Outpost of the battles of conservatives in the United States, the Fox News channel is going through a turbulent phase with revelations about its backstage during the 2020 presidential election and a lawsuit worth more than a billion dollars in sight. But the impact for the pearl of the Murdoch empire remains difficult to assess.
It has become a soap opera that delights the American media and the Democratic camp. Each week brings a new salvo of private messages, text messages or emails from leading figures in the chain and made public as part of defamation lawsuits brought by a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, Dominion Voting Systems.
“We are really, really, very close to being able to ignore Trump, almost every night (…) I hate him passionately”, wrote the star presenter Tucker Carlson, fervent supporter of the Republicans, to members of his team, the January 4, 2021, two days before the assault on the Capitol by thousands of supporters of the former president.
A falsely “stolen” election
Above all, the documents revealed that in November 2020, within the favorite channel of American conservatives, there was little belief, until its owner Rupert Murdoch, in the theory of a presidential election “stolen” by the Democrats, in particular through electronic voting. But that was only in private, when these theories flourished on the air, on the sets of stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham.
These contradictions are at the heart of the argument of Dominion Voting Systems, which wants to see the chain sentenced for defamation to 1.6 billion dollars in damages, during a civil trial which must begin mid-April in the State of Delaware. “This is an unprecedented attack on the first amendment” of the American Constitution protecting the freedom of the press, responds Fox News.
The chain adds that it was legitimate to give the floor to the Trump camp when it contested the vote and “essential for the search for the truth” to let all parties express themselves. She also accuses Dominion of “choosing and taking quotes out of context.”
Fox News tainted?
But regardless of the legal outcome, the revelations “got a bad splash on Fox,” according to Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.
“For a long time, we were like watching a play, and you could see by watching Fox that it was full of lies. What we didn’t know was how deliberate and orchestrated it was,” he adds.
The academic is still cautious about the effects these revelations will have for viewers of Fox News, which claimed in 2022, for the seventh consecutive year, the title of the most watched channel on cable by Americans, well ahead of its competitors CNN or MSNBC.
“They are aimed at a population that already believes in this kind of thing. These lies, they spread them in large part because their audience wanted to hear them, ”explains Mark Feldstein.
Impact financier
Launched in 1996, the channel has already gone through several crises such as the sexual harassment scandals involving its emblematic boss Roger Ailes, who died in 2017, and one of its emblematic presenters, Bill O’Reilly, who was fired the same year.
Even in the event of a heavy conviction, “Fox News is a cash cow. They’ll just absorb the loss and keep programming,” says Mark Feldstein. A sentence of more than a billion dollars would still have a significant financial impact on the parent company of Fox News, the Fox Corporation group, which achieved a turnover of 14 billion dollars in the fiscal year. 2022 (July 2021-June 2022). And Fox News is being sued in a similar case by another company, Smartmatic.
For now, the channel is holding its course. This week, Tucker Carlson devoted his show to seeking to downplay the violence of Donald Trump supporters during the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, images presented as exclusive in support.
” A mistake “
Fox News drew criticism from Joe Biden, who recalled that 140 police officers had been injured. Notably, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, also denounced “a mistake”.
“Beyond the (Dominion) lawsuit, the most likely consequences, if Fox suffers any, will come from advertisers who deem the brand too untrustworthy and viewers who ultimately decide to leave it,” said the editor of the magazine. Columbia Journalism Review, Kyle Pope.
Columnist of media life on Fox News, journalist Howard Kurtz lamented at the end of February not being able to discuss the Dominion affair on the air, at the request of his employer.
