webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

suzanne scott fx news ceo

-=-=

-=-=

-=-=

AN 10 26

MAGA piles on Karoline Leavitt as she ditches family for Fox News stint

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s move to Fox News drew mockery Monday from critics who pointed to her continued presence inside President Donald Trump’s political and media orbit just two months after she left the administration to spend time with her family.

Fox News has confirmed that Leavitt, who is 29 years old, will be joining the network as an on-air contributor with her start date being Nov. 1, and she will appear on both its news and opinion programs. Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, stated that Leavitt's experience gained during her time in the White House and on the campaign trail gives her a “distinct understanding of today’s political landscape.”

Amy Siskind took notice of the announcement, writing on X that "Karoline Leavitt is going to work at Fox News" and stating that "the cycle of MAGA life and reinforcement loop continues".

Siskind, author of The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year, has long been a critic of Trump and a political activist.

It also brought back doubts regarding Leavitt's reason for leaving the White House in August. Back then, she had stated that, after the birth of her daughter, she did not think it was possible to give her two young children the things they needed while at the same time spending the time and energy required of a press secretary.

President Trump also announced that Leavitt was resigning so as to spend more time with her children and family, adding that she would still remain one of his top external advisers.

A self-styled "MAGA patriot" on X referred to those statements following the announcement on Monday and claimed that Leavitt had abandoned the reason she had given for her departure.

“Sorry folks, no more integrity left here, someone sold out,” the user wrote, adding, “pray for her children and her family.”

Progressive commentator Jamie Bonkiewicz also hammered Leavitt on the same point, writing on X, "I guess Karoline Leavitt had enough of being a stay-at-home mom and taking care of her grandpa husband."

Greg Gutfeld had already made a joke about exactly this situation the day after Leavitt announced that she was leaving the White House.

“There is a concern that she will join Fox, which would then leave us with three women,” Gutfeld said on The Five in August, when referring to the Fox personalities Dana Perino and Kayleigh McEnany, who had both been White House press secretaries. Co-host Emily Compagno later made the joke that Gutfeld was trying to get her off the show “to make room for Karoline.”

Leavitt has stayed closely linked with Trump ever since she left office. She went back to MAGA Inc., the superPAC that supported Trump and where she had previously worked, and has continued appearing often on Fox.

She said that she intends to bring to her new position at Fox the "unique perspective and candor" gained during her time in the Trump administration.

-=-=

ARI MELBER , WANTS CNN CEO FIRED BY FEDS?

President Donald Trump's top trade adviser appeared on MS NOW on Wednesday and said it is a "dirty little secret" that Fox News settled for $700 million after telling defamatory lies about the 2020 presidential election for one reason: They didn't want network founder Rupert Murdoch on the stand.

Peter Navarro appeared on Ari Melber's show and called for Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to be fired after one of their on-air talents, Maria Bartiromo, was fired after sharing an internal corporate memo with Navarro in which Scott told people not to amplify the same discredited election theft claims that previously got them sued.

"There was no expectation of confidentiality," Navarro said. "There was an expectation that the White House would be informed,' adding that "basically, what Suzanne Scott should have done when the White House contacted her was apologize and acknowledge that it was disrespectful to the president and to people in this country — not to have that network even talk about the address."

Navarro was referring to Trump's July speech in which he heavily implied that China had meddled in the 2020 elections in a way that ultimately caused the contest to go to his opponent, Joe Biden, instead of himself. Critics overwhelmingly agree that the speech did nothing to verify Trump's discredited claim that the election was stolen from him.

From there Navarro argued that Fox News had "censored" Trump's July speech, which Melber pointed out was not true. They covered it, but declined to do so either live or without fact-checking Trump's various claims.

"It was aired, not censored," Melber said, adding that it seemed like Navarro was arguing that the government should be able to tell networks what to cover and not to cover, including disproved claims about election theft. Navarro reiterated his call for Scott to be fired for not covering Trump's election fraud claims, although he added that he was speaking only for himself and not for the White House.

Overall, Navarro complained that Fox News only agreed with Trump on some issues but not on others.

"There's this misconception among viewers on the right and left that somehow that Fox is a conservative messenger and supports Donald Trump and. Fox in a heartbeat will tell you about transgender stuff and illegal aliens rape and killing as well they should," Navarro told Melber, before complaining that "there's certain guardrails they put up. Election integrity is one that you mentioned."

-=-=

---

MMA

Eight damning new revelations about Fox’s 2020 election lies from the Smartmatic filings

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 08/21/25

Newly available filings in the election technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News provide fresh insights into the network’s egregious and irresponsible promotion of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies — four and a half years after Fox’s propaganda helped trigger a violent insurrection in which enraged Trumpists sacked the U.S. Capitol.

The documents, which support Smartmatic’s motion for summary judgment and were originally filed in April, were first reported by The Washington Post after a judicial hearing officer removed many of the redactions.

The documents feature numerous previously unseen text messages and internal communications between Fox hosts, executives, producers, and other employees as Trump attempted to use false claims about the 2020 election to subvert the results of the election he lost and remain in power.

Fox’s internal machinations during this period were previously made public through the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, another election technology company which accused the network of defamation over its post-election coverage. Fox ultimately settled that suit as it went to trial in 2023 for a record $787.5 million.

The contours of Smartmatic’s story are broadly similar to — if no less damning than — the one Dominion told: Fox hosts and executives knew that Trump lost the 2020 election and that the claims of widespread election fraud he and his supporters pushed were false, but they nonetheless pivoted in the days following the election to promote such conspiracy theories -– including falsehoods about the company — because they were taking heat from viewers overcalling Arizona for Joe Biden and feared losing market share to more aggressive competitors like Newsmax

But the Smartmatic filings provide new evidence that helps flesh out the tale of Fox’s cowardice and corruption.

Maria Bartiromo leveraged her status at Fox to try to overturn the election: “I am news”

Maria Bartiromo was once a respected business reporter, but reinvented herself as a hardcore MAGA propagandist during the first Trump administration. But even as she went further and further down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, Bartiromo has retained her position on Fox’s “news” side, anchoring Fox Business’ three-hour weekday program Mornings with Maria as well as the weekend show Sunday Morning Futures,which is simulcast on Fox News.

Smartmatic’s filings show Bartiromo leveraged that position as she tried to get Sidney Powell, the MAGA attorney notorious for her far-fetched election claims, to come on her Fox Business show in mid-November 2020. (Bartiromo hosted Powell on her Fox News show earlier that month to push election lies after Powell sent her an email featuring fraud hypotheses from someone who also claimed that “the Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.”)

“Sidney we must keep you out there,” Bartiromo wrote in a November 17, 2020, Signal message.

She contrasted her own role at the network with that of then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, another avid promoter of election fraud lies, and suggested she could provide more helpful treatment, saying, “Dobbs is considered very opinionated. I am news. How about Friday?”

Bartiromo later suggested to Powell that her own goal was to reverse the election results and keep Trump in power. “I am very worried,” she wrote. “Please please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can.”

Bartiromo still has both of her “news” shows.

The filings show then-Fox host Jeanine Pirro texted Ronna McDaniel, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, the following on September 21, 2020: “I work so hard for the party across the country… I’m the # 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and the party.”

It’s not precisely news that Pirro viewed her work at the network as an extension of Trump’s campaign — it would in fact have been difficult to come away with a different conclusion after watching her commentary over the years.

Nonetheless, it’s helpful to have that confirmed explicitly in writing.

In mid-November 2020, I reported that Fox appeared to be trying to stave off its competitors by heavily promoting its prime-time “opinion” stars during its purported “news” hours. This campaign included the “news” programs running ads hyping the hosts casting doubt on the election results, airing on-screen bugs promoting their shows, and playing lengthy clips from the “opinion” shows.

The Smartmatic filings reveal that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott apparently ordered this breach of the purported wall the network maintained existed between its “news” and opinion divisions. She emailed top Fox executives on November 9, 2020, demanding that the “news” hours increase its promotion of “opinion” talent like Pirro and the prime-time hosts. She wrote (emphasis added):

On the website – its 345p and I still dont see our opinion folks being promoted on .com – I’m seeing a ton of FOX nation – need that changed asap for the next few weeks. Same for FOX News channel – not seeing nearly enough promotion of primetime talent other than the little bug. And we should get a Pirro promo in as well. This is something I called around about first thing this morning. I’m traveling next four days and expect this to be handled well.

Sean Hannity went from considering Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani an “insane” person he could not conceive of hosting to welcoming him back onto his program in 10 days.

The Fox host functioned as an extension of Trump’s White House and regularly hosted Giuliani to spin Ukraine conspiracy theories that Fox’s research team said were not credible. But the former New York City mayor turned Trump lawyer was apparently going too far for even Hannity in the early days of Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election results.

The filings show Hannity texted associates on November 10, 2020, to say of Giuliani: “He is going nuts. We canceled the guy. Read what’s wrong…. He’s insane.” He told producers the following day that Giuliani is “acting like an insane person. I’m not redpill78.” (According to the Smartmatic filing, “Hannity testified that his reference to ‘redpill78’” — a streaming program associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory — “indicated that he was skeptical” of Giuliani.)

On November 19, 2020, Hannity interviewed Giuliani about his election fraud claims.

Hannity subsequently testified that he had hosted Giuliani because he was a “top newsmaker.”

He retains his Fox prime-time show.

The Dominion filings show that a Fox executive took Pirro off the air the weekend after Election Day, preempting her November 7, 2020, broadcast because he did not “trust her to be responsible.” They also reveal that after Pirro’s show returned the following weekend, her executive producer struggled in vain to prevent her from promoting what he termed her election “conspiracy theories.”

Those filings, however, do not fully explain why Pirro returned to the air in the first place. Smartmatic’s filings fill in that gap: They show that Pirro’s removal sparked a backlash from the MAGA faithful that Fox’s CEO, at Fox prime-time star Sean Hannity’s urging, sought to quell by increasing Pirro’s profile and allowing her to comment without “being censored.”

According to the filings, Hannity told Pirro via text message on November 10, 2020, that he had already reached out to Scott to talk about issues including Pirro’s treatment by the network. When Pirro vented to her colleague, “I’M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I’M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION,” he further explained that he was “looking for changes” including “to leave u alone.”

Hannity may have already been getting results: Scott’s email the previous day ordering more promotion of Fox’s opinion hosts included Pirro along with the prime-time hosts. A few days later, promos for Pirro’s upcoming show were running and being distributed through right-wing channels.

A flurry of communications about Pirro’s show followed between Scott and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and between Scott and Fox executive vice president of primetime programming Meade Cooper the day before Pirro’s next broadcast.

“Has anyone spoken to Judge Jeanine before her show this weekend?” Murdoch asked Scott. “It would be good if she corrects the record and clears up the schedule change last week.”

Scott passed the request on to Cooper, who replied that they weren’t planning to make a statement about that and added, “David Clark is reviewing all scripts and working with her on her open. She is very into not being censored but he is working with her closely on it.”

“We don’t want to censor her,” Scott replied.

According to the filing, Scott “had a conversation with Pirro related to coverage of election fraud claims before Pirro’s November 14 show.” The same day, when Hannity texted her to crow about all the promos she was getting, Pirro replied, “I gave 3 demands. New producer. No censorship. 9 pretapes. Suzanne [Scott] promised me NOT overruled by Meade cooper.”

The newly unleashed Pirro used the opportunity the cowed Fox executive team gave her to promote election conspiracy theories that ultimately proved very expensive for Fox.

But it’s hard to get disciplined at Fox for being too supportive of Trump — she was subsequently promoted to the weekday panel show The Five and recently left Fox to become U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Scott’s handling of Pirro shows how willing Fox was to bend over backward to provide editorial independence to its conspiratorial opinion hosts. But “news-side” personalities at the network who tried to shut down such claims weren’t so lucky.

The Smartmatic filings show top Fox executives expressing dismay after anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a November 9, 2020, White House press conference featuring press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and told viewers, “She’s charging the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can't in good countenance continue showing you this."

Tom Lowell, Fox’s vice president and managing editor of news, subsequently told other top Fox executives that anchors like Cavuto should not have the authority to cut away from live events, writing: “Needs to be a chain of command here considering the environment we are in. It’s not the talents call and [t]he EP [Executive Producer] needs approval from you [Mitchell] or Jay [Wallace] in the handling of pressers.”

When GOP state legislators put on a series of sham election fraud “hearings” in late November and early December 2020, which featured Trump’s legal team and discredited “witnesses” with unverified or debunked claims, Trump praised Fox’s right-wing competitors for airing the hearings live — and criticized Fox for failing to do so.

Scott responded to the pressure by urging her network to start taking such hearings live in a December 2, 2020, email to Lowell. She suggested that the “witness testimony” at the events constituted the “evidence that the news division has been saying doesn’t exist,” and concluded, “This is BUSINESS. RIGHT NOW BAD BUSINESS.” From her email:

The entire impeachment was about one anonymous hearsay whistleblower. We ran the Schiff Nadler show wall to wall. If we wanted to send a strong message to the audience, run the witness testimony. That’s called evidence that the news division has been saying doesn’t exist. Now will the results ever change. Odds are next to zero. This is BUSINESS. RIGHT NOW BAD BUSINESS.

Lowell admitted that the network had featured witness testimony in stories about the hearings without fact-checking them but warned Scott that airing the events live was not a good news practice.

“It is one thing for us to give a platform to the Presidents Attorneys and surrogates, or people like this guy on with Sean [Hannity] right now who signed an affidavit, but we need to be skeptical of some of these supporters who just wander in to make statements about things they think they saw,” he wrote in an email to Scott.

The Smartmatic filings provide new details about what Fox’s Jesse Watters was told and what he did during this period, while he was the host of the weekend evening program Watters’ World.

Watters was explicitly warned not to promote election fraud claims immediately after the 2020 election, according to the filings.

“On November 6, Watters texted Fox host Pete Hegseth, ‘By the way, did you get the memo about not saying fraud?’” the filing states.

Watters testified that this was a reference to instructions relayed by his producer, Megan Albano. In a text message the same day, Albano told Watters, “If we call the race, you cannot, under any circumstances, cast doubt on” the election because “the powers that be are not having any of it.”

This message did not stick, the filing shows: “On November 21, 2020, an original television broadcast of Watters’ World aired at 8:00 p.m. on Fox News. Dobbs appeared as a guest, discussing a ‘cyber-attack’ using voting machines to steal the 2020 election, and Watters presented an ‘investigation’ into Dominion and Smartmatic.”

The filing further states that in a text to The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld, Watters wrote: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”

Fox has since given Watters two promotions — he gained his own weekday evening show in January 2022, and that program took over the network’s “pivotal” 8 p.m. timeslot in June 2023.

---

mma 3 23

Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum argued in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election that the network should consider a “layer” beyond “statistics and numbers” when projecting the election results, and instead take into account how its conservative audience would react to the network’s calls.

The New York Times reviewed a recording of a Zoom meeting held on November 16, 2020, over a week after the network’s decision desk had projected Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The article details discussions between Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and the two purported straight news anchors on the continued political fallout over the network’s correct projection on election night that Joe Biden had won the swing state of Arizona. (Fox News later fired two key news executives who had presided over the call, which was factually correct and never reversed by any real-life developments.)

Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the two main anchors, suggested it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered. “In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, “the game is just very, very different.”

…

Ms. Scott invited Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum, “the face” of the network, as she called them, to describe the heat they were taking, according to the recording reviewed by The Times.

“We are still getting bombarded,” Mr. Baier said. “It became really hurtful.” He said projections were not enough to call a state when it would be so sensitive. “I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer” so they could “think beyond, about the.”

Ms. MacCallum agreed: “There’s just obviously been a tremendous amount of backlash, which is, I think, more than any of us anticipated. And so there’s that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor.” For “a loud faction of our viewership,” she said, the call was a blow.

Neither she nor Mr. Baier explained exactly what they meant by another “layer.” A person who was in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said on Saturday that Mr. Baier had been talking about process because he was upset the Decision Desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first.

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser reported last year in their book The Divider that Baier had attempted to convince the network to retract its call of Arizona for Biden and to “put it back” as Trump winning, even though Trump trailed at the time by more than 10,000 votes.

“The Trump campaign was really pissed,” he wrote in an email to Jay Wallace, the president and executive editor at Fox. “This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.” He accused the Decision Desk of “holding on for pride” and added: “It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it—even if it gives us major egg [on our faces]—and we put it back in his column the better we are in my opinion.

By the time of the Zoom meeting on November 16, there could not have been any remaining doubt over the fundamental accuracy of the Arizona call. Baier and MacCallum, however, were still arguing that it had been a political mistake for the network to be first on the air with this truthful story.

This newest reporting further reveals the extent to which Fox does not have a “straight news” side, but instead is just another cog in a right-wing propaganda machine. This story must also be considered in the context of revelations from Dominion Voting Systems’ ongoing defamation lawsuit against Fox, which reveals that Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and other key executives knew that the Trump campaign’s conspiracy theories about massive electoral fraud were indeed false, but that the network continued to push them in the pursuit of profit.

In the two-week period after the Fox News decision desk had declared Joe Biden the president-elect, the network’s coverage undermined that projection by questioning the results of the election or pushing conspiracy theories at least 774 times.

dominion discovery --> mma 3 23

The recently released legal filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News shows the extent to which multiple Fox executives and anchors knew that the network was pushing lies about the 2020 presidential election results on air. The filing also contains a startling statement by Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch: that Fox News executives who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast should potentially be fired. From the filing (emphasis in original):

Q. What should the consequences be when Fox News executives knowingly allow lies to be broadcast? A.  They should be reprimanded – They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, Fox Corporation.

The filings also show the extent to which Fox executives knowingly spread the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the election at least in part in order to keep up with its far-right media competitors. These decisions now leave multiple Fox executives implicated as potentially worthy of firing, according to Rupert Murdoch’s own declared standard.

Rupert Murdoch

First off, and most obvious, is Rupert Murdoch himself. As chairman of the Fox Corp., Murdoch could have intervened at any time and stopped the hosts and guests featured on his network from spreading lies about the 2020 election, a fact that he bluntly admitted under questioning by Dominion’s lawyers. From the filing:

Q. And you could have said to Suzanne Scott or to the hosts, “Stop putting Rudy Giuliani on the air”?

A. I could have. But I didn't.

Furthermore, Murdoch did nothing about the entreaties by Fox board member Paul Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House, who argued according to the filing “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”

Murdoch did, however, take direct action to get rid of a Fox executive who told the truth. On November 20, 2020, Murdoch personally signed off on firing vice president and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, who had been involved in the network’s projection that President Joe Biden had won Arizona, which assured Biden his Electoral College victory. “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” Murdoch said, per the filing, adding that this move would “be a big message with Trump people.”

Lachlan Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch’s son and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch is also clearly guilty under the standard that his father enunciated, as he helped tailor the network’s messaging to help promote lies about the election. As just one example,Lachlan instructed the network to give positive coverage to a “Stop the Steal” rally on November 14, 2020,which served as a prelude to the January 6 insurrection, and to brand the violent and far-right event as a “celebration of the president.”

The Dominion filing further alleges that in addition to Lachlan’s close interactions with his other key executives, “specific evidence shows he attended the November 13 afternoon editorial meeting” that preceded an episode ofLou Dobbs Tonight that featured disgraced Trump-allied attorney Sidney Powell.The then-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs repeatedly called Powell a “great American,” while she claimed that Dominion had been “created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez, and then shipped internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries, including this one.”

Suzanne Scott

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott also played a clear role in spreading lies and suppressing the truth on the network. Under questioning, Scott affirmed that she had always believed, since at least when the network itself had called Arizona and thus the election on November 7, 2020, that in fact Biden had won legitimately.

And yet on multiple occasions, Scott reprimanded on-air talent who called out the lies and conspiracy theories. Examples include her involvement with Lachlan Murdoch in reprimanding then-anchor Leland Vittert’s coverage of the November 14 “Stop the Steal” rally, as well as her reported “screaming” about negative coverage by anchor Dana Perino and then-Fox reporter Kristen Fisher of the infamous November 19 press conference by Trump attorneys and election conspiracy theorists Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us….We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer,” Scott said at the time.

The filing also reveals that Scott worked personally to preserve the network’s relationship with right-wing billionaire conspiracy theoristMike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, assisting him in spreading dangerous lies about the election and Dominion Voting Systems. In mid-December, after Lindell publicly claimed that Fox was supposedly “in on” stealing the election, the filing details that Scott sent a personal note and a gift to Lindell. She further suggested that shows should book Lindell in order to “get ratings.” (Rupert Murdoch himself admitted that Fox went out of its way to preserve its relationship with Lindell, one of the network’s largest advertisers, to shore up its profits.)

When the network later hosted Lindell on the January 26, 2021, edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the star prime-time host depicted his network’s top advertiser as a champion of free speech, rather than challenging him on his false claims about the election or his apparent effort to urge Trump to impose martial law.

Viet Dinh

Fox Corp. chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh also admitted during his testimony that Fox executives had a duty to “prevent and correct” falsehoods.

Q. But when the executives at Fox News know that hosts of shows are broadcasting allegations that the executives know or believe to be false, in that situation, the executives have an obligation to act, right?

A. If they are within the chain of command and if they -- and if they come to that knowledge, yes.

Q. And by “act,” that means to put a stop to it, right?

Q. They have an obligation under those circumstances, the executives do, in the chain of command, to put a stop to those broadcasts, right, sir?

A. Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.

Dinh confirmed under questioning that he had “pretty easily” been able to look up and debunk the claim that Dominion was owned by a Venezuelan company and founded in order to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chavez. But the filing suggests Dinh failed to require Fox News hosts and guests to debunk such easily discredited lies. On the contrary, the network aired that bogus claim over and over again.

Raj Shah

Fox Senior Vice President Raj Shahsent numerous internal communications about the damage to Fox’s reputation among conservative viewers, including the supposed “brand threat” posed by Fox figures who openly debunked Trump’s fake claims of mass election fraud. On November 13, he sent a “Brand Protection Unit Roundup” to Lachlan Murdoch, Dinh, and Scott, stating there was “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.” He further explained that “[p]ositive impressions of Fox News among our viewers dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.”

In order to mitigate this damage, at one point he pitched the idea of “some sort of public mea culpa for the AZ call,” or “some programming that’s focused on hearing our viewers grievances about how we’ve handled the election.” In other words, Shah wanted the network to apologize for actually broadcasting a truthful story.

In another instance, when host Tucker Carlson briefly feuded with Sidney Powell, Shah instructed a producer for Carlson’s show to downplay the extent of her ludicrous claims. At the same time as Shah described Powell’s claims as “so fucking insane,” he also advised Carlson’s team to “pivot to being deferential.”

Shah suggested the phrasing “we hope she is able to provide the evidence in court and we’ll bring it to viewers when they do” — even though he knew no such evidence existed or could ever be offered in court. In another message just the next day, Shah described Powell’s claims as “MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.”

Jay Wallace

Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace is also responsible for his inaction on the network’s continued lies about the election, even as a Dominion consultant repeatedly :{reached out to him personall:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:y (citations removed):

The day before the WSJ editorial and article appeared—November 16— Dominion’s Communications Consultant Tony Fratto, former Deputy White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush, personally brought the false allegations to the attention of the two top executives at FNN—Scott and Wallace— telling them that Dominion, “as you know, has received a great deal of attention on FoxNews [sic] and from the President. An enormous amount of misinformation -- actually, completely and verifiable wrong information—is finding its way on-air.” Fratto offered to provide the two of them a briefing about Dominion and concluded: “I think this situation is crossing dangerous lines.” Scott responded asking Wallace to provide his thoughts, and Wallace and Fratto then spoke over the phone. When Lou Dobbs again broadcast lies about Dominion that very night, Fratto reached out again to Wallace. He forwarded part of the transcript to Wallace and told him: “More fucking out [and out] lies. Honestly. He is a disgrace.”

Irena Briganti

Irena Briganti, Fox News senior executive vice president of corporate communications, also presided over the network’s continued inaction, even as it was clearly brought to her attention via a press inquiry (citations removed):

On December 1, a reporter with The Washington Post emailed FNN stating that Powell had appeared on both Dobbs and Hannity’s programs the day before making claims of voting machine fraud. The reporter asked,

[D]oes Fox News Media management have any concerns about the veracity of the claims that Powell has been making on network shows? Is Sidney Powell welcome to appear on any Fox News Media show? Has Fox News Media encouraged show hosts to fact-check claims about voter fraud?

Irena Briganti forwarded the inquiry to Scott and Wallace, stating “FYI—we spoke with Lauren [Petterson] and Meade [Cooper] and there’s nothing to combat this, so we are not responding.”

David Clark

David Clark, senior vice president for weekend news and programming, was directly responsible for Fox host Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futuresprogram, in which she hosted Giuliani and Powell. The filing reveals that he also agreed with the statement that there was “no credible evidence of massive cheating or fraud,” and yet he allowed her to continue spreading conspiracy theories by hosting figures such as Powell and Giuliani, and to not push back on them. Interestingly, the Dominion filing notes the ways in which Clark took active steps to temporarily rein in Fox host Jeanine Pirro, but he seemingly failed to do so with Bartiromo.

Fox Business executives

Fox Business executives Lauren PettersonandGary Schreier spoke of using Fox Business shows to grab viewers who were going away from Fox News proper, by supporting the election lies. (They just couldn’t be as open about it, compared to Fox’s far-right competition at Newsmax.) From the filing (citations removed):

The night of November 7, after Fox called the election, Fox Business Network (“FBN”) President Lauren Petterson wrote FBN executive Gary Schreier that she had turned off Fox’s coverage: “I don’t know how we work here. Honestly. We are going to look back at this week and know this was when we lost a significant part of our audience who won’t come back. As soon as Facebook starts telling people to go to [N]ewsmax.” But Schreier and Petterson saw an opening: “You know though between us. This is a problem for the channel yes. But if we keep doing what we do, fbn will get a bunch of the disenfranchised folks too.” Petterson responded: “100 percent. I was talking about exactly that with my husband last night.It’s actually an opening for us.” Schreier: “Yes. We just can’t play for it openly like newsmax and oan.”

Tucker Carlson’s 'nakedly fascist propaganda' leads to resignations, internal outrage, public fury — and a silent Murdoch

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement November 22, 2021

Two longtime Fox News contributors very publicly quit the far right wing cable channel this weekend over "Patriot Purge," a January 6 revisionism series created by the network's star anchor, Tucker Carlson. But other veteran Fox News anchors internally were so outraged their concerns went all the way to the head of Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, who did nothing to stop its release and is reportedly refusing to comment.

Conservatives Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, the latter a staple on other news outlets as well, resigned in protest Sunday night. NPR reports the pair "pointed to a breaking point earlier this month: network star Tucker Carlson's three-part series on the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol that relied on fabrications and conspiracy theories to exonerate the Trump supporters who participated in the attack."

"It's basically saying that the Biden regime is coming after half the country and this is the War on Terror 2.0," Goldberg tells NPR. "It traffics in all manner of innuendo and conspiracy theories that I think legitimately could lead to violence. That for me, and for Steve, was the last straw."

Goldberg's and Hayes' "resignations reflect larger tumult within Fox News over Carlson's series 'Patriot Purge' and his increasingly strident stances, and over the network's willingness to let its opinion stars make false, paranoid claims against President Biden, his administration and his supporters."

But NPR also reports that Chris Wallace, the top anchor at Fox News for nearly two decades, and Bret Baier, another top Fox News anchor and the network's chief political correspondent, were so outraged they "shared their objections with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and its president of news, Jay Wallace. Those objections rose to Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of the network's parent company, Fox Corporation. Through a senior spokeswoman, Scott and Wallace declined comment. Murdoch did not return a request for comment through a spokesman."

At HuffPost senior reporter Christopher Mathias says "Patriot Purge" is "the most nakedly fascist piece of propaganda Carlson has ever produced. And it comes at adangerous moment: The insurrection is on its way to becoming as noble an enterprise as the Boston Tea Party for large parts of the American right."

"Carlson's insurrection agitprop sparked a similar wave of warnings from many experts on fascism and misinformation," Mathias adds. "Propaganda like this, they argued, could one day render the shocking events of Jan. 6 as amere preview of the right-wing violence to come."

Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics," described “Patriot Purge" as “an overarching fantasy about the insurrection that goes like this: It was not an insurrection," she wrote for CNN. “To the extent there was violence, it was stirred up by members of the government and left-wing agitators.All of it was orchestrated so that the full force of federal law enforcement could be unleashed against Trump supporters, marking them as enemies of the state." FALSE FLAG

Goldberg and Hayes at their conservative website The Dispatch describe Carlson's "Patriot Purge" as "a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions. And its message is clear: The U.S. government is targeting patriotic Americans in the same manner —and with the same tools—that it used to target al Qaeda."

Earlier this month Rolling Stonesaid "Patriot Purge" is both "profoundly dishonest" and "profoundly dangerous."