Fox News was able to avert the embarrassment of a trial by settling its defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, but the Murdoch empire remains in crisis amid a parade of ongoing lawsuits, The Los Angeles Times’ Meg James writes.
Fox is still facing a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion, as well as a lawsuit from former producer Abby Grossberg on allegations that she was pressured into giving false testimony in the Dominion case.
Texts and emails revealed during discovery in the Dominion case showed that some of the network’s top executives and talents knowingly aired falsehoods about the 2020 election that have caused reputational damage to the company.
The Dominion case also shows that Murdoch may have lost a step, Yale University management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said Tuesday, according to James’ report.
“There’s a huge amount of evidence that Murdoch is not at the top of his game,” Sonnenfeld said.
“The best case for him would be to acknowledge that he’s lost control of the Fox-enstein monster that he created.”
The network is also facing a shareholder revolt, with investors contending that network executives are responsible for airing falsehoods that damaged the company.
“Fox executives and hosts knew that Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘really crazy stuff,’ as Rupert Murdoch, the head of the Fox media empire, put it, yet pushed them on air anyway,” Fox shareholder Robert Schwarz alleges in court filings obtained by The Times.
“Fox was more concerned about short-term ratings and market share than the long-term damages of its failure to tell the truth,” Schwarz’s suit said. “The board’s decision to chase viewers by promoting the false stolen election claims has exposed the company to public ridicule and negatively impacted the credibility of Fox News as a media organization that is supposed to accurately report newsworthy events.”
