Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned colleagues of “the crazies” pushing false election claims on behalf of then-president Donald Trump in the wake of the 2020 presidential race.
NPR reported that a lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems, one of the voting technology companies suing Fox News for defamation over lies regarding the 2020 election, said in a court proceeding this week that Scott issued a warning on election night after the network was the first to call the crucial state of Arizona for Joe Biden.
“We can’t give the crazies an inch,” Scott said, per Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson.
NPR’s David Folkenflik reported Fox’s lawyer did not dispute the account of those remarks:
Fox’s attorney, Justin Keller, did not dispute the remarks attributed by Nelson 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, he made a broader argument against allowing scrutiny of the executives’ contracts, saying that was unnecessary given how many documents the network has already turned over to Dominion.
Fox News declined to comment when reached by Mediaite.
Nelson also alleged that senior Fox executives tried to stop Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo from hosting Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on their shows to repeat false claims about the election.
Those attempts were apparently in vain. Powell and Giuliani repeatedly appeared on Fox after the 2020 election, and made absurd claims that are now at the heart of the two multi-billion-dollar defamation suits plaguing Fox.
As NPR notes, the argument being made by Dominion is that Fox executives knew stolen election claims from Trump and his allies were false, but they allowed them to be aired regardless. That’s a case Dominion needs to make convincingly if they want prove defamation.
Fox, for its part, argues its coverage of the election is protected opinion, and that is was simply covering claims about the election being made by the president and others.
“As we have maintained, FOX News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis,” the network said in a prior statement. “We remain committed to defending against this baseless lawsuit and its all-out assault on the First Amendment.”
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
from
https://digitalalaskanews.com/we-cant-give-the-crazies-an-inch-fox-news-ceo-warned-against-trumps-election-claims/
No comments:
Post a Comment