Rupert was deposed this week and his son Lachlan will sit for a grilling as well, as the 2020-related case moves along.
Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Newsmax over the right-wing cable network’s airing of 2020 election lies is scheduled to go to trial in late September 2024, a Delaware judge decided.
Big questions loom in the $1.6 billion trial centered on false election fraud claims Fox aired about a voting technology company.
Judge Eric Davis of Delaware Superior Court has been evenhanded and reasonable, legal analysts say. The defamation suit is his highest-profile case.
With jury selection closed to the media and public, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis announced by Thursday afternoon that the interview process had produced a large enough pool from which to choose 12 jurors and 12 alternates for the defamation trial brought by Dominion Voting Systems. The seating of jurors will begin Monday morning, followed by opening statements from lawyers.
Judge Eric M. Davis has been ruling this week on pretrial motions in Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Already, the litigation has pushed internal workings at the network into the spotlight.
Exclusives
The judge presiding over a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox denied the company’s request Wednesday to hold separate trials — one for Fox News and another for the network’s parent company.
Newly revealed recordings of Maria Bartiromo’s conversations with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others have left a Delaware judge again upset with Fox’s legal team. Judge Eric M. Davis indicated that he would appoint a special master to investigate Fox’s representations to the court, including declarations made in December over the extent of discovery materials that have been produced to Dominion Voting Systems in their $1.6 billion defamation case. Davis said that he was “very concerned” that Fox made it seem as if it had met its discovery obligations.
Attorneys defending Fox in the $1.6 billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over alleged false claims about the 2020 election withheld critical information about the role company founder Rupert Murdoch played at Fox News, a revelation that angered the judge when it came up at a Tuesday hearing. It was not clear whether the development would affect a trial scheduled to begin Thursday with jury selection.
Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier is perhaps the best personification of Fox Corp chief Lachlan Murdoch’s description of Fox News as a network that targets the “center-right.” While his selection of stories and analysts often appeal to conservative sensibilities, Baier presents the news from a journalistic standpoint, covers major developments of the day, and corrects misstatements of facts.
Rupert Murdoch built an empire by giving viewers exactly what they wanted. But what they wanted — election lies and insurrection — put that empire (and the country) in peril.
Star hosts for Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity as well as Lachlan Murdoch may also appear in person at the high-profile Dominion Voting Systems trial, which is set to start April 17.
The upcoming trial in a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News for airing false allegations of vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election will not include testimony about the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Whether Fox executives and hosts heeded the guidance of the network’s esteemed research and fact-checking unit could be pivotal in the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation case.
Fox Is Not A News Network But A Propaganda Outlet
Eugene Robinson: ” ‘Fox News’ is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial. I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes. This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.”
Judge: Dominion Defamation Case Against Fox Will Go To Trial
Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled Friday that neither Fox nor Dominion Voting Systems had presented a convincing argument to prevail on whether Fox acted with malice without the case going to trial. But he also ruled that the statements Dominion had challenged constitute defamation “per se” under New York law. That means Dominion did not have to prove damages to establish liability by Fox.
Dominion and Fox News met but could not agree on $1.6 billion defamation case from bogus 2020 election fraud claims. Experts say a settlement is still possible.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott instructed journalists to not fact-check Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, saying it “has to stop now.” It’s the latest update in the news organization’s ongoing defamation battle with Dominion Voting Systems.
They are among the names submitted this week as potential witnesses by Fox and Dominion Voting Systems, although it doesn’t guarantee that they will appear in court. It still isn’t certain there will be a trial. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is expected to make a summary judgment ruling in favor of either side or to go forward with a trial.
Jim Geraghty: “At issue in the lawsuit is not whether you like Fox News, or whether you think it did a good job of covering Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, or whether Fox employees thought their co-workers belonged in an asylum. At issue is whether any of the potentially defamatory statements about Dominion came from Fox News employees, rather than guests such as Trump, Giuliani and Powell, and whether Fox hosts’ comments were knowingly false statements of fact, rather than expressions of opinion.”
Fox News cut ties with Abby Grossberg Friday, Variety has learned, citing disclosure of privileged corporate information, after the booker and producer for such hosts as Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo alleged in court filings earlier this week that she was coerced by executives into providing misleading testimony in the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has levied against the Fox Corp.-backed outlet.
Dominion’s Case Against Fox Is Weak
William Barr: Victory for the plaintiff would severely weaken the First Amendment protection all news media enjoy.
A lawyer for Ray Epps has demanded that the Fox host Tucker Carlson publicly apologize for “false and defamatory statements” that Epps served as a federal agent during the Capitol attack.
Lawyers for Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems tangled Wednesday over the high bar to prove defamation in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that has embarrassed the conservative network over its airing of false claims related to the 2020 presidential election. The argument is at the heart of each side’s attempt to persuade a Delaware judge that he should grant summary judgment in its favor and avoid a jury trial scheduled to start next month that would focus in part on media protections afforded in a nearly six-decade-old libel standard.
Abby Grossberg, who sued Fox News alleging discrimination and a hostile workplace, says she was “coerced, intimidated, and misinformed” while preparing for her deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case.
A Delaware judge on Tuesday will hear arguments from Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems on why each side believes it should be declared the victor in their closely watched defamation case before the dispute goes to trial next month.
Fox News filed a complaint late Monday in the Supreme Court of New York, seeking to stop Abby Grossberg, a senior network producer and head of booking for star anchor Tucker Carlson, from releasing what it says is privileged information about the cable news network’s defense against a $1.6 billion lawsuit against it filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
Fox News, Dominion to Duel in Court Over Redacted Depositions: Could More Bombshells Drop This Week?
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems will meet in court Tuesday to work out a number of issues ahead of their April 17 trial, a process that may produce a fresh wave of juicy details from depositions whose redacted bits could be unveiled at a Delaware judge’s discretion.
More than a fifth of Fox News Channel viewers are less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed text messages and emails from Fox executives and on-air personalities, according to a new survey. But only 9% of Fox News viewers say they aren’t watching the network as much as they used to, according to research provided exclusively to Variety Intelligence Platform by consumer insights specialists Maru Group. A representative for Fox News said: “There has been no impact to advertising, with no advertisers dropping or pausing,” and confirmed that viewership levels had not been impacted.
In TV guest spots, the Trump-affiliated lawyer injected far-fetched and debunked claims of widespread fraud into the mainstream. Now the decision to keep booking her is at the heart of a $1.6 billion defamation case. (Ben Margot/AP)
Some of the unflattering private messages among the network’s hosts and executives may never become evidence when Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News goes to trial.
Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz said Sunday that the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the network is a “major test of the First Amendment,” just weeks after announcing that Fox would not let him cover the case.
Among thousands of pages of recently released documents related to Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for its post-election reporting, much of what was uncovered may have little bearing on whether Fox will be judged guilty of libel. Instead, the material offers insight into how Fox’s stars and leadership responded at a time of high anxiety and how giving its audience what it wanted to hear took precedence over reporting uncomfortable truths.
There is no question that Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has embarrassed the network. But what matters legally speaking is whether Dominion can prove Fox meets the standard for defamation. And it’s worth combing through the evidence on that thus far.
Everything seems like it’s going great at Fox Corp., except for the fact that everything seems like it isn’t. While speaking at an investor conference Thursday, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch praised his family’s decision to sell off a large swath of cable and studio assets to Walt Disney Co. in 2019, a move that left Fox significantly smaller and focused largely on live TV, mainly news and sports. He even brought up a reference to the 1979 comedy Monty Python’s Life of Brian, in which a small combatant unencumbered with armor or muscle is able to survive a colosseum fight after his larger opponent suffers a heart attack. “We are the little guy,” said Murdoch. “We are going to be the one that survives.” Many interested observers may not be so sure.
Court filings give a peek into how Rupert Murdoch shapes coverage at his news organizations.
In a remarkable series of depositions that have been made available from much-scrutinized litigation between voting-technology company Dominion Voting Systems and Fox Corp., top officers at Fox and its most lucrative subsidiary, Fox News Media, are grilled over whether they have direct responsibility for stories, talent and reporting that airs on Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network. In many instances, the executives say they do not.
