Fox News and Dominion: Interpretations of the Fox News News Report by B.Baier, Susan Glasser, P. Baker and S. Glasser

According to the new book by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, anchor Bret Baier cited a lot of pressure from Trump’s team to investigate if the Arizona call could be reversed. Fox did not withdraw its projection. The authors also reported that Wallace, the head of news, overruled his election unit and instructed his anchors to not announce that Biden had won Nevada, too.

Scott’s remarks were revealed by the attorney for the voting machine and technology company, who argued that the legal team of 13 Fox News executives should be entitled to their employment contracts. She has served as CEO since 2018. (Dominion is also suing Fox Corp, the network’s parent company.)

In a ruling yesterday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis affirmed that Dominion should receive the contracts – the point of contention in Tuesday’s hearing.

The Fox News Dispatch: Why the Fox News Executives Were Disproved to Vote “Irregular” and “Delicious”

Justin Keller did not disagree with the remarks attributed to Fox News CEO Scott. Nor did he deny that executives sought to intervene in the two programs’ efforts to book Powell and Giuliani even though their claims had been discredited. Instead, Fox’s attorney made a broader argument against allowing scrutiny of the executives’ contract, saying that the network has already turned over too many documents.

Keller pointed to a distinction between a host and a network executive, who are often pre-scripting material for the show, in his exchanges with the judge.

“That person is going to be far removed from the day-to-day operations of editorial control and discretion over the particular channel’s telecast,” he said. The executives whose contracts are being sought include Jay Wallace, Fox News’ president and executive editor, and the executive vice president of prime time programming, among others.

Nelson cited a document obtained from Fox that he claimed talked about almost all of the executives that the company is looking at.

Fox aired false claims that they helped cheat Trump in the election. The jury trial is set to start in April and both sides just filed motions asking for victory. The motions are under seal, meaning they have not been made public.

Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, Dominion has to prove Fox demonstrated “actual malice” to win a defamation case. Either you are broadcasting false and damaging info, or you are ignoring the truth.

No one at Fox would directly comment on Baker and Glasser’s assertions, other than Baier, who released a statement taking some issue with how his objections were framed. One person inside Fox with direct knowledge of its election coverage told NPR that a technical glitch delayed the full White House win for Biden, because one show transitioned to the next at the top of the hour.

In hosting Fox’s first post-election interview with Trump that November, Bartiromo echoed Trump’s disproven allegations of electoral fraud, saying, “This is disgusting, and we cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted.” She told viewers in mid-December that “an intel source” told her that Trump had won the election. Bartiromo, officially designated as a news anchor, never returned to explain on what grounds the source made that statement. (Fox no longer publicly characterizes her as an anchor, which had rooted her in the news side of Fox, as opposed to an opinion host.)

In December 2020, Dobbs contended on the air that Trump’s opponents within the government had committed “treason,” and later suggested any action by a Republican officeholder to uphold Biden’s victory might have been “criminal.” His departure from the network was hastily announced the day after another election software company, Smartmatic, filed its own $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox for defamation surrounding similarly false accusations of fraud. That case is not as far along in the process.

According to the legal team, Fox invoked a reporter’s privilege to shield her from some of the questions that were posed during her deposition. There is a ruling regarding whether the person must return for questioning.

Fox News has repeatedly defended its conduct by invoking the importance of American free speech principles bound up in the First Amendment, saying the Smartmatic and Dominion cases are attempts to chill independent reporting and commentary.

Fox Corp CEO and Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch has taken a seemingly conflicting stance halfway across the globe in Australia, where the media magnate and his family now live. A political columnist for the magazine Crikey accused the Murdochs of being “unindicted co-conspirators” in the insurrection at the U.S. Congress by Trump supporters because of the false fraud allegations and the hyper-charged rhetoric ahead of the planned rally.

In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. He has forced the site to pay out for highly critical commentary several times previously; Crikey says it intends to use the suit as a test case for recent changes in libel law in that country. Media outlets have less legal cover in Australia than they do here in the U.S.

The fate of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News lies, for the moment, in the hands of a plainspoken judge known for his unflinching poker face.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M.Davis has a reputation for trying to temper the anger in the case between the broadcasting company and the voting technology company. Each side repeatedly has accused the other of acting in bad faith.

Joseph Hurley, a criminal defense attorney who has argued before Davis but has not been involved in the case, thinks Cool Hand Logistics would be a good name for the man. “In court, he never shows any emotion, and I mean that in a good way.”

Defaming Newsmax, Fox News, and the First Amendment in the Light of Culhane’s Theoretical “Preliminary Results”

Smartmatic could reasonably have accused Newsmax of defaming the company in statements that did not name it. He said Newsmax “seemingly wants the court to make a hyper-literal reading of every statement.”

Like Dominion, Smartmatic was the subject of false claims that its software had switched Trump votes to Joe Biden. Those claims were broadcast on Newsmax, Fox News and elsewhere.

“Here, Smartmatic’s allegations support the reasonable idea that Newsmax’s reporting was not accurate or disinterested,” Davis said.

John Culhane says that it seems clear to him that the judge wasn’t having any of the Newsmax arguments.

While Culhane, an authority on defamation law, cautions against drawing too strong a conclusion from the Newsmax ruling, he says Davis “is very clear and he’s very step-by-step when it comes to the law.”

In its defense against Dominion, Fox News’ legal team argues the network simply relayed stark claims about national elections, either as “questions to a newsmaker on newsworthy subjects” or by “accurately report[ing] on pending allegations.” As the sitting U.S. president, Trump was among the most newsworthy people imaginable, Fox and Newsmax attorneys each argue.

Smartmatic has sued Fox for $2.7 billion, but that is not as close as the case of the other companies. Fox News was trying to have the smartmatic case against it dismissed, but it was rejected by the New York state appellate court. The ruling dismissed claims against parent company Fox Corp, saying no cause was stated.

Connolly said that an amended complaint would include details of Murdoch’s involvement.

Newsmax has similar legal privileges as Fox’s in New York and Delaware, which allow it to present new allegations without adopting them as true, so that the public can draw their own conclusions.

While he notes the First Amendment protects reporters in order to guarantee a “robust and unintimidated press,” he also states the “First Amendment is not unlimited.” A neutral reportage principle does not protect a publisher who makes false statements in hopes of sparking a personal attack on a public figure.

The stakes could hardly be greater in the two cases. Yet Davis does not seek to amplify his own profile. His court didn’t make a photo of him available for this story. The judge attempts to ensure an air of comity between proceedings, a hallmark of the Delaware legal bar.

In a Feb. 8 court hearing in Dominion’s suit against Fox, Davis apologized to the rival legal teams, saying he had been surprised to re-read an email in which he said he came off as snarky.

He pinned it on the use of a pat phrase. “You know that typical sarcastic thing that judges say?” Davis asked. “‘Tell me if I’m wrong…’ Which means, don’t tell me I’m wrong. It means that I’m making some kind of statement. That was not the reason I was doing it.