Murdoch Admits Fox News Hosts “Endorsed” US Election Fraud Claims

News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch has admitted that he allowed Fox News hosts in the US to perpetuate and propagate false claims that widespread election fraud helped push President Joe Biden into the White House.

In court documents unsealed last night in a legal battle between voting machine manufacturer, Dominion and Fox, Murdoch said that Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Sean Hannity all propagated the stolen election lie to different extents. Dominion alleged in March 2021 that Fox amplified the conspiracy theories around its voting machines to boost ratings and stay abreast of hard-right competitors including One America News Network, which Dominion is suing separately.

Testifying under oath, Murdoch was asked by Dominion’s lawyers a series of questions about Fox’s role in lies. The Australian media mogul also said that Fox News was trying to “straddle the line between spewing conspiracy theories on one hand, yet calling out the fact that they are actually false on the other.”

Fox also asked the court to hold that it has no legal responsibility whatsoever for broadcasting falsehoods, provided that they were “newsworthy.”

However, the company’s chief legal and policy officer, Viet Dinh, said that people within Fox’s chain of command had the power to exercise control over the spreading of fake news on its channel and had an obligation to “prevent and correct known falsehoods.”

When asked whether he could have exercised some control over the network, notably by telling Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to stop putting Rudy Giuliani on the air, he replied:

“I could have. But I didn’t.”

The news comes two weeks after previously unsealed court documents found that many Fox execs knew the claims about Dominion and its voting machines were untrue.

Host Tucker Carlson said that attorney and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell was “lying” about voter fraud docs, Murdoch said statements from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani were “crazy” and “damaging.” Hannity said he “did not believe it for one second.”

Fox had previously said that Dominion’s lawsuit was “baseless.” The voting machine manufacturer said that Fox’s news coverage had “deeply damaged [its] once-thriving business.”

On Monday, Fox said in a statement:

“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

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