Sol Rosenberg
Girthy Member
Want to win the prize for scariest costume at the Fox News Halloween Party this year?
Go as a Fact Checker.
Go as a Fact Checker.
Fox News
- Thread starter Ventucky Red
- Start date
Fox is not a news network but a propaganda outlet
“Fox News” is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial.
I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes.
This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.
After the 2020 election, Fox repeatedly aired wild, unsubstantiated and patently false allegations about Dominion’s voting machines having “stolen” votes — and, by extension, the presidency — from incumbent Donald Trump.
In a ruling on Friday sending the case to trial, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis wrote that the evidence produced so far makes it “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
The lies pushed by Fox’s hosts and guests included claims that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for dictator Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, and that the company’s machines used some kind of algorithm to change Trump ballots into votes for Joe Biden. These and other false statements, Davis ruled, were presented by Fox as fact rather than opinion and — to state the obvious — were harmful to Dominion’s reputation.
What is most stunning about the voluminous evidence presented thus far by Dominion is how differently Fox operates from any news organization I’ve encountered in all my years as a journalist. (I should mention that I am a regular commentator on MSNBC, which competes with Fox.)
Text messages, emails and other internal Fox communications show that in the weeks after Election Day, as Trump and his advocates pushed the “stolen election” lie, the network’s most senior executives — including Murdoch himself — and its most popular hosts were less concerned about reporting the truth than about having Fox’s huge, lucrative, Trump-supporting audience stolen away by even more MAGA-friendly outlets, such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN), with even fewer journalistic scruples.
Dominion court filings revealed a Nov. 12, 2020, text chain among prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. In it, Carlson complained about a tweet from a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, in which she said there was no evidence of voter fraud by Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” wrote Carlson, whose show is among the network’s highest-rated. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
At legitimate news organizations, senior figures do not seek to have staff members fired for telling the truth. At Fox, however, this appears to be business as usual. During the 2020 vote count, Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Biden — which all but extinguished any chance for Trump to win an electoral majority and sent him into a rage. Real news organizations take pride in being first — and right — on an election call. Fox, by contrast, ended up firing the politics editor who oversaw the Arizona call, ostensibly as part of a bureaucratic reorganization.
Meanwhile, Fox hosts and executives were privately dismissive and even contemptuous of the Trump mouthpieces, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were making false claims about Dominion. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Yet Fox kept putting Giuliani and Powell on the air.
In another set of internal Fox communications revealed by the Dominion suit, the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, complained in early December 2020 about an anchor who had fact-checked some of Trump’s false “stolen election” claims. “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [of] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
I repeat: This is not journalism.
If your practice is to tell people what they want to hear rather than what you know to be true, you are not a journalist. You are an infotainer or a propagandist. Perhaps both.
I don’t believe this case threatens the protections accorded to journalists. My only worry is that some people might get the idea that actual news organizations think and act like Fox. We do not.
“Fox News” is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial.
I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes.
This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.
After the 2020 election, Fox repeatedly aired wild, unsubstantiated and patently false allegations about Dominion’s voting machines having “stolen” votes — and, by extension, the presidency — from incumbent Donald Trump.
In a ruling on Friday sending the case to trial, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis wrote that the evidence produced so far makes it “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
The lies pushed by Fox’s hosts and guests included claims that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for dictator Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, and that the company’s machines used some kind of algorithm to change Trump ballots into votes for Joe Biden. These and other false statements, Davis ruled, were presented by Fox as fact rather than opinion and — to state the obvious — were harmful to Dominion’s reputation.
What is most stunning about the voluminous evidence presented thus far by Dominion is how differently Fox operates from any news organization I’ve encountered in all my years as a journalist. (I should mention that I am a regular commentator on MSNBC, which competes with Fox.)
Text messages, emails and other internal Fox communications show that in the weeks after Election Day, as Trump and his advocates pushed the “stolen election” lie, the network’s most senior executives — including Murdoch himself — and its most popular hosts were less concerned about reporting the truth than about having Fox’s huge, lucrative, Trump-supporting audience stolen away by even more MAGA-friendly outlets, such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN), with even fewer journalistic scruples.
Dominion court filings revealed a Nov. 12, 2020, text chain among prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. In it, Carlson complained about a tweet from a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, in which she said there was no evidence of voter fraud by Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” wrote Carlson, whose show is among the network’s highest-rated. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
At legitimate news organizations, senior figures do not seek to have staff members fired for telling the truth. At Fox, however, this appears to be business as usual. During the 2020 vote count, Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Biden — which all but extinguished any chance for Trump to win an electoral majority and sent him into a rage. Real news organizations take pride in being first — and right — on an election call. Fox, by contrast, ended up firing the politics editor who oversaw the Arizona call, ostensibly as part of a bureaucratic reorganization.
Meanwhile, Fox hosts and executives were privately dismissive and even contemptuous of the Trump mouthpieces, including attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were making false claims about Dominion. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020. Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Yet Fox kept putting Giuliani and Powell on the air.
In another set of internal Fox communications revealed by the Dominion suit, the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, complained in early December 2020 about an anchor who had fact-checked some of Trump’s false “stolen election” claims. “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [of] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
I repeat: This is not journalism.
If your practice is to tell people what they want to hear rather than what you know to be true, you are not a journalist. You are an infotainer or a propagandist. Perhaps both.
I don’t believe this case threatens the protections accorded to journalists. My only worry is that some people might get the idea that actual news organizations think and act like Fox. We do not.
Rupert Murdoch reportedly calls off engagement after two weeks
Billionaire media mogul, 92, abruptly ends engagement to radio host Ann Lesley Smith, 66, after announcing plan for fifth marriage
www.theguardian.com
But sources close to Murdoch then told Vanity Fair that while the exact reason for the split was unknown, it could be due to Murdoch’s reported discomfort with Smith’s evangelical views.
Smith was previously involved in a court battle with her husband’s stepchildren over his multimillion-dollar assets, Vanity Fair added. During the litigation, Smith was accused of “financial elder abuse” by one of the children. The case was settled in 2010.
billy backstay
Backstay, never bought a suit, never went to Vegas
Rupert Murdoch: Media mogul splits from fiance Ann Lesley Smith showing that true love is dead
Rupert Murdoch’s split from fiancee shows true love is DEAD
Rupert Murdoch and Ann Lesley Smith have abruptly called off their engagement — just two weeks after they announced their plans to marry.
www.perthnow.com.au
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
Don't they need to have evidence of an actual crime, first?
That's what they've been stubbing their toe on for decades.
Rupert almost gets grifted...
Who Was Rupert Murdoch’s Two-Week Fiancée?
Last month Rupert Murdoch presented an engagement ring to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist whom he had met last year at his vineyard in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. A little over two weeks later, the wedding has been canceled.
A spokesman for Mr. Murdoch declined to comment Tuesday. A person close to him, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share details concerning a personal matter, acknowledged that the planned summer wedding had been called off, adding that it would not be a “great leap” to say that Mr. Murdoch’s relationship with Ms. Smith had come to an end. The wedding would have been the media magnate's fifth trip down the aisle and Ms. Smith’s fourth.
Mr. Murdoch, 92, made the engagement public last month through Cindy Adams, the veteran gossip columnist at one of the many newspapers he owns, The New York Post. After reporting that Mr. Murdoch had presented Ms. Smith with a diamond engagement ring in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, the columnist included a comment from her boss: “I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last,” he said. “It better be. I’m happy.”
In the days after the engagement, details began to emerge about Ms. Smith, who was born Ann Krohn and attended high school in Petaluma, Calif. Efforts to reach Ms. Smith by phone and via social media were unsuccessful, and she did not immediately reply to a message passed to her by a worker on her property in Escalon, Calif.
In her 20s, while working as a dental hygienist in the Bay Area, Ms. Smith met John B. Huntington, a California railroad heir nearly 20 years her senior. During their marriage, which lasted from 1985 to 1989, she spent lavishly on clothes, rode horses and did charity work, she said in a 2013 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Money was no object,” she said. “I had everything in the world.”
In 1988, she was involved in an imbroglio at a society gala on the dance floor of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Reuters described the melee as “a shoving match between two San Francisco socialites,” Ann K. Huntington (as Ms. Smith was then known) and another guest, Avelina Pritchard. “She pulled my hair,” Ms. Pritchard said in an interview for this article. “She scratched me.” Ms. Smith pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault and was ordered to donate $3,000 to a shelter for abused women, Reuters reported at the time.
In the interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms. Smith claimed that, after her marriage to Mr. Huntington, she had no place to live and had become suicidal because of a stingy prenuptial agreement.
While pressing for greater financial support in court, she alleged that her former husband had been physically abusive. Court documents from the case show that three mental health experts testified on Ms. Smith’s behalf, saying that the marriage had left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, rendering her unable to work. But a psychiatrist who treated Ms. Smith in the late 1980s disputed that assessment in his testimony, according to the court documents.
Ms. Smith’s life began to turn around when she became a Christian, she told the network, adding that she had started doing volunteer work as a chaplain for police departments in Marin County. In 1999, she wed Michael Carabello, a former percussionist in the rock band Santana. The fact of that marriage, which lasted about a year, did not appear in the spate of reports published in the wake of her engagement to Mr. Murdoch.
Her third marriage was to Chester Smith, a radio and television entrepreneur in Modesto, Calif., who had started out as a disc jockey and country singer. Ms. Smith appeared at his side on the cover of “Captured by Love,” a 2005 album credited to “Chester Smith with Ann Lesley Smith.” In the photo, Mr. Smith is holding a guitar and has one foot on the fender of a Rolls-Royce. Ms. Smith is dressed in a police uniform with a priest’s collar, her hand on her husband’s shoulder.
At the time of their meeting, Mr. Smith had been married to his first wife, Naomi Smith, for more than four decades. Together they had built his radio and television business into a mini-empire that included stations in California and Oregon. One of their three daughters, Lorna Scott-Smith, said she had not been invited to her father’s wedding to his second wife. “I never met her,” Ms. Scott-Smith said in an interview.
After Mr. Smith died at age 78 in 2008, another of Mr. Smith’s daughters, Roxanne Storey, sued Ann Lesley Smith in San Joaquin County Superior Court. She alleged that Ms. Smith, the trustee of his estate, had failed to give her and her sisters their fair share of the inheritance.
The case was settled days out of court after Judge Duane Martin admonished Ms. Smith in a ruling, writing that “the court has lost all confidence in her ability to administer the trust other than for her own benefit, in conflict with her fiduciary duty to Chester Smith’s three daughters.”
Mr. Murdoch’s broken engagement comes at a time when he is embroiled in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against two of his companies, Fox Corporation and Fox News. Last week, a judge in Delaware Superior Court ruled that the case was strong enough to go to trial.
Mr. Murdoch’s fourth marriage, to the actress and model Jerry Hall, ended in divorce last summer after six years.
Who Was Rupert Murdoch’s Two-Week Fiancée?
Last month Rupert Murdoch presented an engagement ring to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist whom he had met last year at his vineyard in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. A little over two weeks later, the wedding has been canceled.
A spokesman for Mr. Murdoch declined to comment Tuesday. A person close to him, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share details concerning a personal matter, acknowledged that the planned summer wedding had been called off, adding that it would not be a “great leap” to say that Mr. Murdoch’s relationship with Ms. Smith had come to an end. The wedding would have been the media magnate's fifth trip down the aisle and Ms. Smith’s fourth.
Mr. Murdoch, 92, made the engagement public last month through Cindy Adams, the veteran gossip columnist at one of the many newspapers he owns, The New York Post. After reporting that Mr. Murdoch had presented Ms. Smith with a diamond engagement ring in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, the columnist included a comment from her boss: “I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last,” he said. “It better be. I’m happy.”
In the days after the engagement, details began to emerge about Ms. Smith, who was born Ann Krohn and attended high school in Petaluma, Calif. Efforts to reach Ms. Smith by phone and via social media were unsuccessful, and she did not immediately reply to a message passed to her by a worker on her property in Escalon, Calif.
In her 20s, while working as a dental hygienist in the Bay Area, Ms. Smith met John B. Huntington, a California railroad heir nearly 20 years her senior. During their marriage, which lasted from 1985 to 1989, she spent lavishly on clothes, rode horses and did charity work, she said in a 2013 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Money was no object,” she said. “I had everything in the world.”
In 1988, she was involved in an imbroglio at a society gala on the dance floor of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Reuters described the melee as “a shoving match between two San Francisco socialites,” Ann K. Huntington (as Ms. Smith was then known) and another guest, Avelina Pritchard. “She pulled my hair,” Ms. Pritchard said in an interview for this article. “She scratched me.” Ms. Smith pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault and was ordered to donate $3,000 to a shelter for abused women, Reuters reported at the time.
In the interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms. Smith claimed that, after her marriage to Mr. Huntington, she had no place to live and had become suicidal because of a stingy prenuptial agreement.
While pressing for greater financial support in court, she alleged that her former husband had been physically abusive. Court documents from the case show that three mental health experts testified on Ms. Smith’s behalf, saying that the marriage had left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, rendering her unable to work. But a psychiatrist who treated Ms. Smith in the late 1980s disputed that assessment in his testimony, according to the court documents.
Ms. Smith’s life began to turn around when she became a Christian, she told the network, adding that she had started doing volunteer work as a chaplain for police departments in Marin County. In 1999, she wed Michael Carabello, a former percussionist in the rock band Santana. The fact of that marriage, which lasted about a year, did not appear in the spate of reports published in the wake of her engagement to Mr. Murdoch.
Her third marriage was to Chester Smith, a radio and television entrepreneur in Modesto, Calif., who had started out as a disc jockey and country singer. Ms. Smith appeared at his side on the cover of “Captured by Love,” a 2005 album credited to “Chester Smith with Ann Lesley Smith.” In the photo, Mr. Smith is holding a guitar and has one foot on the fender of a Rolls-Royce. Ms. Smith is dressed in a police uniform with a priest’s collar, her hand on her husband’s shoulder.
At the time of their meeting, Mr. Smith had been married to his first wife, Naomi Smith, for more than four decades. Together they had built his radio and television business into a mini-empire that included stations in California and Oregon. One of their three daughters, Lorna Scott-Smith, said she had not been invited to her father’s wedding to his second wife. “I never met her,” Ms. Scott-Smith said in an interview.
After Mr. Smith died at age 78 in 2008, another of Mr. Smith’s daughters, Roxanne Storey, sued Ann Lesley Smith in San Joaquin County Superior Court. She alleged that Ms. Smith, the trustee of his estate, had failed to give her and her sisters their fair share of the inheritance.
The case was settled days out of court after Judge Duane Martin admonished Ms. Smith in a ruling, writing that “the court has lost all confidence in her ability to administer the trust other than for her own benefit, in conflict with her fiduciary duty to Chester Smith’s three daughters.”
Mr. Murdoch’s broken engagement comes at a time when he is embroiled in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against two of his companies, Fox Corporation and Fox News. Last week, a judge in Delaware Superior Court ruled that the case was strong enough to go to trial.
Mr. Murdoch’s fourth marriage, to the actress and model Jerry Hall, ended in divorce last summer after six years.
Marty Gingras
Mid-range Anarchist
Swimsailor
Super Anarchist
So, real question...
If it's un-American to indict a former president, does this mean all the calls for Joe Biden to go to jail are... un-American?
And the Trump kid??? Holy fuck. You know what is communist level third world shit??? Letting a corrupt politician go free and get back into power. These stupid fucking idiots have never read a fucking book. I am so fucking over these tools.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
No, that's different. Because it's all OK when Republicans do it.
I'm struggling with the 3rd-rate-TV-preacher Republican Party. WTF happened to those guys? They used to be the political party that was supposed to be good for business.
At least they are still strongly against Communism, even if they've forgotten what it is.
Liquid
NFLTG
Good for the execs is good for the company right?
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
Well, I was thinking of before that. Like Ike!
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
If it's true, it isn't a "smear"
