CNN's Oliver Darcy reacted with astonishment on Wednesday evening to the newly released emails in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, which provided even more evidence the network higher-ups, including CEO Suzanne Scott, knew they were pushing false conspiracy theories about the election — something Fox still denies.
"Stunning that the CEO of Fox said in an email or a text, said that fact-checking the former president, which some Fox employees were trying to do, was bad for business," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "Not something you would expect from a leader of a purported news network."
"Right," said Darcy. "Now we're having new emails that really shed light on the pressure that Fox News is under as a business, after they called the election accurately for Joe Biden. I want to read to you an email that Suzanne Scott, the CEO, sent another executive after a correspondent, Eric Shawn, fact-checked Trump's lies and a guest who went on Sean Hannity's program and spread some election lies, and she said, 'This has to stop,' and goes on to say 'This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding of what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding the material. Bad for business.'"
"Now, Fox News will say that this was because they fact-checked a guest that was spreading, again, these election conspiracy theories on Sean Hannity's show," Darcy added. "But still, regardless, like, if a guest went on cnn and spread election conspiracy theories, it would be pretty normal, it would be expected, that other anchors would then call it out. In fact, check that for the audience."
"There was also emails about concern about viewers dropping out of their streaming service, is that right?" Cooper continued.
"Viewers left in pretty large numbers after the election," said Darcy. "When they were rebelling against fox news, they switched over to Newsmax, which Donald Trump was telling them to do. But now we're also learning in this new email that 25,000 subscribers to Fox Nation, Fox News' streaming service, had also dropped. They had just unsubscribed, apparently because there were so angry that Fox News had the nerve to actually accurately call the election for Joe Biden. And in other another email that we also see, we see Dobbs producers talking about how putting on election liars like Rudy Giuliani, like Sidney Powell, was actually good for the ratings. In one email they write, 'I mean to keep this alive we really need Rudy or Sidney.' I mean, extremely stunning emails, again. There's just a mountain of evidence now showing the behind the scenes at Fox News."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Oliver Darcy breaks down "stunning" Fox News emails www.youtube.com
