Thread: FOX "news"

I must be misunderstanding what 'Speakers Corner' is for.

90% of the words on this forum now are from spamdreth's spamtastic spam generator.

Originally Posted by cyrille

I must be misunderstanding what 'Speakers Corner' is for.

90% of the words on this forum now are from spamdreth's spamtastic spam generator.

He is american

Guess where the mods come from ?

(there is ofcourse also our competent mods from the 51th state down under )

Originally Posted by cyrille

spamtastic spam generator.

There seems to be a lot of that nowadays on TD by numerous posters. Cut and Paste a full page of utter BS rather than just the link leaving it to the reader to go view if they want. If not that GIF's seem to be the cute thing to do as well.

Originally Posted by Stumpy

Cut and Paste a full page of utter BS rather than just the link leaving it to the reader to go view if they want.

Most won't

Originally Posted by Stumpy

There seems to be a lot of that nowadays on TD by numerous posters.

Some doesn't have an opinion of their own''

Originally Posted by Stumpy

There seems to be a lot of that nowadays on TD by numerous posters. Cut and Paste.

Oh, there is a lot of it, but 99% of it is from one particular knob.

Originally Posted by beachbound

Cut and Paste a full page of utter BS rather than just the link leaving it to the reader to go view if they want.

Yes. Netiquette, innit?

Originally Posted by beachbound

Oh, there is a lot of it, but 99% of it is from one particular knob.

If only

Not sure if it’s a permanent show, but it appears that Piers Morgan is part of the Faux Noise team, hosting the 8 PM slot.
Just wondering what our British friends think of Mr. Morgan.

Originally Posted by beachbound

Not sure if it’s a permanent show, but it appears that Piers Morgan is part of the Faux Noise team, hosting the 8 PM slot.
Just wondering what our British friends think of Mr. Morgan.

He's an abject wanker.

Originally Posted by beachbound

Just wondering what our British friends think of Mr. Morgan.

Narcissist, isn't he ?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

He's an abject wanker.

Originally Posted by helge

Narcissist, isn't he ?

He’s the British version of Sean Hannity, IMO.


I did, however, enjoy his interview with Rudy Giuliani.

^^
what was the crowd chanting?

Originally Posted by beachbound

He’s the British version of Sean Hannity, IMO.

He's more the British version of Tucker Carlson.

• New York City’s pension funds sue Fox over election falsehoods

New York City’s pension funds have sued Fox Corp., alleging the company neglected its duty to shareholders by airing false statements about the 2020 election that exposed it to defamation lawsuits.

“Fox’s board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement to The Hill. Lander oversees the pension funds.

“A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox’s reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability,” he continued.

The Hill has reached out to Fox for comment.

The five pension funds represent more than 800,000 current and retired workers and are long-term investors in Fox shares. They held about $28 million in shares as of July 31.

The suit argues that Fox knowingly amplified false claims from former President Trump and others that the 2020 election was stolen, opening itself up to legal jeopardy, according to the The New York Times, which reviewed the suit.

It alleges the company’s board “consciously disregarded” the risk of broadcasting the false claims, per the Times.

“Defendants chose to invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News,” the suit reads, according to the outlet.

Lander said the funds seek ethics and governance reforms in the company.

“Clear governance systems are absolutely necessary for the long-term health of a company. As Fox’s board continues to ignore these red flags, we are holding them accountable as long-term shareholders,” he said in a statement.

The pension funds had about 857,000 shares in the network. The value as of July 31 was $28.10 million. At its peak after the 2020 election and the COVID crash rebounded in March 2021, Fox was at $42.93. It would have put the value of the funds at $36.79 million.

The state of Oregon pension fund is also joining the lawsuit.

Rupert Murdoch stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp

Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, now seems to be his successor. In the note Murdoch called Lachlan a “passionate, principled leader” who can take the companies into the future.

“On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch, 52, in a statement.

• Smartmatic judge rejects Fox News' subpoena of George Soros

‘That’s a peripheral matter’: Judge swats down Fox News’ attempt to subpoena George Soros in Smartmatic defamation case

A New York judge has rejected an attempt by Fox News to subpoena George Soros — the liberal philanthropist and frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories — in the Smartmatic defamation case.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen said Monday that the media giant will not be allowed to force Soros to provide documents in response to the subpoena, CNN reported. According to court filings, Fox wanted Soros, his son Alexander Soros, and representatives from their Open Society Foundation to produce “all documents and communications relating to Smartmatic” and all communications between Soros and Smartmatic and its officers.

Cohen denied that request, calling Soros’ potential role in the case a “peripheral matter.”

“I base that on the finding that the crux of Smartmatic’s claims is that Fox has asserted they were part of rigging [the election], not that Smartmatic was affiliated with George Soros, Alex Soros, or the OSF,” Cohen said, according to CNN. “That’s a peripheral matter — at best, it’s a possible rationale for defamation.”

Stalwart Donald Trump allies and regular Fox News guests Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell alleged that Smartmatic, a voting technology company, has links to George Soros, the billionaire who created the Open Society Foundation, which funds pro-democracy organizations and causes. These allegations tied Soros to the unsupported conspiracy theory that voting machines switched votes for Trump in favor of the ultimate winner in the election, President Joe Biden.

“Why did we serve the Soros group?” Fox lawyer Aaron Marks said in court on Monday, CNN reported. “In the complaint, there are allegations by Smartmatic that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, on the airwaves of Fox News, made defamatory remarks, largely implying that Smartmatic — a supposedly neutral and apolitical voting machine company — was rather, in fact, biased and was likely to chat in the direction of Democrats.”

According to CNN, lawyers for Fox said that Mark Malloch-Brown, a longtime friend of Soros, was the chair of Smartmatic’s parent company before the 2020 election and was also a board member for Soros’ foundation.

Lawyers for Soros said the subpoena was nothing more than an attempt to distract from the issues in the case.

“They’re trying to prove something that’s not in dispute,” attorney Benjamin McCallen, a lawyer for Soros, said in court on Monday, according to CNN. McCallen said that the relationship between Soros and Malloch-Brown is irrelevant to Smartmatic’s defamation claims.

“We are non-parties to this case and we wish to remain so,” McCallen said.

Soros’ legal team had vehemently objected to the subpoena, arguing that any alleged connection between the voting machine group and the Jewish, Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, is tenuous, at best.

“Mr. Soros objects to the Subpoena in its entirety on the grounds that its service is an abuse of process that constitutes harassment of a non-party,” attorneys for Soros said in a court filing. “The Complaint in this Action cites, within its hundreds of pages, only a handful of vague allusions, made by Fox personnel or their guests, to a purported ‘connection’ between Smartmatic and Mr. Soros. This handful of stray, imprecise remarks does not provide grounds for the broad requests served on Mr. Soros, a private non-party to this Action. The alleged defamatory remarks, which are at most peripheral to this action, do not justify the expense required to respond to this Subpoena, nor do they provide a basis to obtain the personal and professional communications of Mr. Soros.”

Smartmatic is one of two voting machine companies that has sued Fox for defamation relating to the 2020 presidential election. Dominion settled its lawsuit against Fox in April for a jaw-dropping $787.5 million.

• Ex-Fox News reporter sues network, saying he was fired for challenging lies about 2020 election

A former Fox News Capitol Hill reporter and producer has sued the network, claiming he was fired for challenging its on-air lies about the 2020 election.

Jason Donner alleges in the lawsuit that Fox News knew President Donald Trump's claims that voter fraud was behind his 2020 loss were false but that following backlash from Trump and the network's audience over its Election Day announcement that President Joe Biden had won Arizona, it "purged" journalists who spoke out against false election fraud claims.

"To win back viewership and pledge its loyalty to President Trump, Fox’s corporate leadership purged the news division and those reporters who spoke out against claims of election fraud," says the suit, filed in Washington, D.C., Superior Court.

The wrongful termination and discrimination claim seeks undisclosed damages and expenses, as well as a judgment that would prohibit Fox News from discriminating or retaliating against Donner or other current or former Fox News employees. Though it was filed Sept. 27, the lawsuit did not come to light until Monday in a report by the Daily Beast.

“Mr. Donner’s lawsuit speaks for itself, and we have no further comment beyond that,” plaintiff’s lawyer Brendan J. Klaproth said by email.

• Dominion’s Fox News Case Was Just the Beginning

The 2024 presidential contest is well underway, but teams of lawyers are still poring over the 2020 election, and for a very good reason: They are trying to hold Donald Trump’s allies accountable for the damage done by their election lies. Civil lawsuits by companies like Dominion Voting Systems are progressing at the same time that Trump is facing criminal trials in multiple jurisdictions. “We have so much work ahead of us,” Stephen Shackelford says on this week’s episode of Inside the Hive.

Shackelford was one of the lead attorneys in Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News, which resulted in the media giant paying $787.5 million in April to settle that case. According to Davida Brook, another one of the lead attorneys, Dominion has “lawsuits pending against Newsmax, One America News, Mike Lindell and MyPillow, Sidney Powell and her law firm, Rudy Giuliani, and Patrick Byrne.” Those cases, she says, are “all proceeding towards trial.”

Host Brian Stelter interviewed Shackelford and Brook multiple times for his new book, Network of Lies, which hits shelves November 14. (Vanity Fair recently published an excerpt from the book about Tucker Carlson’s abrupt exit.) On Inside the Hive, Stelter shares some of his reporting from the book and asks the attorneys about the pending cases. Shackelford says Dominion was “put through hell” by Trump’s election lies in 2020—“hell that continues to this day.”

Brook says the ongoing litigation is about “setting the record straight”—which is what Dominion’s PR representatives called their fact-checking emails that Fox received in November 2020. “The truth was in Fox’s inbox,” Shackelford says. And yet Fox stars like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs hyped conspiracy theories about Dominion instead.

The lawyers are now preparing for depositions. The suits are moving more slowly than the Fox case “because most of them are in DC, and the DC courts are very busy, still to this day, with a lot of the January 6 cases,” Shackelford says. The courts in Delaware, where Dominion sued Fox, “have traditionally moved at a quicker pace.” Dominion’s case against Newsmax is poised for a September 2024 trial in Delaware—if there is no settlement first. “We’ve got a long road ahead to finish up this work for Dominion,” Shackelford says.

Another election technology company, Smartmatic, is also suing Fox, Newsmax, and other defendants. “Smartmatic is a global company that was injured on a global scale,” attorney J. Erik Connolly told Stelter for the book. “The damages are much bigger.” Fox, which denies any wrongdoing, has dismissed Smartmatic’s damages claims as “implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

• Rupert Murdoch to be deposed in Smartmatic defamation case

Rupert Murdoch is set to be questioned under oath on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp over coverage of debunked vote-rigging claims involving the 2020 US presidential election, a person familiar with the matter said.

Murdoch will be deposed in Los Angeles, according to that person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The deposition does not appear on the public docket for the case.

Murdoch, 92, had been the chairman of Fox Corp and News Corp before the companies announced in September that he was stepping down, becoming chairman emeritus of each company as of mid-November. As part of the transition, his son Lachlan Murdoch became the sole chairman of News Corp and continues as the chair and chief executive officer of Fox.

Representatives for Fox News and Murdoch did not respond to requests for comment about the deposition. A representative for Fox Corp declined to comment.

Florida-based Smartmatic is seeking damages from Fox Corp, Fox News and five individuals: Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who were lawyers for Donald Trump; and Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, as well as former Fox host Lou Dobbs.

Smartmatic alleges in its lawsuit filed in state court in New York that the defendants knowingly spread false claims that the company’s software was used to flip votes in favor of Joe Biden and against Trump.

Fox has denied the allegations made by Smartmatic.

In previous statements, Fox has said that the network had a right to report on highly newsworthy allegations of voter fraud, that its job was to inform the public, and that airing fraud claims was protected by the US constitution’s first amendment protections for press freedom. It also has called Smartmatic’s damages claims “outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis”.

Murdoch is not a named defendant in the case. But by establishing that he was involved in making decisions about Fox’s coverage, Smartmatic would have a better chance of proving that Fox Corp is liable. In order to prevail in a defamation case, Smartmatic must prove that Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregarded the truth, the standard known as “actual malice”.

A New York state appeals court in February rejected Fox’s bid to dismiss the case, finding that Smartmatic had alleged in “detailed fashion” how Fox “effectively endorsed and participated” in defamation.

Fox Corp and Fox News in April settled for $787.5m another defamation lawsuit, brought by voting technology firm Dominion Voting Systems. It was the largest-ever defamation settlement publicly announced by an American media company, according to legal experts. Rupert Murdoch sat for a deposition in that case as well.

Smartmatic lawyers during the deposition may ask Murdoch about his private opinions about the 2020 election and how closely he followed Fox’s coverage as they seek to establish that he could have reined in the network’s anchors but chose not to.

Murdoch said during his deposition in the Dominion case that he believed the election was fair. He acknowledged having concerns about Fox’s coverage of the debunked voting fraud claims but said he did not play an active role in shaping it.

Dominion had accused Fox of ruining its business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 election. Fox said in a statement at the time of the settlement that it acknowledged “the court’s ruling finding certain claims about Dominion to be false” and that the settlement reflected “Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards”.

• Fox Must Face Smartmatic’s $2.7 Billion Defamation Suit

Fox Corp. was ordered to face a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic Corp., one of two voting technology companies falsely accused on Fox News of rigging the 2020 US presidential election against Donald Trump.

The decision Wednesday by a New York judge is the latest setback for Fox after the media giant agreed in April to pay $788 million to settle a similar suit by Dominion Voting Systems Inc., the other company targeted by the conspiracy theory. Fox continued airing the allegations even after they were widely debunked.

Justice David B. Cohen in Manhattan denied Fox Corp.’s motion to dismiss the suit after finding Smartmatic had sufficiently laid out claims that executives at the parent company — including Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch — were involved in directing the election coverage by its subsidiary. Fox News Network LLC, along with several of its current and former on-air personalties, are also named in the suit and previously lost their attempts to dismiss the case.

“In essence, plaintiffs allege that no programming, messaging, or employment decisions were made at News without Corp.’s knowledge, approval, and direction, thus rendering News wholly dominated by Corp.,” Cohen said in the ruling.

The decision sets up a possible trial on Smartmatic’s claims next year. Fox and Fox News have both argued their coverage is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech because they were covering important claims being made at the time by a sitting president and his lawyers.

‘Ready to Defend’

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” Fox said in a statement. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

On Tuesday, the same judge allowed Fox’s counterclaims against Smartmatic to proceed, denying Smartmatic’s motion to toss them out. Fox argues the suit violates a New York law against the use of litigation to chill speech, pointing to the eye-popping damages amount as evidence.

“We look forward to proceeding and holding Fox Corporation, as well as Fox News, responsible for the damage they did to Smartmatic,” the company’s lawyer, Erik Connolly, said in a statement.

The lawsuit stems from news coverage in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, with Fox News guests and hosts airing claims that Smartmatic and Dominion conspired with Democrats and foreign hackers to flip millions of votes away from Trump. The former president, who is seeking to return to the White House, still floats the conspiracy theory.

Fox Corp. was initially dismissed from the case after Cohen ruled Smartmatic’s allegation didn’t fully connect the parent company to the actions at Fox News. But the amended suit filed by the voting machine company fixed the issue, the judge ruled, by properly alleging how the Murdochs “were personally and intimately involved” in the election coverage.

The amended suit also spelled out how Fox Corp. employees allegedly directed the network subsidiary to pivot away from reporting on Joe Biden’s victory after “they were criticized for doing so by Trump and others, and began to lose viewership and ratings,” the judge said.

Smartmatic’s case got a significant boost from evidence and rulings the Dominion lawsuit. In that case, internal Fox emails and text messages were made public as evidence, showing key executives and on-air personalities thought the conspiracy theory was nonsense but allowed it to be amplified anyway.

The case is Smartmatic v. Fox Corp., 151136/2021, New York Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).