Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Fox News, acknowledged that some anchors at the television network supported false claims about the theft of the presidential election in the days after the elections.2020 elections.
Murdoch's statements were made public this Monday after new court documents came to light in the framework of a million-dollar lawsuit againstFox News filed by the voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, as revealed in a note fromNBC News.
In his statement, Murdoch claimed that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and former host Lou Dobbs promoted the falsehood about the theft of the presidential race.
When asked why he continued to allow claims of voter fraud to be made inFox News, the man responded that it was a business decision. "It's not red or blue, it's green," he said.
"Some of our commentators were supportive of [Donald Trump]," Murdoc said, according to information revealed in the dossier. "In retrospect, I wish we had been more firm in reporting it," he added.
The documents also revealed that the Fox president referred to some of Trump's lies about the2020 electionsas "harmful."
Murdoch also confirmed that he could have exerted some control over the network, most notably telling the CEO ofFox News, Suzanne Scott, whowill stop broadcasting Giuliani.
"I could have done it," Murdoch said in court papers. "But I did not".
The presentation of this evidence adds to a growing collection of documents and testimonies, including those of many other senior executives ofFox News andFox Corp., which detail how the network reacted in the hours, days, and weeks following the 2020 election, and how those reactions opened the door for unfounded claims of voter fraud to become a constant topic of conversation.
The new documents come less than two weeks after a declassified court file exposed the communications of many executives, hosts and producers ofFox News who considered the claims about Dominion to be unfounded.
Dominion first sued Fox News in March 2021, seeking $1.6 billion for what it alleged were lies that "deeply damaged Dominion's once-thriving business," the lawsuits said.media.
Fox News has defended its coverage and called the lawsuit "baseless."
Dominion notes in court documents that it tried to get the network's shows, hosted by Dobbs, Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, to hire its spokesman, Michael Steel, to refute allegations of voter fraud, but that its efforts were unsuccessful.
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