In a lawsuit moved to federal court Monday, producer Jason Donner said he was part of a “purge” of employees who refused to report only information that would “appease” former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Fox News is facing a new defamation lawsuit from a man who claims that its former host Tucker Carlson falsely identified him as an undercover FBI agent who triggered the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court, the same venue where the network recently faced a lengthy trial over Dominion Voting Systems defamation claims that its hosts and guests amplified a false narrative that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election. Fox News settled the case for $787.5 million.
Jay Johnston, 54, of Los Angeles, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he joined a mob of Donald Trump supporters in confronting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, court records show. A federal magistrate judge agreed to free Johnston on $25,000 bond after his initial court appearance in California. Pictured: This image from Washington Police Department body-worn video, shows Johnston, circled in yellow, at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was not peaceful. It was an abomination,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said as the Hill’s police chief slammed the Fox News host for falsely portraying the attack.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson released the first portion of never-before-seen angles of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Monday. “‘Deadly insurrection.’ Everything about that phrase is a lie,” Carlson said on his widely watched weeknight program. “Very little about Jan. 6 was organized or violent. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed Tuesday to eventually make roughly 42,000 hours of sensitive Capitol Police security videos available to the broader public “as soon as possible,” but made it clear the Fox News commentator had first dibs. The Republican McCarthy is also supportive of giving access to some of the nearly 1,000 defendants being prosecuted for their roles in the siege.
Exclusives
Ruling keeps secret Trump’s efforts to prevent testimony by top aides and law defining the scope of confidentiality of Oval Office communications.
U.S. Congress Democrats accused House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy of endangering Capitol Police officers and potentially exposing security secrets if he releases thousands of hours of video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources say. Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.
Journalists were important players in making sure the country knew what was going on in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, when protestors fired up by President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol threatening to hang Vice President Mike Pence or kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Committee to Protect Journalists pointed out on the second anniversary of the insurrection that journalists paid a price for that role.
Newsmax has broadcast at least 40 false claims or conspiracy theories about the attack since June, when a House committee began televising its evidence about the role former President Donald Trump and his allies played in the day’s events, according to NewsGuard, a tech firm that monitors misinformation.
James Goldston was a longtime producer at ABC News and then its president for seven years. Now, he’s helping congressional investigators retell and reframe the events of Jan. 6, 2021, for a weary and polarized nation.
It’s showtime for the Jan. 6 House select committee. For the last year, the group has been hearing testimony on the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the involvement of then-President Trump as an alleged instigator determined to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Thursday, the findings will get a primetime TV platform, a rarity for such proceedings, with three broadcast networks, the Fox-owned TV stations, several cable networks and a myriad of streaming outlets presenting the opening hours.
Television viewers will find nearly blanket prime-time coverage of a Congressional hearing Thursday on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with the exception of Fox News Channel. The broadcast networks are giving their nightly news anchors the prime position, with David Muir anchoring for ABC, Lester Holt for NBC and Norah O’Donnell for CBS, each starting at or close to 8 p.m. ET.
Latenight hosts poked fun at Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman who complained about not being able to lie to the FBI about Jan. 6.
Fox News Channel Won’t Carry Jan. 6 Hearing And Instead Will Move Primetime Coverage To Fox Business
On Thursday night, most major broadcast networks and cable news outlets are slated to shake up their evening programming grid to show what is expected to be a shocking report from the U.S. House Select Committee, which has spent months investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and what may be coordinated efforts behind it.
The House’s Jan. 6 committee has turned to a renowned former network news executive to hone a mountain of explosive material into a captivating multimedia presentation for a primetime hearing Thursday. James Goldston — former president of ABC News, and a master documentary storyteller who ran Good Morning America and Nightline — has joined the committee as an unannounced adviser.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued subpoenas on Thursday to four major social media companies — Alphabet, Meta, Reddit and Twitter — criticizing them for allowing extremism to spread on their platforms and saying they have failed to cooperate adequately with the inquiry.
Text messages — newly released by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection — between Fox News hosts and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, crystallize with new specificity just how tightly Fox News and the White House were entwined during the Trump years, with many of the network’s top hosts serving as a cable cabinet of unofficial advisers.
All of the news networks carried events marking the anniversary of Jan. 6, albeit with differences in tone and tenor, but by the time of the opinion-heavy primetime hours, there were wildly different characterizations of the significance of attack on the Capitol, ranging from calling it “Trump’s failed coup” to “barely rates as a footnote.”
The Jan. 6 select committee has revealed a series of texts where Sean Hannity privately advised former President Donald Trump before, during and after the assault, and is seeking his insight about what happened in those days. The popular Fox News Channel primetime host hasn’t said what he will do, but he’s slammed the congressional probe as a partisan witch hunt. His lawyer has raised First Amendment concerns about the request.
Stars of the most-watched cable channel continued to downplay the Jan. 6 attack and back Donald J. Trump while criticizing the investigation of the Capitol siege.
Three prominent Fox News anchors sent concerned text messages on Jan. 6 to Mark Meadows, the last chief of staff for President Donald Trump, urging him to persuade the president to take the riot seriously and to make an effort to stop it. Afterward, on their shows, Laura Ingraham spread the false claim of antifa involvement, and Sean Hannity referred to the 2020 election as a “train wreck.”
The first day of a House investigation into the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol featured emotional testimony from four police officers who defended the Capitol and video clips of violence and mayhem. It was shown live widely, but not uniformly, on several television networks. Cable networks CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC carried the hearing, lasting more than three hours, in full. ABC preempted daytime programming to air most of it but not CBS and NBC. Instead of compelling their local stations to carry it, those networks said it was optional.
The crackdown comes amid news of secret subpoenas of reporters’ phones. The first such charge came last week, when 43-year-old Shane Jason Woods of Illinois was charged with engaging in violence on the Capitol grounds Jan. 6, as well as assaulting a law enforcement officer. Authorities say Woods was caught on video knocking down a cameraman.
Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the right-wing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing.
As the historic events unfolded on Capitol Hill during the afternoon and evening of Jan. 6, people around the world tuned into news networks and social media to follow what was happening. The TV networks also harnessed social platforms such as YouTube to share breaking news, videos and more as the Capitol was thrown into chaos.
The National Association of Broadcasters joined in a letter from a coalition of news organizations to federal law enforcement agencies Thursday, saying they wanted more information about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as well as the potential for further violence around the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Fringe social media networks are seeing their user bases swell in the aftermath of last week’s insurrection at the Capitol building and the subsequent banning of President Trump and some of his loudest supporters from Facebook and Twitter.
How The Press Can Hold Trump’s Enablers — And Itself — To Account
Jon Allsop: “The most immediate answer to both these accountability questions is the same: to never forget what happened on [Jan. 6], and to use it as a point of no return. That means no more squeamishness about calling nasty truths—racism, lies, coups—what they are; no more bothsidesism; no more optics chatter; no more blinkered American exceptionalism.”
As new and more graphic videos of the mayhem emerged on social media and TV, the enormity of what happened only deepened.
Correspondents recall last week’s mob attack on the Capitol and the threat to news media.
A number of journalists who were at the Capitol reporting on this week’s insurrection, including NBC’s Kasie Hunt (above), offer their observations and insights from the ground during what was a historic, chaotic, and frankly, sad day for America.
Some 30 million people watched coverage during the day and evening on broadcast networks and the major cable news channels. CNN had its most watched day ever.
Dealing with the shocking breach of the national landmark was a complex task for outlets aimed at Trump’s base, many of whom are suspicious of more mainstream news sources. Most were clear: the violence was indefensible.
Many expressed anger and frustration at the violence at the U.S. Capitol, offering somber monologues that pleaded for unity even as some aimed pointed barbs at those they held responsible for the mobs’ actions.
