Fox News heir sinking in the 'mire' in explosive Fox defamation suit: report

Fox News heir Lachlan Murdoch is facing one of his biggest media challenges to date deep in "the mire" of the operation's admitted lies about a "rigged" election revealed in the scathing Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, a biographer warned Saturday.

“This is an incredible signal moment for him, and his fingerprints are not absent here — he is part of this," journalist and author David Folkenflik told The Guardian in an article Saturday.

"Everything we’ve seen from Lachlan so far suggests that he was very front-of-mind worried about appeasing and serving their audiences," added Folkenflik, media correspondent for National Public Radio and author of "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires." It was "business first, then politics and political influence, then the ideological agenda, and only then came journalism, which looks like a distant fifth right now," he noted.

It's far from clear if Lachlan has the savvy and bold obstinance of dad Rupert Murdoch to survive it — and what that could ultimately mean for Fox.

Rupert Murdoch himself admitted in a deposition in the $1.6 billion lawsuit that neither Fox News executives nor star hosts ever believed Donald Trump's lies of a "rigged" presidential election. But the network nevertheless continued to peddle Trump's tale to its extremist viewers to keep up ratings.

Now, Murdoch seems to be taking a backseat to his son to deal with the blowback. That's fine with Dominion, which noted in its lawsuit that Lachlan Murdoch's role in allowing the rigged election lies on Fox was "direct." Lachlan admitted in a deposition in the Dominion suit that he gave “specific direction on both the tone and narrative of Fox’s news coverage." He was "responsible for the defamatory broadcasts," the Dominion suit has noted.

So far, Lachlan Murdoch seems to be taking a "whatever" approach, which hasn't been particularly effective. In his first public comments on the controversy Friday he called the scandal just "noise," and said he stood by Fox News' "without fear or favor" election and political coverage. Murdoch — who is CEO of Fox News' parent, Fox Corp. — also insisted the issue is not even "about journalism" — it's "about the politics." He added: “Unfortunately, that is more reflective of our polarized society that we live in today.”

Fox has attacked Dominion's scathing revelations of election lies as "distortions" and "cherry-picked quotes."

The case is scheduled for trial April 17.