Journalistic Malpractice on Trial

the Dominion Voting System tells us about how the media sacrificed their credibility to partisan falsehoods

By Nolan Higdon

“This is direct evidence of knowing falsity” exclaimed RonNell Anderson Jones, professor of law at the University of Utah, in a February 2023 interview with Jon Stewart. Jones noted that in most defamation cases “the likelihood that you will find evidence of them [news outlets] saying, ‘We know this is a lie and we would like to move forward with it anyway is deeply unlikely.’” However, in the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News, “the filing contains just this trove of evidence of emails and text messages and internal memos that are ‘rare’ both in terms of the ‘volume of the evidence and as to the directness of the evidence.’” This sentiment was echoed by Harvard law professor Laurence

Columnists/Reporters Melina Paris Assistant Editor/Arts Hunter Chase Community News Reporter

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Tribe, who noted, “I have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues.”

In the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, Dominion Voting Systems accuses Fox News Channel of falsely reporting that Dominion’s voting machines fraudulently delivered victory to Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Court documents obtained by other media outlets reveal that hosts and other high-ranking Fox News Channel officials — including the chairman and CEO of Fox’s parent company news

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We Need to Talk About Fox News

In a stunning development, we now know that Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the media empire that owns Fox News, admitted under oath that Fox hosts “endorsed” Donald Trump’s Big Lie on air despite knowing full well that the claims were false.

This latest bombshell comes on the heels of other documents in the same lawsuit against Fox documenting Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and other top Fox hosts and executives privately in text messages and emails calling the Trump team’s claims of voting irregularities “mind blowing nuts,” “insane,” “shockingly reckless,” and “dangerous as hell.”

Of course, those same hosts then became a megaphone for the Big Lie—spreading the Big Lie to millions of viewers—all in pursuit of ratings and revenue.

We cannot underestimate how destructive Fox News is to our country. President Joe Biden has called Murdoch “the most dangerous man in the world.” And he’s right.

Robert Reich

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor

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