Dominion lawsuit is just the start as Fox faces losing friends – and viewers


The $1.6bn lawsuit brought by voting company Dominion against Fox News has done more than threaten the rightwing channel with a historic financial penalty.To get more news about dominion, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

In recent weeks Fox News has also found itself thoroughly, and publicly, embarrassed, as internal messages have revealed not just the extent to which the organization attempted to ignore the actual news in its coverage of the 2020 election, but also the contempt many people within the organization have for Fox News viewers.But whether Fox News wins or loses the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion – a court hearing is set for 21 March, and a trial is scheduled to start on 17 April – more suffering is likely to come, on multiple fronts.

There’s some evidence that Fox News’s legendary hold over the Republican party is on the wane, and even speculation that the Murdoch family’s position atop the Fox conglomerate could be at risk.

The channel, which was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1996, has become arguably the most influential media operation in American political history, holding huge sway over the Republican party while maintaining a reputation as a news organization.

But the disclosures released as part of Dominion’s suit have put that balance at risk. Dominion lawyers allege Fox News went out of its way to prop up false allegations of fraud, in what appears to have been a concerted effort to prop up the Republican party at the expense of reporting facts.

Messages from the likes of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Fox News’s two biggest stars, showed that many within Fox News did not believe Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, even as people on the channel continued to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the result.

Rupert Murdoch himself, in a deposition as part of the lawsuit, admitted that several Fox News hosts, including Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, “were endorsing” the lie that the election was stolen from Trump, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

“What we’ve seen is a keyhole view into how Fox operates,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a watchdog group.“What makes all of this so disturbing is that this is about power,” he said. “And Fox News at its core is actually a political operation that is designed to give power to the Murdochs.”

The exposure of Fox News’s internal workings will weaken its reputation as a news organization, Carusone said, and should the channel and its owner, Fox Corporation, lose the Dominion case, there could be immediate financial consequences.

“If they lose the case I think it’s going to be really significant. One, it makes shareholder litigation a certainty. Two, it puts Murdoch control of the company in jeopardy.”
At least four firms, including Kehoe, which has previously involved in a lawsuit against Bank of America, and Scott+Scott, which was part of a $310m settlement from Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2020, have made public appeals for shareholders to approach them to potentially sue Fox Corporation directors and officers for allegedly breaching “their fiduciary duties to Fox and its shareholders”.

Allen & Co. Holds Its Annual Sun Valley Conference In Idaho
SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 11: Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive officer of Fox Corporation and co-chairman of News Corp, attends the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 11, 2019 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Every July, some of the world's most wealthy and powerful business people from the media, finance, and technology spheres converge at the Rupert Murdoch currently serves as chair of the Fox Corporation board, with his son Lachlan Murdoch as executive chair. Amid the current scandal, however, Carusone said it is possible there could be “a couple of runs at Murdoch control of the company” from aggrieved shareholders.

Fox News could also face problems when it comes to renewing its contracts with cable companies, Carusone said. Cable companies in the US pay individual channels, like Fox News, for the right to include them in their cable packages. Fox News is currently the second most expensive channel, behind ESPN.

Fox News has been able to demand such fees by touting its loyal audience. But messages released as part of the Dominion case have laid bare the contempt some at Fox News have for both their viewers and for Donald Trump, a hero to many in the Fox News audience.“Like negotiating with terrorists,” Alex Pfeiffer, then a producer on Tucker Carlson’s nightly show, said of the line Fox News had to tread between reporting the news and feeding its audience the conspiracy theories they crave.