Fox News V Dominion Voting Systems: What does it mean for the Murdochs?

Sascha: [00:00:03] I'm Sascha Kelly and welcome to the Dive. The podcast that asks whoever said the business news needs to be your business. Here's a question: Are you like me watching? Succession. This HBO drama is the topic of choice around the Office WaterCooler lately. I cannot stop laughing at Cousin Greg and I cannot wait to see what happens at the end of this final season. 

Audio Clip: [00:00:29] If it is to be sad, so would be so would it. Are you all right? Yes. 

Sascha: [00:00:35] It's long been assumed that this highly successful satire is loosely or not so loosely based on the Murdoch family. And despite Murdoch's global fame for the media empire they preside over for decades, their attitude has seemed to be to operate behind the headlines and actively avoid trying to make them. But recently, that's not been the case. There's currently two high profile court cases gearing up to take place on two different continents. One is against Fox News, a flagship in the Murdoch media empire, and the other one is of a more personal variety. It's Lachlan Murdoch's personal defamation claim against private media, the publishers of Crikey. So today we're doing something a little bit different on the dive. We're going to examine both of these cases. In a two part series. Today, I'm going to ask what exactly is the Fox versus Dominion trial about and what does it mean for the future of the Murdoch empire? As of recording this $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News brought by Dominion Voting Systems is headed to trial and it's scheduled to begin on the 17th of April. To learn more about this, I spoke to Sarah Ellison, a staff writer at the Washington Post. Sarah, let's start right at the beginning. What is dominion and why are they suing?

Sarah: [00:02:01] Dominion is a voting technology company, and that means that they own and operate the voting machines that you use to put your votes in on Election Day. They are suing because. They became part of a outlandish conspiracy theory that was promulgated by allies of Donald Trump that said that dominion voting machines were capable and in fact did switch votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. 

Audio Clip: [00:02:37] We have a company that's very suspect. Its name is Dominion with the turn of a dial or the change of a chip. You could press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this. 

Sarah: [00:02:54] And that This was part of a scheme by which Dominion was owned by another voting technology company called Smartmatic, and they were in fact sort of funded in some ways by Hugo Chavez. It was a convoluted and entirely false conspiracy theory that was given a lot of air on Fox News. And the reason that Dominion is suing Fox News is because there were wide, you know, many, many people who are watching FOX believe this. And Dominion alleges that this really scared off a lot of counties where they had contracts. You know, voting machine companies have long contracts. And Dominion is saying that this conspiracy theory has sort of wrecked their business. 

Sascha: [00:03:43] So this case has provided a glimpse into the inner machinations of Fox News, which is something the public hasn't really been privy to for a long time. What have we learned and has there been any bombshells from the evidence that's been tendered? 

Sarah: [00:03:57] Yeah, I mean, we've learned quite a bit. There are a shocking number of internal messages that have come out as part of this lawsuit. What we've seen is that the people who are on Fox News and the people who run Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election were really panicking because what Fox News did on election night was that they made a pivotal call. There's a swing state in the United States, Arizona and Fox News was the first news outlet to call Arizona. 

Audio Clip: [00:04:31] Arizona. Are you 100% sure of that call? And when you made it and why did you make it? 

Audio Clip: [00:04:37] Absolutely. We've made it after basically a half hour of debating. Is it time yet? Because it's been clear for a while that the former vice president is in the lead and Arizona was most likely to win the state. It has been in the category that we call knowable. 

Sarah: [00:04:52] And that was a pretty significant call because in many of the previous presidential elections, Arizona had gone for the Republican candidate. And in fact, what that meant was that it made it very difficult for Donald Trump to win the presidential election once Arizona flipped for Biden. And almost from the moment that that happened, Donald Trump went it was livid. His he and his people were calling Fox and demanding them to retract their call. And what he did then is he sort of went to war against Fox and he brought his supporters along with him. What that caused inside of Fox was an utter panic about losing viewers and upsetting Donald Trump. So that's just a long way of sort of leading in to say that what we are seeing in this lawsuit is sort of the fallout from that. And you see that one of Donald Trump's lawyers, Sidney Powell and the another lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were going on Fox and sort of promulgating this false conspiracy theory about Dominion, an explanation for why. Donald Trump had lost the election. And in fact, what happens is you see that all of the hosts don't believe what they are, what they are saying on the on the on the air. So the hosts, in fact, are saying that Sidney Powell is a liar. Tucker Carlson's a very prominent host. He's saying that, you know, the viewers are good people and they believe this. He says he hates Donald Trump, even though on air he actually really seems to like Donald Trump. You see Rupert Murdoch worrying about how few of Fox's viewers want to watch Fox. And it's a fascinating glimpse inside this company that is panicking about if they tell the truth, they're going to lose all of their viewers.

Sascha: [00:06:42] It's really interesting reading the evidence and hearing, you know, the private thoughts or the behind closed doors thoughts versus what they were publicly saying. I'd like to ask you, what's the lay of the land? 

Sarah: [00:06:56] The trial is set to begin on April 17th. And what we have had so far is a lot of pre-trial motions and pre-trial hearings and a lot of people expected this lawsuit was going to settle before it got to trial because Rupert Murdoch has a habit of paying people off to make problems go away. And he did that with phone hacking in the U.K. He's done that with a number of other cases in the U.S. They've done that before at Fox News, when there were a number of women who were alleging sexual harassment. But Dominion doesn't want to settle and Fox doesn't want to pay Dominion $1.6 billion. So where we are right now it seems that we are heading to trial. Like I said, it's due to start on April 17th. And I just got to my inbox today. The witness list of people we're going to hear from and their testimony. And it's, you know, everybody from Rupert Murdoch on down. 

Sascha: [00:07:50] So what do legal experts think at this stage is the most probable outcome? 

Sarah: [00:07:55] Most of the legal experts that I speak to say that this is a pretty this is a very strong case. Dominion has a very good hand in order to win a defamation case in the United States. It's actually quite difficult because you have to prove that if you are suing a public figure, you have to pass a very high bar. You have to prove that they acted with reckless disregard or actual malice. And the definition of those legal terms is that you have to show that the entity or the person knew what they were saying was false, but said it anyway. And what these internal messages, what's so important about them is that it shows that the people on Fox knew what they were going to say was false, but did it anyway. And so legal experts say it's very, very it seems like they have a good case. And at the same time, when you go down to the very specific instances of what did this particular host say and did they actually know that it was false? It's not a slam dunk. So I think that that's sort of my best pre-game prognostication that I can give you at the moment. 

Sascha: [00:09:02] I'm going to be right back with more of my conversation with Sara Ellison from The Washington Post in just a minute. And when we come back, I ask her what exactly is a $1.6 billion payout going to mean for Fox News? Welcome back to the dive. I'm Sascha Kelly. A quick reminder that today we're talking to Sarah Ellison from the Washington Post all about the defamation trial that's about to take place on the 17th of April. Fox News versus Dominion voting systems. Let's get back into my conversation now. You've mentioned that Dominion is suing for the amount of $1.6 billion. If they do win, what will that mean for Fox? 

Sarah: [00:09:53] This is a slightly technical answer, but if they win, Fox is going to appeal. And so then the case will go to a panel of three judges and we'll see what happens there. But Fox very well, they can pay that money. They will pay $1.6 billion if that is, in fact, there could be some additional damages that might be added to that or it might be less than that. It will be up to the jury. But what's fascinating to me is that so far, Fox's viewership numbers have held steady. So I've written a dozen articles about this case full of information about what the hosts were saying behind the scenes and how it contradicts what they were saying on the air. That doesn't seem to be resonating with Fox's viewers. They're either not reading all this press or they don't care. So in terms of what it actually means for Fox, I think that I mean, it can't be great for them. But it's it speaks to how divided we obviously are living in a very divided country politically. But we're also living in a people are in their own media bubbles. I mean, I hate to try to predict the future. 

Sascha: [00:11:03] Maybe a more interesting question is, have we seen any changes in Fox's editorial policies since this all began? And I think what you're saying is that there hasn't been a noticeable difference. Am I wrong? 

Sarah: [00:11:16] I mean, what Fox has tried to do since the suit was filed is not mentioned dominion in the same way that they have. And they've tried to keep people from coming on their air and making false claims about the election. So that very narrow thing has happened. Fox is still very much delivering the same kinds of messages and the same kind of programming that we have always seen from Fox. They are bashing liberals, talking about how there's too much crime in America, talking about, you know, all the same issues that they have been running on for two decades at this point. And it's not a it's definitely not a channel and an outlet that is chagrined on the outside. I think internally, people are pretty disturbed about where they are and all the attention that this this case is bringing to FOX. 

Sascha: [00:12:13] I'd like to say a huge thank you to Sarah Ellison for her explanation of the Fox News vs Dominion Voting Systems case and her insight into the media landscape over in the U.S. at the current time and just her generosity of spending the time with us here on the dive. On Wednesday, we're going to turn our attention to the case that's taking place here at home in Australia. The defamation case Lachlan Murdoch has lodged against private media, the publisher of Crikey. To discuss this, I'm going to be joined by Paddy Manning, a freelance investigative journalist and the author of The Successor fantastic biography on Lachlan Murdoch. He provided such wonderful insight and I really loved this conversation. So please join us on Wednesday. Meanwhile, if you're enjoying the dive, do us a favour. Send it to a friend. It really is the best way for us to get in front of the news. Until then, I'll be back with you on Wednesday.