Leak reveals Fox News CEO raged at host for fact checking Trump: 'This has to stop'

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at left-wing media watchdog Media Matters for America, has posted some photographs on Twitter of a leaked slideshow deck that Dominion Voting Systems is using in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Among other things, the deck features an email from Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott in which she berated host Eric Shawn for fact checking former President Donald Trump's false claims about Democrats using "massive dumps of votes" to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.

Shortly after Shawn shot down this claim on air, Scott sent out an angry email to Fox News executive Meade Cooper complaining that hosts such as Shawn were infuriating their viewers by providing context to Trump's false claims about election fraud.

"This has to stop now," she demanded. "This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business."

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In its lawsuit, Dominion has repeatedly shown that Fox News aired claims about Dominion's machines purportedly rigging the election for President Joe Biden that it knew to be false.

Earlier messages released by Dominion show that Scott also said that Fox News reporters who fact check Trump's false statements "don't understand our audience."

In a statement, Fox News stated: “These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case. The foundational right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to fiercely advocate for the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news.”