The business model for television network news in the United States is imploding because the advertising revenues from live sporting events, upon which most rely financially, will soon shift to streaming channels owned by the teams and supported by subscriptions. But also accelerating television’s eventual demise are two gigantic defamation lawsuits against the highly profitable Fox News, claiming $4.3 billion in damages. Two companies claim the network defamed them by saying they were part of a conspiracy that stole the 2020 U.S. Presidential election through electoral fraud. And internal Fox News documents have surfaced, as the cases grind through the courts, which are damning and reveal staff knew the stolen election narrative was false but kept viewers in the dark. Another text, written by Fox superstar Tucker Carlson, who publicly supported Donald Trump, revealed his private disdain for Trump: “I hate him passionately. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it [the Trump Presidency], because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
Even Fox’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, in a sworn deposition, said that he knew that the various election-fraud conspiracy theories weren’t just baseless, they were “really crazy stuff”. He also said “if they [his anchors and producers] knew they were lies, they were wrong”. But his network gave lots of airtime to Trump’s “stop the steal” proponents such as lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell as well as Fox advertiser Mike Lindell of My Pillow. Propagandist pile-ons and toxicity before the election led Murdoch’s younger son, James, to quit the media corporation in October 2020. “A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimize disinformation,” he said.
Fox’s legal crisis is not simply another lawsuit, but an existential threat. The network has never been about journalism, but is designed to make billions by attracting eyeballs to its political propaganda, controversy, and sensationalism. Interestingly, Murdoch also owns ethical and accurate media properties such as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which provided insightful coverage of this current Fox legal debacle. On March 12, the WSJ published a series of helpful highlights illustrating the case and the network’s internal operations and attitudes following Joe Biden’s resounding victory:
Murdoch hasn’t thrown Fox’s newsroom and its “journalists” under the bus yet. But the network is at risk. The first lawsuit for $2.7 billion was launched in February 2021 by Smartmatic, a software company that designs electronic voting systems. The second one, for $1.6 billion, was filed March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems, that makes voting machines. Each claim that the damage to their corporate reputations and financial prospects is colossal because of the network’s coverage.
Attempts by Fox News to have these cases dismissed have failed and the Judge who most recently refused to dismiss the Smartmatic case stated: “Even assuming that Fox News did not intentionally allow this false narrative to be broadcasted, there is a substantial basis for plaintiffs’ claim that, at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth.”
If Fox loses, it may lose its broadcast license too or Murdoch may walk. This isn’t be the first time that Rupert Murdoch has allowed a cash cow media enterprise to run amok until it hit a wall. In 2011, he shuttered his dreadful British tabloid, the News of the World, following a hacking scandal. For years, its “journalists” had hired sketchy investigators, bribed police, trespassed, paid photographers fortunes to intrude privacy for shots, and commissioned illegal phone hacks to garner scoops on the rich and famous. But the final straw was when the newspaper by hacked the phone of a missing schoolgirl and published personal details before she was found murdered.
In America, Murdoch has built an empire and gained access to the White House. In 1976, he converted The New York Post into a profitable tabloid and helped Ronald Reagan win New York in the 1980 U.S. Presidential election. Reagan repaid Murdoch by deregulating television networks – he removed the prohibition against ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market then in 1987 vetoed the Federal Communication Commission’s post-war Fairness Doctrine which modulated broadcast coverage and required balanced views. Murdoch capitalized on both edicts and created a powerful media conglomerate of newspapers and Fox News which turned itself into an informercial for Donald Trump, helping him win in 2016.
But defamation cases are ruinous but are difficult to prove. The defense will argue that the channel was covering news, not creating it, and that it’s protected by the First Amendment which guarantees rights to free speech and a free press. But litigants argue these rights were abused and they were defamed and damaged. If Fox loses, the network may disappear and an unfettered streaming, podcast, and subscription model will more quickly replace networks. If Fox wins, falsehoods and inaccuracies will continue to proliferate and damage individuals, entities, and societies without consequences.