- “Dominion has mischaracterized the file, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled appreciable ink on info which are irrelevant underneath black-letter rules of defamation regulation,” Fox Information stated Feb. 16, in response to a Dominion movement.
- “Dominion mischaracterizes the info by cherry-picking soundbites, omitting key context, and mischaracterizing the file,” the community argued in a Feb. 27 assertion.
- “Among the many 1000’s of pages of proof disclosed as we speak, included are the total context surrounding Dominion’s cherry-picked narratives about FOX high executives, expertise and inside communication,” the community stated in a March 7 assertion.
- “Very like it did in its opening abstract judgment movement, Dominion litters its opposition transient with cherry-picked statements from individuals who don’t have anything to do with the precise statements it challenges as defamatory,” the community stated in a March 8 assertion.
There’s extra to the Fox Information cherry harvest (our fruity boldface all through), but people can handle only so many of these morsels. The community’s overreliance on a monocrop defamation protection, furthermore, speaks to wider issues because the April 17 trial date in Dominion Voting Programs v. Fox Information approaches — particularly, that this can be a case of quantity. Dominion’s criticism spans nearly 140 pages, with 300 more in exhibits; greater than 700 displays again up Dominion’s arguments for abstract judgment; oral arguments for abstract judgment stretched over two days, yielding transcripts of some 450 pages; the courtroom schedule units apart six weeks for the trial.
What’s driving all this? The seemingly bottomless provide of journalistic misfeasance at Fox Information — the contradictions between what community expertise believed and what they reported; the shaming of people that dared to fact-check claims from Trumpworld that the 2020 election was stolen; the community’s response — or non-reaction — to greater than 3,000 emails from Dominion correcting untruths on Fox Information airwaves (Fox Information counters that the tally is a deceptive depend of a dozen emails despatched to a large distribution record). Discovery within the case has produced displays consisting of emails, texts and different paperwork substantiating all of this stuff.
Fox Information accuses Dominion of twisting or in any other case stripping context from statements by Fox Corp. executives Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch and Fox Information host Sean Hannity, in addition to different claims. A Feb. 27 brief answering Dominion’s motion for summary judgment lays out the authorized import of the plaintiff’s alleged mangling of the file: “Dominion tries to distract from its evidentiary deficiencies by cherrypicking something it will probably discover from any nook of the Fox Information group that exhibits that anybody at Fox Information doubted or disbelieved” claims that the election was stolen. This can be a essential level as a result of if Dominion hopes to prevail at trial, among the many issues it wants to point out are that the defendants — which embrace each Fox Information and its mother or father firm, Fox Corp. — knew that the damaging claims it broadcast have been false or acted with “reckless disregard” of their reality or falsity. These are the options for proving “precise malice,” a requirement for all defamation plaintiffs who’re public figures underneath long-standing U.S. Supreme Court docket precedent.
What’s exceptional concerning the proof from which Dominion has allegedly “cherry-picked” is how far it seems to go towards assembly this commonplace. One instance: Final week, Dominion launched a bevy of slides that it posted through the March 21-22 oral arguments over the motions for abstract judgment. One among them contained info from a beforehand redacted exhibit detailing what the Fox News “Brain Room” had determined concerning the numerous allegations towards Dominion after the 2020 election.
The mind room is a vaunted establishment at Fox Information, a analysis hub sometimes cited by hosts on air as a spot to get info unfiltered by ideology. Its verdict on Dominion, as communicated in a Nov. 13, 2020, e-mail: “Claims about Dominion switching or deleting votes are 100% false,” reads the report. “Dominion programs proceed to reliably and precisely depend ballots, and state and native election authorities, in addition to reality checkers, have publicly confirmed the integrity of the method.”
In a information group, any such discovering from the analysis workplace would drive protection choices. Not so at Fox, which continued in indulging Dominion-related conspiracy theories for weeks after the “mind room” dedication. As The Publish’s Jeremy Barr reported this week, 18 of the 20 defamatory statements Dominion alleges in its swimsuit got here after that mind room memo. That’s exactly the type of proof at subject in a defamation trial. But when confronted with the very fact, Fox Information fell again on its speaking level: “These paperwork as soon as once more show Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes with out context to generate headlines with a purpose to distract from the info of this case,” reads its assertion.
A Dominion spokesperson stated: “The emails, texts, and deposition testimony converse for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our proof as a result of all of it results in the identical place — Fox knowingly unfold lies inflicting monumental harm to an American firm.”Delaware Superior Court docket Choose Eric M. Davis final week issued a ruling on abstract judgment motions that was unfavorable to Fox Information.
Fox Information has spent its complete 26 years selecting info and developments and presenting them as balanced information protection. It has picked Benghazi cherries, Obama cherries, Clinton cherries, social-justice cherries, crime cherries, welfare cherries, Soros cherries and plenty of others: Any tidbit that casts its ideological enemies in an unfavorable mild will get high billing; the opposite stuff, you’ll have to search out on different stations.
So there’s worth in watching Fox Information retreat many times to its fruity mantra. That is an establishment squirming in its personal orchard of self-contradiction — a comeuppance with no expiration date.
