News of what was in Rupert Murdoch’s recent deposition in the Dominion defamation lawsuit has trickled out into the media spotlight through various court filings made in that case. National Public Radio (and other media outlets as well) has already documented the stark discrepancies between what Fox News hosts claimed on air and what they were saying to each other in private in texts and emails.
Now comes the news that Rupert Murdoch had to concede that many of his Fox News hosts “endorsed” the false election claims that Trump was peddling right after 2020.
Murdoch had to concede under oath that at least Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanne Pirro and Sean Hannity all had “endorsed” Trump’s lies.
“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” was Murdoch’s comment about the fact that these lies were promoted on air.
C’mon Rupert.
Who are you trying to kid?
They didn’t decide to do this on their own. They decided to “endorse” these lies — well, they decided to lie to their viewers over and over again with a straight face — because this is clearly what they were told to do.
I hope Rupert doesn’t try to invoke the “I’m an old man, I didn’t know what my underlings were doing” defense, as he tried to do in the News International phone hacking scandal.
C’mon Rupert.
We weren’t born yesterday.
I mean, you are old. You’re 91 years old. It’s time for you to follow David Koch and Sheldon Adelson and Roger Ailes into the grave. Honestly, it couldn’t happen soon enough. (Why do these mothers always live as long as they do?)
But first, let Dominion take that $1.6 billion bite out of your operation, and make it clear to anyone with a brain that Fox News has never been “fair and balanced” but has been a disinformation factory from the moment that they were incorporated. It will be interesting to see whether Lachlan and Elizabeth and James can keep the operation together when Rupert is finally deported to the great beyond.