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Fox News continues to be exposed for the dishonest organization that it is — this time, with the help of its billionaire owner.
A Monday filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against the right-wing talk channel offered additional revelations — including the fact that Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that some of his top hosts were pushing election lies to his audience.
Murdoch rejected that Fox News, as an entity, endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. But Murdoch conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest being stolen.
“Yes. They endorsed,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about the hosts’ promotion of false claims about the election.
“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” the media mogul added at another point in the deposition.
That’s just one of the several revelations included in Monday’s filing. Here are some additional highlights:
► In the wake of the election, Murdoch wrote in an email to the New York Post’s Col Allan, describing election lies that Trump was pushing as “bulls**t and damaging.”
► Murdoch said it was “wrong” for Tucker Carlson to host conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell after the election. When asked why he continued to allow the MyPillow CEO to continue appearing on Fox News, Murdoch signaled it was a business decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” he said. That’s a shocking admission from Murdoch about what actually guides coverage at Fox News.
► Behind the scenes, Paul Ryan repeatedly warned the Murdochs to stop allowing the spread of election lies. The former House speaker said that Fox News should “move on from Donald Trump” and “stop spouting election lies.” Ryan told the Murdochs that many of those who thought the election had been stolen did so “because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources.
