NEW YORK – After allegedly lying repeatedly to dupe and lure back viewers thirsty for news that Donald Trump won an election he lost by millions of votes and blaming voting machines, the maker of those machines may continue its lawsuit against the entertainment company FOX, a judge ruled today.
According to a lawsuit filed last year by Dominion versus FOX, a maker of voting machines used in the United States:
Fox Corporation and its crown jewel Fox News, together one of the most powerful media empires in the United States, gave life to a manufactured storyline about election fraud that cast a then-little-known voting machine company called Dominion as the villain. After the November 3, 2020 Presidential Election, viewers began fleeing Fox in favor of media outlets endorsing the lie that massive fraud caused President Trump to lose the election. They saw Fox as insufficiently supportive of President Trump, including because Fox was the first network to declare that President Trump lost Arizona. So Fox set out to lure viewers back – including President Trump himself — by intentionally and falsely blaming Dominion for President Trump’s loss by rigging the election. 2.At least two top executives from Fox Corporation, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, exert direct control over Fox News’s programming decisions, including editorial control. At the time Fox broadcast the defamatory statements at issue here, the Fox News website listed both Rupert Murdoch (Fox Corporation’s chairman) and Lachlan Murdoch (Fox Corporation’s CEO and Executive Chairman) as part of the “Fox News Executive Staff.”13.Yet after Dominion filed suit in March 2021 against Fox News for publishing numerous defamatory statements about Dominion, Fox News ran away from the actions of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. Indeed, Fox News has disclaimed any responsibility for searching or producing the Murdochs’ documents, or working to facilitate any discovery from Fox Corporation at all—despite Fox Corporation’s clear involvement (through Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and others) in managing Fox News, including through editorial input and control. Fox News also has disclaimed responsibility for the defamatory statements appearing on fox.com, a website operated by Fox News’s sister company Fox Broadcasting Company—also wholly owned by Fox Corporation.These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included Fox falsely claiming that: (1) Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election; (2) Dominion’s software and algorithms manipulated vote counts in the 2020 Presidential Election; (3) Dominion is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chávez; and (4) Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines in the 2020 Presidential Election. 5.Fox recklessly disregarded the truth.
A judge has ruled Tuesday that the lawsuit may continue.
