. So, as usual, I poked about finding one article about free speech and defamation. From that, it appears it is very tricky to prove either one. It will be fun to see how it unfolds.
Defamation of Character or Free Speech? (It is a short read)
https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/ci … peech.html
On that journey, I came upon actual court documents that gave clarity, though they are lengthy reads They are from Dominion's website. The actual recent summary judgment filing on Feb 16 is there.
It lays out the whole story. It would be nice to read Fox's petition for a summary judgment. The PDF link is found on Dominion's website.
Dominion seems to be forthright in reporting their cases not only with Fox Broadcasting but the others being sued. They share the actual court documents so there is no media slant. In other words straight from the horse's mouth.
They go back to 2021 with the original filing against Fox. They are PDF documents. Some you can open online, and some you have to download and use a PDF reader like Acrobat.
Dominion Voting - Legal Updates
https://www.dominionvoting.com/legal-up … -dominion/
The next link is also from Dominion's website.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS ABOUT DOMINION (Feb 28, 2023)
https://www.dominionvoting.com/setting- … -straight/
How is broadcasting known falsehoods any different from yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater? Free speech has limitations when it harms others.
Yes, free speech does have limitations. Our legal system has defined those limitations. Telling a non-fire-type lie is not one of them.
My 'bones' comment wasn't about whether the broadcasts were harmful but that the protected right to make them was a constitutional free speech issue. It was also noted that the details and supporting rationales were knowingly wrong—the flesh on those bones was rotten.
GA
We don't know for certain that these lies were or were not "non-fire-type". If you look at Jan. 6 they were. People died.
Back up a step. I'm not saying Fox has a case or that their actions aren't as dangerous as you described. I think they are. Strongly enough to compare them to Pres. Trump's Jan. 6 Mall speech.
I am saying that framing their defense as a freedom of speech issue, as in censoring the press, can be a valid starting point. I don't see any of Dominion's claims as based on that issue. So Fox's defense isn't to the point and I bet the courts won't let them 'get out of the gates' with it.
GA
You may be right. I guess in the coming days, weeks, months we'll see.
One should keep that in mind when considering the litany of falsehoods and fabrications by CNN that have been exposed over the years.
Of course, no one should be taking anything our MSM sites say as anything more than biased information that is suspect.
They are ALL in it for the profit, they ALL cater to corporate interests, they exist to create ratings, create ad revenue, and beat the drum of whatever messaging they promote... progressive, conservative, foreign, federal, etc.
You want the Left side watch MSNBC and CNN.
You want the Right watch FOX or OANN.
You want the Russian slant watch RT, the Arabic slant Al Jazeera, etc.
This is what can happen with unfettered capitalism.
Rupert Murdoch said Fox was bringing in big bucks for allowing the My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, to broadcast his lies. He says what matters is not the color blue or red, but green. Meaning green back dollars, because if Lindell told the truth, they would be losing a big portion of their audience.
I understand, Fox is not carrying any news about about Murdoch, Dominion, or the law suit. So I think their audience is not affected by any of this. They could care less if Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Powell et al. lied to give their audience the narrative they wanted to hear, not the truth about what was happening.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ … ng-systems
In a Jan. 12 email exchange with former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Murdoch said "everything changed" on the day of the riot.
"Trump's troubles multiplying. His businesses now ruined! Who is going to throw a party at one of his golf clubs or hotels?"
He went on: "Could he still resign and get Pence to pardon, then just disappear? Would Mike Pence agree?"
They were lying, they still keep lying, they're complicit... with someone that they believe needed a pardon, uhm?
Still waiting for that context.
More
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald … -rcna73669
It looks like we are getting more 'context.' I saw blurbs today concerning another Tucker Carlson text in the filing. Things aren't looking any better for Fox.
GA
Ryan couldn't have been more wrong. Jan. 6 was inevitable at the moment Trump came down that escalator five years earlier.
Raj Shah (who had served as a senior aide in Donald Trump’s White House for two years before his hiring at Fox as senior vice president of Fox Corp)
Shah and a Carlson producer weighed whether Carlson should devote time in his next show to Powell’s claim that she had an affidavit that would link Dominion to Venezuela.
“Might wanna address this, but this stuff is so f------ insane. Vote rigging to the tune of millions? C’mon,” Shah wrote.
Carlson’s producer, Alex Pfeiffer, responded: “It is so insane but our viewers believe it so addressing again how her stupid Venezuela affidavit isn’t proof might insult them.”
Pfeiffer, who has since left the network, answered that the delicate dance was “surreal.”
“Like negotiating with terrorists,” he added, “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f----- types not saudi royalty.”
________________
On Jan. 3 — three days before the Capitol was attacked by Trump supporters as Congress met to confirm Biden’s win — Shah exchanged text messages with another former White House spokesman, Josh Raffel, who had been primarily responsible for handling communications for Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner.
Raffel flagged to Shah a tweet noting that Trump’s daily schedule now carried with it the vague assurance that the president would make “many calls and have many meetings” and “work from early in the morning until late in the evening.”
“I think what they meant is The President will wake up early and commit many, many crimes including but not limited to obstruction of justice, attempted fraud, and treason in an effort to conduct a coup. Then he’ll fly to a rally in furtherance of the same,” Raffel wrote. (Now a public relations executive in New York, Raffel declined to comment on the text.)
“It’s really disheartening,” Shah responded. “The only clear cut evidence for voter fraud is the failed attempts from Trump.”
These were Trump people, not liberals, not democrats, not moderates... They knew, they know.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he is angry that his private text messages about former President Trump to fellow network employees were made public as part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit facing the company.
In one text exchange with a fellow Fox employee, Carlson said of Trump “I hate him passionately.”
“Oh, let’s see. I spent four years defending his policies and I, I’m going to defend them again tonight,” Carlson said. “And actually, and I’m pretty straight forward, I’m um I love Trump. Like, as a person, I think Trump is funny and insightful.”
“And I said this to Trump when he called me, you know, all wounded about those texts,” he continued. “That was a moment in time where I was absolutely infuriated.”
From a little b%*+h to a pathetic little man. How lovely!
by Mike Russo 18 months ago
This is not only an admission of guilt for Fox News, but also includes Fox News broadcasters, Trump, Guiliani, Sydney Powell, et al.. This can also be used as evidence in Trump's claim that the election was rigged by Dominion. This raises the question, can certain forms of lying be charged as...
by Mike Russo 19 months ago
A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more of the witnesses testifying before itThe 26-member panel also rejected false claims from Mr Trump that the election had been rigged, saying it found "by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took...
by savvydating 5 years ago
Fox News announced Friday that "Shepard Smith would be stepping down from his role as Chief News Anchor and Managing Editor of the network’s breaking news unit and anchor of Shepard Smith Reporting" as of October 11, 2019.Longtime news anchor, Smith, an outspoken critic of president...
by rhamson 14 years ago
With claims of being the "Fair and Balanced" take on reporting and the #1 news network in the nation, are we to believe they have a corner on the truth and spin because of their ratings?
by Kenna McHugh 5 years ago
I had to post this here because it is so cool. CNN reputation is poor for accurate reporting, so finally, the public is catching on. https://www.forbes.com/"...the network saw its prime time lineup drop 26% in April compared to the same month one year ago. CNN's total audience in prime time...
by Susan Reid 13 years ago
By Paul FarhiWhen you have a group of religious leaders taking out an ad in the WSJ demanding that your boss (Roger Ailes)tell you to STOP with the Nazi comments, do you stop? Or do you gleefully continue with your on-air blasphemy? Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 26, 2011; 11:40 PM...
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |