Fox News Does Not Deserve to Survive

Records reveal that, at the network, delivering real news is a firing offense

Fox News executives and on-air hosts know their viewers are rage addicts who desperately crave propaganda that reinforces their beliefs. They understand that telling the truth is bad for business. They cling to any absurdity as “proof” of the lies they spin – including nonsense from someone who thinks she may be a decapitated ghost. Their weeks and months of fantasies about election fraud came from their understanding of the psychological needs of their viewers, sparking decisions that helped lead to the January 6 insurrection. But the saddest part is, viewers will never be told of the astonishing proof that this network is feeding them a pack of lies.

Nothing about Fox is what anyone would expect to find in a real news outlet. It is a business whose most powerful on-air presenters will call for the firing of reporters who ignore the Fox playbook of lies. It hires hosts that executives believe suffer from psychiatric problems. And when these dissemblers for dollars see that a competitor in the conservative media bubble has no compunction about telling even bigger whoppers, Fox swims deeper into its swamp of deception.

These are the unavoidable conclusions from what is, without question, the most astonishing court filing that has ever been written in a case against a media organization. Dominion Voting Systems, one of the corporations relentlessly attacked by Fox and other conservative fabulists as part of an illegal conspiracy to throw the 2020 election to Joe Biden, has performed an amazing public service with its multibillion-dollar libel suit against the network. Through relentless discovery, presented in brilliantly written court filings, Dominion has proven what decades of media criticism and public rebuke has failed to accomplish: Using Fox employees own words to expose the network as an organization of shameless liars, willing to destroy democracy and rip this nation apart so long as it helps Rupert Murdoch, and his acolytes get even richer. 

In its motion for summary judgement, Dominion argues that the case should go straight to the damages phase, skipping a trial about whether libel occurred, because - based on the evidence - no rational jury could conclude that Fox should win. These kinds of motions are common and are almost always dismissed. But here - unlike in dozens of others such filings I have read over the years - it is hard to dispute that Fox cannot possibly win on the facts. And whether the case goes to trial or settles, Fox could well be hit with damages more than $1.6 billion. And that’s just round one: The network still faces a $2.7 billion libel suit from Smartmatic, another company smeared as part of the network’s election fraud fantasy.

In the end, it’s possible that Fox could be financially crippled by just these two cases, but the other damaging part for the network is that, with the veil finally dropped, more lawsuits claiming damages from its lies could easily be brought. What about January 6 defendants going to court in a class action, claiming Fox’s lies tricked them into attacking the Capitol? Or scores individuals defamed by Fox banding together with a civil racketeering case, arguing that the network is an enterprise that uses lies to generate profits? What about families of Fox addicts joining forces to sue the company for turning their loved ones into rage addicts whose personality changes have destroyed personal lives? The possibilities here seem endless.

Good. Because any rational person reading the Dominion filing cannot escape the conclusion that Fox News does not deserve to survive. Companies that dump tons of toxic waste into residential areas would be put out of business. But the damage they cause is far less than what Fox has done: These are anti-American, anti-democracy miscreants who have turned lies into a weapon against this country, used for the sole purpose of making money. No Constitutional right is absolute - the Bill of Rights, as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said, cannot become a suicide pact. 

In its motion, Dominion makes clear that what Fox has done is unlike any act of libel ever committed by a news organization. This was not just acting with reckless disregard for the truth; it was broadcasting lies with actual knowledge of their falsity. It wasn’t just one slip-up on one broadcast; it was a months-long assault with scores of lies broadcast, rebroadcast, posted on Twitter, and highlighted on the Fox website. It wasn't just a failure by one person; the libel involved scores of people, from senior executives to producers to hosts to many others with editorial responsibility. It wasn’t ignored by the rest of the world; Fox was fact-checked in real time by government agencies, other journalists, and Dominion itself, but continued with its conspiracy of lies. And this wasn’t some minor claim about an issue of public interest; as Dominion highlights using the words of Tucker Carlson, Fox was accusing the voting machine company of participating in what “would amount to the single greatest crime in American history. Millions of votes stolen in a day. Democracy destroyed. The end of our centuries-old system of self-government.” And remember - Carlson knew he was lying. 

The number of falsehoods told by Fox - and the magnitude of them - also exceed what might be found in a standard libel suit. Fox - on multiple programs, platforms and for months on end - said that Dominion rigged the 2020 Presidential election, used software and algorithms in its voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Biden, paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines in the 2020 election, and was founded in Venezuela by the dictator Hugo Chavez for the express purpose of rigging elections. All of this is false, and Fox knew it.

The problem for Fox started on the night of the election when the network told its viewers the truth - an act that enraged them and led them to flee to Newsmax, a network that trafficked in even more audacious lies, wrapping the MAGA and conservative audience with a comfortable blanket of confirmation of their delusions. The unforgivable truth that Fox told? That Trump lost the Arizona. That’s what the network’s statisticians concluded based on the long-used electoral modeling, and they were right. (This was not the first time that conservatives lost it because Fox’s statisticians told them an ugly truth - in 2012, Republican consultant and Fox contributor Karl Rove freaked out on the air when they correctly called Ohio for Obama. That led to a bizarre confrontation between presenter Megyn Kelly, Rove, and members of the decision desk.) 

Unlike in 2012, though, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney was not willing to push an “election fraud!” lie. With Trump spewing that conspiracy theory long before the election was even held, the voters who held him in thrall turned on Fox. Chris Stirewalt, the politics editor who made the call - spurring the murderous rage of viewers and Republican politicians who could not handle having their beliefs confirmed - was soon after fired by Fox.

Committing real journalism, Dominion’s filing shows, was a firing offense throughout the entire organization. When Trump tweeted a lie about Dominion - specifically citing lies by Carlson and Sean Hannity - a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked it by tweet. In her tweet, Heinrich correctly pointed out that “top election infrastructure officials” said that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

This truth telling was beyond the pale for Carlson. In a text to Hannity, Carlson raged about Heinrich’s truthful fact-check. “Please get her fired,’’ he told Hannity. “Seriously. What the fuck? Actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Hannity jumped on it. He texted Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News, apparently in a rage. His text is not included in the court filing, so whether he ordered Scott to fire Heinrich is not clear. But Scott managed to talk him off the ledge - she said as much in a text to two other Fox executives. “Sean texted me - he's standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn't understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.” By the next morning, Heinrich had deleted her tweet, the only scrap of truth to come out of Fox during its conspiracy of libel against Dominion.

In modern American history, there has never been a series of exchanges in a purported news organization who so clearly and definitively proved - in his own words - that presenting accurate and truthful reporting was cause for termination. It is something that should be taught in every journalism school for decades, to underscore that some groups that call themselves “news” are no different than Pravda in the Soviet Union.

And it wasn’t the only one during the Fox conspiracy. On November 9, Fox anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House Press Conference when Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany started laying out false claims of election fraud. Cavuto cut away. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. She's charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can't in good countenance continue to show you this and that's an explosive charge to make.”

Of course, that was unforgivable. The Fox brand team led by Raj Shah notified contacted senior leaders at both Fox News and the Fox Corporation, saying that Cavuto’s insistence on preventing lies from being spread on the air posed a threat to the Fox “brand.” And Hannity agreed that Cavuto’s act of journalism had no place at Fox when, in a later text to Carlson, he included it in a list of what he considered outrages - including the Heinrich tweet and the Arizona call on election night - that were harming the network.

Not every person associated with the Fox family appeared to realize that they work for a propaganda network that peddles in fantasy. As the flood of viewers demanding that they be told what they believed to be true continued to flow from Fox to Newsmax, Jerry Bowyer - an occasional commentator on Fox Business - emailed the senior vice president of programming at the business channel. “What about truth and integrity?” Bowyer wrote. “Do they actually believe the election was stolen?” The programming executive, Gary Schreier, responded “They're not a news organization…(W)e have to follow journalistic rules…they do not have to and they simply do not.”

Over at Fox News, the reaction among its executives and on-air propagandists was quite different. If Newsmax was going to be a non-journalistic peddler of endless falsehoods, Fox had to ramp up its conspiracy of lies. On November 10, Suzanne Scott texted Jay Wallace, the Fox News president, that they had to do battle head-to-head. “The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling - truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can't be ignored.” Scott replied, “Yes.” Wallace then texted “Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on a war footing.”

Senior vice president of primetime programming and analytics Ron Mitchell comprehended it - and fully knew that the reason Newsmax was doing well was because Fox News viewers craved lies and delusions. In a memo to Scott and Wallace, Mitchell wrote about Newsmax, “With respect to Newsmax, the lack of any meaningful editorial guidance may be a positive for them at least in the short term. For example, last night on Stitchfield (who?) at 8pm, the show sourced websites like Gateway Pundit while talking about voter fraud. This type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC viewer is looking for.”

Carlson, meanwhile, hoped the top brass recognized the threat. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we've lost with our audience?” he texted his producer. We're playing with fire, for real…an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.” For Hannity, the bottom line from the Newsmax threat was the bottom line - money was at stake. In a text to Carlson and Laura Ingraham, another Fox host, Hannity wrote, “(S)erious $$ with serious distribution could be a real problem…Imho they need to address but wtf do I know." Carlson responded, “That could happen.”

No matter - Newsmax has also paid a price for its lies. Dominion also sued the channel of $1.6 billion, and a judge ruled in June that the suit can proceed to trial.

The rest of the court filing is replete with evidence of how far down into the sewer of slander Fox was willing to go to meet the challenge from Newsmax and to satisfy its viewers’ desperate need for fantasy. Some are beyond belief, such as the decision of Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs - two Fox Business conspiracy theorists - to accept an email from a woman who said she believed she might be an internally decapitated ghost as proof of some of the wildest Dominion lies. Or Fox continuing to allow Judge Jeanine Pirro - another Fox host - to remain on the air even though executives considered her “nuts” and not “a credible source of news.” (Then again, David Clark, the senior vice president of weekend news and programming, also wrote in a text that he didn’t believe Hannity and Carlson were credible sources of news either.)

As horrifying as all of this evidence of how Fox on-air liars cling to whatever nonsense they can to feed their conspiracy-addled viewers with more fantasies, though, the broader theme should be the focus: The lesson of this filing is not that Fox is as knowingly dishonest as critics have always maintained, but that committing journalism is a fireable offense, because - as everyone from the top executives to the on-air hosts knows - providing news rather than lies will cost the network big bucks.

Fox, rather than being a news organization, is metaphorically someone screaming fire in a crowded movie house - except here, their lies are tearing apart democracy. No constitutional right is absolute, and no one should be able to hide behind the First Amendment for the purpose of tearing down our Constitutional government for profit - remember, the constitution is not a suicide pact. Fox has demonstrated, beyond any dispute, that it does not deserve to survive. Hopefully, Dominion - and later Smartmatic - will finally put this anti-American group out of business.