Fox News will be judged by American justice. After the failure of the mediation attempt to find an amicable agreement, the hearing opened on April 18 for defamation in the State of Delaware. Dominion Voting Systems is suing the broadcaster for $1.6 billion. Dominion Voting System machines counted votes in the last US presidential election, in some states where Donald Trump said he was robbed by Joe Biden.
Fox news reporters aired Donald Trump’s accusations of voter fraud at length after Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. with the invasion of the capitol on January 6, 2021.
The American justice will have to determine if the journalists of Fox news diffused the allegations of fraud knowing that they were false. But the battle is off to a bad start for the conservative channel. As part of the legal proceedings prior to the trial, the channel had to reveal numerous emails, text messages and internal memos. The journalists there openly criticize Donald Trump and his allegations of electoral fraud, contrary to the information broadcast on their antenna.
A few days after the election, the United States is still waiting for the end of the vote count. Fox news reaches a spectacular audience. A senior executive, Jeff Collins, praises the editorial staff for historic numbers in an internal memo, according to The New York Times. The channel owes its success to supporters of Donald Trump who follow the course of the election on the conservative channel.
However, on November 7, the American media, including Fox News, announced the victory of Joe Biden. Audiences plummet. Pro-Trump voters don’t want to hear about Joe Biden’s victory, as the Republican nominee challenges the vote count.
Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, is alarmed by the drop in ratings in a November 8 email to Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News, according to the New York Times: “We’re getting slammed by CNN! The presenter of the evening show, Tucker Carlson, suffered the wrath of supporters of Donald Trump, on twitter, who reproached him for not talking about electoral fraud. The presenter takes note.
A few days later, he decides to relay these accusations to recover viewers. “Do we have enough dead people for tonight?” “, he wrote to his producer. Donald Trump’s campaign team claims that votes from deceased people were counted in favor of Joe Biden. This is one of the many – false – arguments put forward by Donald Trump to claim his victory.
During the days that followed, the messages fuse between the leaders and journalists of Fox news on the veracity of the accusations of the Trumpist camp. The chain quickly decides to relay them to recover the hearing, encouraged by the direction.
Except that internal messages published as part of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit show that Fox News reporters were critical of Donald Trump and his allegations of fraud. In an email, Rupert Murdoch writes that Donald Trump’s stubbornness is “virtually a crime”, and that it was “inevitable” that the situation would “explode”, in reference to the attack on the Capitol.
Questions arise within the editorial staff on how to cover the former president. Journalists will choose to support his theses to attract viewers.
Over the next few months, Tucker Carlson modeled his remarks on those of former President Donald Trump. According to a New York Times survey published in 2021, almost half of its programs, out of a hundred, then dealt with the January 6 riots in Washington. The presenter claims that the rioters are peaceful protesters, that there was electoral fraud and that the invasion of the Capitol was orchestrated by the federal police to trap supporters of Donald Trump.
This documentation must be used by jurors in the Superior Court of Delaware to judge whether the television network broadcast the accusations of vote manipulation, knowing that they were false. For Fox News, journalists were exercising their freedom of expression, guaranteed by the first amendment of the American constitution, by reporting the accusations of fraud by the former American president.