According to a just-released report by The New York Times, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, court documents released on Monday showed.
Under oath, in response to direct questions about the hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Murdoch said that “they endorsed” the false narrative. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight”, Mr. Murdoch added.
Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated in an attempt to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway.
The new documents and a similar batch released this month revealed that top executives and on-air hosts privately did not believe in what has come to be known as the “big lie”, that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. That, indeed, many of them reacted with incredulity bordering on contempt to the various fictitious allegations about Dominion, including that a secret algorithm in its machines allowed votes to be switched from one candidate to another and that the company was founded in Venezuela to help that country’s longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections.
Dominion’s latest filing also described how Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had told Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Murdoch’s son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, “Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” Mr. Ryan suggested that the network pivot and “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”
Asked by Dominion’s lawyer, Justin Nelson, whether he could have ordered Fox News to keep Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani off the air, Mr. Murdoch responded: “I could have. But I didn’t.”
The filing helps fill in the broader case against Fox News and its corporate parent, Fox Corporation, that Dominion lawyers hope to present to a jury in April, when a Delaware judge has scheduled the trial to begin.
