Court filing: Rupert Murdoch headed Fox News’ ‘stolen’ election coverage
A voting tech company suing Fox News argues that Fox Corp. leaders Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch played a leading role in spreading false claims that technology helped shape the 2020 presidential election to former President Donald Trump “to steal”.
According to Smartmatic, the Murdochs, as the supreme authorities of the group’s parent company, “directed Fox News Network to accept disinformation as a business decision after the 2020 US election.”
“Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were at the heart of the decision to cover and support the disinformation campaign published by Fox News in the wake of the 2020 US election,” Smartmatic said in its filing Monday, which is part of its libel case against the top conservative network.
Fox News and Fox Corp. did not immediately return the messages sent Tuesday to comment on the claims based on news reports and filings in a separate defamation case against the network by a voting machine maker, Dominion Voting Systems.
In a recently unsealed dossier in the Dominion case, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that he did not stop various Fox News commentators from spreading unsubstantiated claims by Trump allies that the election was stolen, although he could have done so. He also acknowledged that some of the network’s moderators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times supported the false claims.
Some of the network’s biggest stars also privately voiced their disbelief in claims made by Trump allies, but aired the claims anyway. “Sydney Powell is lying,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a text to a producer, referring to one of the attorneys pursuing the allegations for Trump. Host Laura Ingraham wrote to Carlson that Powell was “a total jerk.”
Further filings were awaited in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox.
Federal and state election officials, sweeping reviews in battleground states, and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they discover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s fraud allegations have also been firmly dismissed by dozens of courts, including judges he appointed.
According to Smartmatic, its technology was only used in Los Angeles County during the 2020 election. Yet Fox News has repeatedly given Trump’s lawyers a platform to cast Smartmatic as an election-rigging specialist involved in a technological conspiracy to sink votes for Trump or shift them to Democrat Joe Biden in several battleground states.
Fox News has said it only reported on newsworthy claims made by the President and his attorneys. The network notes that its hosts have at times asked the lawyers for evidence to support their claims, which was never provided.
After Smartmatic requested a retraction, Fox News conducted an interview with an voting technology expert who denied the allegations of fraud.
Smartmatic claims the Murdochs “participated in the broadcast and dissemination of the defamatory reports, encouraged them, played a positive role, ratified them and they were responsible for them” even though they knew they were false. The Murdochs attended meetings about the coverage, briefed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on the message and tone, and had no objections when the segments aired, Smartmatic says.
Like Dominion, Smartmatic alleges that Fox News went behind the false voter fraud narrative to win back pro-Trump viewers who turned to rival conservative news outlets after Fox correctly declared on election night that Biden had won Arizona.
Rupert Murdoch is Chairman of Fox Corp. and founder of the news channel; his son Lachlan is the CEO of Fox Corp.
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