Fox News Sticks to Its Lies

After Rupert Murdoch stated in court that the members of Fox News’ leadership who had disseminated Trump’s fairy tale about a stolen election should be disciplined, some thought that the CEO of the network needed to go. Now Lachlan Murdoch is backing her.

After American media have been speculating for days about which heads will roll at Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, CEO of Fox Corporation, has been explicit about his support for the CEO of Fox News: Suzanne Scott “has done a tremendous job,” he said at an industry conference in San Francisco. “The position of the channel is very strong and doing very well” thanks to Scott and her team, Lachlan Murdoch said. Lachlan Murdoch was speaking for the first time about the scandal surrounding the news network. The parties responsible for it are being accused of hypocrisy and fraternization with Donald Trump’s camp.

Lachlan Murdoch really should have commented on the defamation charges that voting machine producer Dominion is bringing against the network. Instead, he maintained the propaganda with which Fox News knowingly, it seems, transmitted Trump’s fairy tale about a stolen election. The “noise” surrounding the legal proceedings is just a political attack, Lachlan Murdoch said. Fox News continues, in his words, to report “without fear or favor.”

The Moderators’ Lies

There is documented evidence, however, that this is not the case: According to documents presented in court, Fox News moderators knew that the theory about election fraud was “absurd” (Tucker Carlson), “insane” (Sean Hannity), “nonsense” (Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham”), “nuts,” “shockingly reckless” and “unbelievably offensive” (Carlson) to viewers.

At the same time, those at the corporate level noticed that viewers were switching to other networks, such as Newsmax and OAN. Their “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled (Fox News) viewer is looking for,” mused Fox News executive Ron Mitchell. The network had been the first to (correctly) call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden. That’s when the moderators began to lie, saying that there had been “irregularities” with voting machines (Bartiromo), that concerns about the integrity of the election were “legitimate” (Carlson), and that the election was “rife with problems and potential fraud” (Ingraham).

Scott was responsible for that, apparently, according to what Lachlan Murdoch has indicated. She gave instructions to be careful about ”pissing off the viewers.” In light of critical reporting by the network’s own journalists about Trump, she said that she could not “keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers.” To Lachlan Murdoch, she said that it was necessary to “[let] the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” The younger Murdoch had pushed her to stop critical statements about Trump.

Lachlan’s father, Rupert Murdoch, participated in the conversations between Scott and Lachlan, according to documents presented by Dominion. In a hearing for the Dominion case, the elder Murdoch admitted that he had doubted the claims about a stolen election. Leading personnel who had bolstered these lies “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.” That had led to speculation that Scott would have to go, but that is apparently not the case and is easy to explain — after all, she was acting in concert with Lachlan Murdoch. In the meantime, Fox News continues animatedly broadcasting fake news. Tucker Carlson said that “the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy” and that “no honest person can deny it.”