As a mountain of evidence behind Fox News’ decision-making comes to light in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network, speculation has intensified as to who might take it.
Fox Corp. executive chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch tried to quell the chatter on Thursday by touting Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott — a target of many theories — and the Dominion case as a politically motivated attack on the downplayed company.
“I think a lot of the noise you hear about this case is not related to law and not journalism,” Murdoch said at the 2023 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco. “And it’s really about the politics, and unfortunately it’s more reflective of this kind of polarized society that we live in today.”
Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit in which Fox News alleged that it deliberately lied about claims of former President Trump’s 2020 election fraud to boost his ratings. Dominion bore the brunt of the falsehoods, with claims that his machines rigged votes to favor President Biden and that the company was set up in Venezuela to help Hugo Chávez.
Fox News said Trump’s claims, even if false, are newsworthy and their reporting is protected by the First Amendment.
Legal experts said Dominion presents some of the strongest evidence they’ve seen in a libel case. Dominion must prove that Fox News acted willfully in a reckless disregard for the truth when reporting Trump’s allegations against the Denver-based voting device maker.
The case will be heard in a Delaware court in mid-April.
While Lachlan Murdoch was not directly asked about Scott’s status, he twice praised her at the Morgan Stanley event when discussing Fox News’ overall performance, which is a dominant no. 1 in the ratings of cable press agencies.
“It’s an honor for Suzanne Scott and her entire team there,” said Murdoch. “You’ve done a great job running the business and building this business. … It’s a tough thing. And I think, you know, Suzanne Scott did a great job.”
Murdoch’s comments on the case were the first he made public following a tsunami of bad publicity that has swept Fox News since the release of testimony and other evidence submitted to the court.
Testimony of Lachlan Murdoch and his father News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch raised eyebrows when both men downplayed their direct involvement in decision-making at Fox News and emphasized that Scott is in charge of the network.
The revelations immediately sparked speculation from media analysts and journalists that they were distancing themselves from Scott.
But Scott also suggested that she isn’t actively involved in every decision made on the network.
“I don’t decide what goes on Fox News,” Scott said in her statement. “I entrust that to the editorial teams and the people who make these decisions about what is shown on their shows. …I have a 15,000 foot overview of all the companies and I don’t go deep into managing programs on the network .
Scott didn’t disagree with the Murdochs’ argument either. She said that while she heavily considers all the input she gets from them, they don’t force network-related decisions on her.
Fox News has circled the wagons in the past when the company came under fire.
In 2016, network figures — including Maria Bartiromo and Martha MacCallum — rallied to publicly support Fox News founder Roger Ailes when allegations of sexual harassment against him first surfaced. Ailes was fired when the evidence in an internal investigation became insurmountable.
There was also speculation that Scott’s status was in doubt in early 2021 as ratings plummeted in the months following Trump’s election defeat. But the Murdochs rewarded them with a new contract, and Fox News partially regained its dominant competitive position in the cable news market by adding more conservative commentary to its schedule.
Scott has been with Fox News for 26 years, starting out as an executive assistant when the network launched in 1996. She climbed to the top spot at Fox News in 2018 and is said to have improved culture at the company following the Ailes harassment scandal.
Source: LA Times