US media entrepreneur and Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch has admitted that some of the anchors at Fox News, after the 2020 presidential election, were following the lies of the losing candidate donald trump, according to which the election had been “stolen”, supported and spread the word. Fox News has tried to “stretch the balancing act between spreading conspiracy theories on the one hand and showing the fact that they are actually wrong on the other hand,” Murdoch said in his testimony, which has now been published in court documents.
True, Murdoch has according to CNN rejected that FoxNews as a whole supported former President Donald Trump’s electoral lies. However, he acknowledged that presenters Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and former presenter Lou Dobbs spread the lie about the stolen presidential election. “Some of our commentators supported that.” Murdoch said, according to the filing. “In retrospect, I wish we had denounced it more,” he added. The filings also show that Murdoch called some of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election “bullshit.”
Murdoch made the statement as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Fox News by voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, which alleges that Fox News intentionally made false statements about the voting machines and the integrity of the election. The release of Murdoch’s statement comes less than two weeks after a court filing revealed communications by many Fox News executives, anchors and producers who also said the claims about Dominion were unfounded. That included Murdoch himself, who called Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s statements “crazy stuff” and “harmful.”
When Fox News confirmed Joe Biden’s election victory on November 7, 2020, it “complained”. Rupert Murdoch according to Dominion Voring Systems filings with his son Lachlan, co-chairman of Fox Corporation, that things should have been done differently. “We should and could have been the first to announce the result, but being second at least saved us a Trump explosion,” the elder Murdoch said, according to the filing.
