Fact checks are considered a feature of quality reporting in many editorial offices and media companies. Fox News bosses see it differently. The British “Guardian” and the US magazine “Forbes” report that the bosses of the US broadcaster apparently make profit through correct reporting. It’s about internal emails in which Fox News boss Suzanne Scott criticizes fact checks as “bad for business”.
The emails are from December 2020. Scott was responding to an on-air fact check by Eric Shawn, one of the station’s presenters. In an earlier email, she was also annoyed that a reporter from the station had checked Trump’s false claims about the presidential election. “This has to stop now,” she wrote to another Fox executive shortly after the presidential election. “It’s bad business and there’s clearly a lack of understanding [sic] of what’s happening on these shows. Viewers are angry and we’re just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
Weeks earlier, Scott had written complaining that a reporter had verified Trump’s claim of the “stolen” election. “I can no longer defend these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and don’t know how to handle stories,” she wrote in an email. “Viewers feel betrayed by us and we’ve damaged their trust and belief in us.” Fox Nation lost 25,000 subscribers. The named reporter, Kristin Fisher, later said she felt she had been punished for telling the truth.
The revelations are part of a defamation lawsuit that the US broadcaster is currently facing. Voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems has accused Fox News of spreading conspiracy theories. According to the plaintiff, the US broadcaster reported that the voting machine manufacturer manipulated the 2020 presidential election. The lawyers argue that Fox News deliberately airs false claims about Dominion for fear of losing viewers to competing networks like Newsmax and One America News (OAN).
The company provided copies of messages as evidence. It also included messages from Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo, whose show is considered a hotbed of false claims about the election.
A Fox News spokesman has already denied the allegations. “These documents show once again that Dominion continues to rely on selected, out-of-context quotes to make headlines and distract from the facts of this case. The fundamental right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to defend the first amendment to protect the role of news organizations in reporting,” he said.
The broadcaster also commented on the fact-check emails that have recently become public. The claims made by ex-President Donald Trump and his lawyers were newsworthy. These were not understood by viewers as statements of fact, as claimed by Dominion. The legal team also asserted that the broadcaster had always been “far from calling the allegations true. Rather, the moderators informed their audience at every opportunity that the allegations were just allegations that would soon come to court would have to be proven if they were to influence the election result.”
Channel boss Suzanne Scott did not push back the election claims in her emails. It wasn’t about the fact check at all, but about “one moderator scolding another,” said the spokesman in a statement.
Scott also asked other Fox employees to alert them if the network booked Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, or Mike Lindell, a serial purveyor of election misinformation. “They would both get ratings,” she said.
At the end of February, right-wing conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch admitted in an affidavit in response to the defamation lawsuit brought by voting technology company Dominion that several Fox News moderators had deliberately spread false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. “In retrospect, I would have liked us to denounce it more clearly,” Murdoch was quoted as saying by several US media. At the same time, he stated that it was by no means a matter of collective behavior on the part of the broadcaster. Only a few Fox moderators would have spread the Trump narrative of the stolen election.
Jury selection is scheduled for April 13 in Wilmington, Delaware. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 17 and last six weeks.
