Fox News Lies and 2020 Election Fraud Set to Face Jury: What to Expect Come Monday

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On Monday, some people from Fox News will have to explain why they kept telling people that the 2020 election wasn’t real or fair and why this caused a big problem for our democracy.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for 1.6 billion dollars, and a jury must decide if Fox spread lies about the election being rigged against then-President Donald Trump, even though some at Fox knew it wasn’t true. The judge says that Fox’s lawyers aren’t giving enough evidence, and the same people who work for Rupert Murdoch are working for both sides of the case.

A judge has decided that a case against Fox News (a conservative news source) will go on trial. This case is important because it could affect press freedom and Fox’s reputation. It could also show how false information, like the kind spread before the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building, is still used to help Donald Trump try to come back into power in 2024.

Famous people on Fox News like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch will be answering questions in the next few weeks. On Monday, if there isn’t any deal made to stop it, a special court hearing will begin. RonNell Andersen Jones (a professor at the University of Utah) says that this situation is super exciting for experts on defamation law!

Fox News is not doing well, like a sports team on a losing streak. Problems in the court and news that hurt its reputation have put them in a tough spot. Important people are getting injured and the judge isn’t happy with them.

Recently, documents were revealed that show Fox bosses, producers, and employees thought Trump was wrong about the election being rigged. However, Dominion said Fox News didn’t want to upset some of their viewers after they told people on Election Night in November 2020 that Joe Biden had won Arizona.

Judge Eric Davis made it very clear that all of the false accusations against Dominion were wrong. This ruling means that during our 2020 presidential election, there won’t be any time wasted trying to prove those claims since lots of Republicans still don’t believe the results.

Davis said that people know about the bad reputation Dominion had and it will be up to a jury to decide if Fox did something wrong – which is called “actual malice” in legal terms – and if they did, the jury would have to decide how much money they should receive. Fox could say they thought talking about what happened with Dominion was important to mention but Davis pointed out that doesn’t mean they can get away with saying things that aren’t true. The jury has to understand this.

The law in New York protects news outlets from being sued for saying their opinions. However, Davis studied 20 different discussions on Fox about Dominion and found that all of them involved statements of fact so the talk show could be legally challenged for libel.

Cary Coglianese, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, compared a lawsuit to “hitting a home run”. This means that it needs to go through certain steps before achieving its desired goal. According to the judge’s rulings, Dominion is almost there as if they were on third base and just needs to get fairly close to finish their job.

Fox News and Dominion are both companies in Delaware but Fox News is located in New York and Dominion is from Denver.

Fox upset Judge Davis this week because the lawyers working for Fox didn’t give out evidence quickly or be honest about Rupert Murdoch’s role at Fox News. It’s not clear if this will hurt the court case, but it’s not a great start when a judge isn’t sure whether your side is telling the truth since the whole point of the case is based on being truthful.

The court case is all about whether Fox News knowingly broadcast false information, or if they did not take careful enough measures to ensure said information was true. In the case of Dominion, there’s evidence that people in positions of power within Fox did not believe charges made by Trump allies such as Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani. However, Fox argues those same disbelievers weren’t able to actually choose for themselves which reports would be aired on their show.

Erin Murphy, a Fox lawyer said that it’s important for people to draw the connection between powerful figures like Murdoch and election-fraud charges. The jury will now decide if Murdoch had enough influence to stop these charges being discussed on air.

Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota said that it is important to be trustworthy in any trial and especially in this one.

Kirtley is scared that the case she’s working on might be taken all the way up to the highest court in America, which could use it as an excuse to change a law from 1964 concerning what journalists are able to publish. She worries this would be really bad for them.

Another voting-technology company called Smartmatic is paying close attention to a lawsuit from Dominion. It’s in New York and Smartmatic wants money from Fox News because it says Fox News said bad things about them, which wasn’t true. The case hasn’t gone to trial yet, but Fox News didn’t convince a judge to get rid of the lawsuit.

Experts are shocked Fox and Dominion haven’t already agreed on something outside of a trial, although they still can. There’s likely a big difference in the amount of money at play. Court documents seem to suggest that the $1.6 billion figure Dominion is asking for is way too much.

Dominion most likely wants to embarrass Fox and make them look bad by showing messages they sent after the election. Texts from January 2021 showed that Tucker Carlson hated Trump and was ready to get away from him. Dominion may also want Fox to apologize for something.

We still don’t know what the reactions of Fox viewers is to this lawsuit. Fox doesn’t allow anyone on their channel or website to talk about it, but Howard Kurtz did mention it on his show last Sunday. Charlie Sykes from Bulwark and MSNBC said that if Fox viewers think they have been lied to then there could be some problems.

Fox News has not changed the way they produce content or lost viewers, even though former president Donald Trump was recently charged with a crime by a New York court. Fox also welcomed Trump back to their channel and Carlson reported some new facts about the Capitol riot from tapes that were given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Tim Graham, who works at the conservative watchdog Media Research Center, said that just because Fox has not discussed the Dominion lawsuit on their channel, its fans are still aware of it. He also said that because other networks focus a lot on revealing text messages and emails related to this case, Fox News viewers may perceive this as an attempt by liberal media to target them. As a result, they might stand united in support around Rupert Murdoch.

The trial will probably continue until the end of May. Jennifer Peltz, a journalist from Associated Press, wrote this report.