Media
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Here are some highlights from the mountains of Fox documents:
Despite what they were saying on air, behind the scenes many people at Fox were disparaging of Donald Trump, to put it mildly:
Almost a week after the attack on the Capitol, former speaker of the U.S. House and Fox Corp. board member Paul Ryan emailed Rupert Murdoch an article called The Alternate Reality Machine. The article, which appeared on the conservative website The Dispatch, touched on how Fox News and other conservative media circulated misinformation about the Capitol riot. Murdoch responded to Ryan, “Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers!”
In an email on November 19, 2020, Murdoch says of Donald Trump: “The real danger is what he might do as president. Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls! Don’t know about Melania but kids no help.” In the same email, he writes that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani both appear to be going “increasingly mad.”
In an email to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott on January 21, 2021, Murdoch wrote: “Maybe Sean (Hannity) and Laura (Ingraham) went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”
The person at Fox who hated Donald Trump the most was none other than Tucker Carlson who, in public, was the biggest kiss-ass on the entire network.
In texts to members of his staff on January 4, 2021, Carlson wrote: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
On November 10, 2020, in a text exchange with a member of his staff regarding the news that Trump wasn’t attending the inauguration of Joe Biden, Carlson wrote: “I’d heard that about the inauguration. Hard to believe. So destructive. It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.”
On November 6, 2020, Carlson had this text exchange with his producer Alex Pfeiffer:
Pfeiffer: Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures.
Carlson: That’s for sure. All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.
On January 7, 2021, Carlson and Pfeiffer had another text exchange:
Carlson: Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters.
Carlson: He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.
Pfeiffer: You’re right. I don’t want to let him destroy me either. [REDACTED]. The Trump anger spiral is vicious.
Carlson: That’s for sure. Deadly. It almost consumed me in November when Sidney Powell attacked us. It was very difficult to regain
emotional control, but I knew I had to. We’ve got two weeks left. We can do this.
Fox News hosts and executives knew full well the claims of election fraud being pushed by Donald Trump and his surrogates were false but broadcast them anyway.
In his January 2023 deposition, Rupert Murdoch said, “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight.”
Also in his deposition, Murdoch said he thought Donald Trump was a sore loser and, when asked if he believed there was “massive fraud,” he replied, “No. I have never even studied it.”
On November 7, 2020, Tucker Carlson told his producer Alex Pfeiffer that “the software shit is absurd.” The next day he wrote, “I dont think there is evidence of voter fraud that swung the election.”
On November 18, 2020, in a text exchange between Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, Tucker said to Laura: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” To which Laura replied, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
In yet another text exchange between Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, from November 22, 2020, they had this to say:
Carlson: I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.
Ingraham: No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.
Carlson: But they said nothing in public. Pretty disgusting. And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care.
In an email to Fox producers on November 21, 2020, Fox Corp Senior Vice President Raj Shah called Sidney Powell’s election fraud claims “totally insane” and “just MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.”
Referring to Fox host Maria Bartiromo on November 8, 2020, Fox executive Gary Schreier wrote, “The problem is she has gop conspiracy theorists in her ear and they use her for their message sometimes.”
On November 19th, after Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s off-the-chain news conference, Fox executive Ron Mitchell wrote, sarcastically: “Will you be mentioning the international crime conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Maduro, Chavez, Antifa, Cuba, and China?” He continued by saying “those clowns put us” in “an awkward place where we’re going to need to thread the needle.”
Fox’s motivation for allowing misinformation on its airwaves is crystal clear:
When asked in his deposition why he did not want to “antagonize” Donald Trump after the 2020 election, Murdoch replied, “He had a very large following. They were probably mostly viewers of Fox, so it would have been stupid.”
After the election, a Fox producer wrote to colleagues, “Don’t know how closely you’ve looked at our charts this week, but audience much more interested in voter irregularities than COVID hypocrisy or race/Obama book tour.”
On November 9th, Fox News host Dana Perino texted Republican strategist Colin Reed: “… but there is this RAGING issue about fox losing tons of viewers and many watching – get this – newsmax! Our viewers are so mad about the election calls (as if our calls would have been any different. It’s just votes!)”
Five days after the election, Suzanne Scott forwarded a message from Rupert Murdoch that showed concern for Fox’s ratings. Scott told Fox News President Jay Wallace that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were “expecting” certain things. For one, “audiences don’t want to see too much of the Mayor Pete’s (referring to now Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg) and Coons (referring to Democratic Senator Christopher A. Coons) etc in the news hours. Need to be careful about bookings next 2 months-especially in news hours.”
On November 10th, Fox News president Jay Wallace texted, “The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling.” It is “truly an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored.”
On November 18th, after discovering that Newsmax was pushing conspiracy theories, Fox executive Ron Mitchell wrote, “This type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC viewer is looking for.”
In a moment of rare self-reflection, Fox News senior vice president Bill Sammon wrote, “It’s remarkable how weak ratings” make “good journalists do bad things.”
Even when some people at Fox tried to do the right thing, they were condemned for it:
On November 9th, Fox host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press conference led by Kayleigh McEnany after she claimed that Democrats took certain positions on voting issues because they were “welcoming fraud” and “illegal voting.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto told his audience. “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this. I want to make sure that maybe they do have something to back that up.” Afterward, members of Fox News executive Raj Shah’s staff notified senior leadership that Cavuto’s behavior amounted to a “Brand Threat.”
After Giuliani and Powell’s November 19th news conference, Fox reporter Kristin Fisher said on-air, “So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court.” She also pointed out that much of what Trump lawyers were saying in court did not align with the falsehoods that were being said in public, and that Trump’s team had failed repeatedly to provide any evidence. Although every word she spoke was true, Fisher recounted that she was reprimanded by her boss Bryan Boughton, who “emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it” and that she “needed to do a better job of – this is a quote – ‘respecting our audience.’”
In the days following the election, Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich wrote on Twitter that “top election infrastructure officials” confirmed that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” mentioning by name Fox News host Sean Hannity and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. In a text among Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, Carlson told Hannity he should have Heinrich fired: “Seriously...What the fuck?” I’m actually shocked... It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Carlson then told the group that he “just went crazy on” Executive Vice President Meade Cooper “over it.” Hannity replied that he had already spoken to CEO Suzanne Scott, and then later texted, “I just dropped a bomb.” For her part, Scott said in a message to Fox News President Jay Wallace and Irena Briganti, Fox News Senior Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications, that Heinrich “has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.”
The absurd notion that Fox News is “fair & balanced” has finally been laid to rest for good:
Before the election, Rupert Murdoch gave Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner “confidential information” about Joe Biden’s advertisements “along with debate strategy” – essentially giving Kushner “a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.”
In an email from Rupert Murdoch to former editor of the New York Post Col Allan in September 2020, Murdoch lamented, “How can anyone vote for Biden?” Allen replied that Biden’s “only hope is to stay in his basement and not face serious questions.” Murdoch answered, “Just made sure Fox banging on about these issues. If the audience talks the theme will spread.”
In his deposition, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged, “We were worried that Mr. Trump would lose the election and what Mr. Biden may do.”
On November 7th, after Fox’s decision desk called Arizona for Joe Biden, Rupert Murdoch said that that he hoped Trump would still win the state, writing he was “still praying for Az to prove them wrong.”
On election night, in a message between CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Scott mentioned that Donald Trump could very well win the election, even with losing a historic percentage of the popular vote. Murdoch replied, “If that happens, god willing, we will have to defend the electoral college aggressively.” Murdoch later wrote, “Momentum in Pennsylvania looks good” then “Trump now ahead in Wisconsin!” then “Trump ahead in popular vote so far! Amazing.”
On October 27, just days before the election, Rupert Murdoch asked Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to have Sean Hannity say “something supportive” about Republican Senator Lindsey Graham after Fox host Lou Dobbs was critical of the Senator. “Could Sean say something supportive? We can’t lose the Senate if at all possible.” Scott replied that Graham “got a lot of time” when he was on Hannity’s show the night before” and she had “addressed the Dobbs outburst.”
After Trump lost the election, Rupert Murdoch told Suzanne Scott to “concentrate on Georgia” since Georgia would decide which party ultimately controlled the U.S. Senate. He told her that they should be “helping any way we can.”
Obviously, this is all incredibly damaging to Fox News’ credibility and should have been eye-opening for – and insulting to – Fox’s audience. But once again, here we are in the same old catch-22: Fox’s audience wasn’t insulted BECAUSE they didn’t hear about it BECAUSE Fox and most other conservative media outlets didn’t cover the story.