Fox News

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.

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.”

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.

Despite recent criticism, the network’s star personalities joined other leading conservatives in denouncing the indictment as politically motivated and a possible cause for unrest.

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.

The network used to be a safe space for the former president. But Brian Kilmeade, Jason Chaffetz and others had tough words for his appearance on Hannity, his first Fox interview in months.

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.”

In the hours and days that followed a missile strike that killed his colleagues, it was uncertain if Benjamin Hall would survive the injuries he sustained during the attack while covering Russia’s war in Ukraine for Fox News. Foreign correspondents is eyeing a remarkable return to the field after a lengthy rehabilitation process — one that has highlighted the dangers journalists covering the ongoing conflict constantly face while reporting from a war zone. Pictured: Hall during a segment on Fox and Friends. His book Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home, was released on Tuesday. (Seth Wenig/AP)

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.

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.

Executives from Fox News, The Weather Channel, Capitol Broadcasting and Bitcentral will explain how they’ve delved into their archives to unearth content for new shows and lucrative licensing opportunities in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 16. Register here.

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 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.

The media regulator was once more adversarial and had various rules it could enforce, but there’s little in the way of expectations it will act about how Fox News misled viewers about the 2020 election.

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.

Amid continuing releases of documents and text messages about how Fox News reported false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch praised Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “Suzanne Scott has done a tremendous job,” said Murdoch, talking about Fox News’ audience and financial performance at a Morgan Stanley investor conference Thursday.