On Wednesday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis ruled that both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch must testify live during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation trial against Fox Corporation. Along with other top executive Paul Ryan, the three men will need to answer questions sometime after the trial begins on April 17.
Since Fox is a Delaware business, Davis explained he would not deny any attempts made by Dominion lawyers to subpoena any of the corporation’s corporate officers to testify during the trial. In fact, Davis said he “would compel them to come,” as that is the law. According to The New York Times, the judge explained that “[b]oth parties have made these witnesses very relevant,” so it would make sense that they testify if one side or the other wanted them to.
It has been mostly bad news for the conservative propaganda network in court the last few weeks after Davis ruled the defamation lawsuit should go to trial and, more importantly, that Dominion had proven at the very least: “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that (it) is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
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One light ray of hope for Fox executives is that Davis also ruled today that the upcoming trial would not feature any footage or mention of what took place on Jan. 6, 2021. While they may have helped fan those flames of misinformation, Davis wanted to narrow the defamation case to Dominion Voting Systems and the alleged slander implicit in Fox News’ coverage of the 2020 election.
As documents have made their way into the public, it has become very clear that Fox employees, from lowly hosts and producers up to executive producers and C-suite members, seem to have clearly known that what Trump and his various Big Lie surrogates were peddling were lies. At best, Fox’s defense might be that they couldn’t control their on-air talent because, as one executive said of Jeannine Pirro, they could each be described as a “reckless maniac.”
However, the rest of the digital communications from their most influential hosts seems to belie that defense. It seems very clear that Fox Corporation and Fox News were heavily invested in retaining their propaganda influence over the conservative movement in the country and willing to say and do anything to promote the lies being told, even if they had a hard time swallowing the messenger that is Donald Trump.
A Fox Corporation spokesman released a statement to media outlets stating: “Dominion clearly wants to continue generating misleading stories from their friends in the media to distract from their weak case. Demanding witnesses who had nothing to do with the challenged broadcasts is just the latest example of their political crusade in search of a financial windfall.” Generating misleading stories. That gave me goosebumps!
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