Posts tagged with "News Corp."

Above, Ruppert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News and Fox Corp. (Photo source: Lionel Bonaventure/Agence-France Presse)

In deposition, Rupert Murdoch says Fox News hosts endorsed false 2020 election claims

March 1, 2023

Rupert Murdoch has admitted that some Fox News hosts and commentators endorsed the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, according to testimony in an ongoing defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Denver-based voting-machine company is suing Fox News and Fox Corp. for defamation, over false on-air claims that its technology enabled widespread fraud in the election. The new details emerged in briefs in which the companies laid out evidence they plan to present to a Delaware state court.

Murdoch, who is the chair of both Fox News and its parent, Fox Corp., said Fox News and Fox Business commentators—including on-air hosts Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity—endorsed the idea of a stolen election to varying degrees, according to a deposition cited in Dominion’s brief, which was unsealed on Monday, February 27.

The media baron said Fox News itself didn’t endorse that narrative. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” Murdoch said, according to the filing. Asked if he could have stopped the hosts from highlighting allegations on air, Murdoch responded, “I could have. But I didn’t.”

In full disclosure, Murdoch is also executive chairman of News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal. He and his family are large shareholders in Fox Corp. and News Corp.

Dominion is suing for what it alleges were defamatory on-air comments about its products after former President Donald Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden. The voting-machine company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.

Fox News Media has said that it simply reported newsworthy allegations, and the lawsuit would be an attack on press freedom under the First Amendment. Fox also has argued the damages claim from Dominion vastly overstates the value of the company, and that the voting company can’t tie any losses directly to the network’s coverage.

Fox News Media said in a statement Monday that Dominion’s lawsuit “has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny.”

The trial is slated to begin April 17 in Delaware state court.

Research contact: @WSJ

Above, a visual grabbed from Facebook's News tab.

Facebook gets grief for including Breitbart in News tab

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October 29, 2019

Can Facebook do anything that doesn’t draw fire from users, regulators, legislators, and the media? After years of complaints from American news outlets that the social media site has The Washington Post reports that Facebook has agreed to compensate at least some news organizations as part of a specialized “News” tab meant to steer users toward curated national and local news stories.

But the project immediately raised new controversy when it became known that Breitbart News—a Web outlet linked to right-wing causes that was once run by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon—had been included among the 200 media outlets participating in the program.

“Given that Facebook is putting actual news outlets in the same category as Breitbart, actual news outlets should consider quickly withdrawing from the program,” Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, a liberal nonprofit media watchdog, told the Post.

At an event in New York to launch the project, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Breitbart’s inclusion. “You want to include a breadth of content to make sure all different topics can be covered,” Zuckerberg said.

Other outlets participating include The Washington Post, The New York Times, News Corp., BuzzFeed News, Business Insider, Bloomberg News, Fox News, NBCUniversal, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times.

The News tab marks the latest iteration of Facebook’s approach to online news, the Post reports. Before January 2018, the company had been a leading distributor of news, but that role was dogged by the presence in its feed of false and misleading information, as well as by allegations that its news feed and other features tilted toward liberal viewpoints

Zuckerberg did not go into specifics about how different publishers would be compensated, and media analysts expressed skepticism that the arrangement will help the small and medium local outlets that have been most seriously undercut by the rise of online news distribution.

“The vast majority of local news outlets are not included, and that is part of the news ecosystem that’s most at risk,” David Chavern, the president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance, a trade association of news publishers, told The Washington Post.

Chavern called Facebook’s agreement to pay at least some news outlets for their content a step in the right direction, noting that tech platforms have been “uniquely unwilling to pay for news and quality journalism.”

The News tab already is available to more than 200,000 Facebook users in the United States, with a broader rollout planned for early next year. The new service, Facebook executives say, should make it easier for users to locate the day’s major headlines, as well as stories geared toward particular topics or locales.

The initiative could reach 20 million to 30 million people over a few years, Zuckerberg said.

 Research contact: @washingtonpost