No B.S Friday: Fox News knew they were lying. But that’s just business.
So this story is just kind of wild, but it gives us a good insight into the kind of world we’re living in.
I’m talking about the defamation law suit between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.
Just as it was about to go to trial, Fox settled, and agreed to pay Dominion $US787.5 million (A$1.2 billion) – one of the largest defamation settlements in history.
Dominion had claimed that Fox had knowingly aired claims about Dominion (That they helped steal the 2020 US election) that it knew to be false, just to bolster their ratings.
From the evidence Dominion had gathered, that certainly looked to be true. They had texts and emails from big name presenters and even Rupert Murdoch himself.
But when you track the timeline, its actually all kinds of crazy.
So Trump lost the 2020 election, but refused to acknowledge that it was a fair result.
Rupert Murdoch wrote an email to his CEO saying that Trump was coming off as a sore loser and Fox’s hosts risked doing the same if they gave time to his nonsense.
The directive came down that Fox wouldn’t be buying into the whole ‘stolen election’ narrative.
But with Fox News sidelined, small time player Fox Business News saw an opportunity to capture disgruntled Trump voters.
FBN’s Maria Bartiromo invited lawyer Sidney Powell onto her morning show to talk about ‘voting irregularities’ and a “stolen election”.
Sidney Powell privately shared an email she received from Marlene Bourne which claimed that the voting irregularities could be tied to Dominion’s voting machines.
Who was Marlene Bourne?
She was an artist from Minnesota who makes ‘cactus art’ using glitter and crystals.
(no, really not making that bit up.)
She attributed her extraordinary knowledge to vivid dreams, which were like time travel and in which she would “listen to the wind”.
She also said she had been “internally decapitated” in a car accident in 1992, then shot in the back shortly after submitting a tip to the FBI in 2018, when she “felt my soul leave my body … And yet, I continue to walk the earth.”
Totally checks out.
Despite the fact that the only evidence that Powell and Bartiromo had had was one email from one clearly crazy woman, FBN run with it.
And then it blew up. It was just the story that the Trump base was looking for. And all the major anchors started running with it.
Despite no further evidence coming to light.
And despite them all acknowledging privately with each other that the story was clearly BS.
But the ratings were lifting. Fox’s CEO writes to Murdoch: “Time to pivot.” The stolen election narrative is given more airtime.
Dominion’s staff start receiving death threats. Someone is found outside with a long-range rifle.
Madness.
And all because one crazy lady making ‘cactus art’ fed them what they wanted to hear.
But the thing that jumps out for me?
It’s just how calculating Fox’s hosts and management were. They knew it was BS. They didn’t even like Donald Trump. (Tucker Carlson privately called him a ‘demonic force’.)
But they went where the money was.
Truth be damned.
And that’s why Fox had to settle. The evidence clearly seemed to suggest that they peddled lies they knew to be false, just to boost their ratings.
If this is news to you, you’re not paying attention.
This is how the media works. Not just Fox. All media.
Their business model is simply selling advertisers access to people’s eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more money.
Truth, lies, it’s neither here nor there. It’s all about the eyeballs.
This is the media landscape you live in.
JG.