When President Donald Trump delivered a national address last Thursday to rehash his 2020 election denial claims, Fox News notably dodged any appearance of promoting his allegations. It’s not the first time Fox has avoided lending a platform to Trump’s attempts to push his “Big Lie,” and according to Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye, that may be because the network has learned an “expensive lesson.”
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“Fox News may have been scared straight,” wrote Tesfaye on Wednesday. After airing the address, “rather than rushing to validate the president’s claims, chief political anchor Bret Baier immediately offered a stark, legally cautious disclaimer to his audience. He informed viewers that the network ‘has not seen the evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims.’” Afterwards, there was an “almost total blackout” of the president’s speech across Fox. As Tesfaye explained, “The morning after the address, ‘Fox & Friends,’ the network’s flagship three-hour morning show that typically serves as a rallying ground for administration priorities, pointedly neglected to even cover the speech. ‘The Five,’ the powerhouse afternoon panel show that regularly generates the highest ratings in cable news, completely ignored the address on Friday, Monday and Tuesday.”
Top network talent who usually champion Trump’s agenda were similarly silent. “Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters chose not to preview or promote the speech in the two prime hours leading up to it, and Ingraham refrained from mentioning it on her Friday, Monday and Tuesday broadcasts. Hannity, despite promising his audience a ‘deep dive into all this documentation in the days ahead,’ promptly took Friday night off and subsequently omitted the topic from his Monday and Tuesday shows. Mark Levin — the man who helped craft the legal theory Trump’s allies used to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into rejecting electors in 2020, and who defended that effort publicly for years — said nothing about the speech on either of his Fox News weekend programs. On ‘Fox News Sunday,’ anchor Shannon Bream allocated a mere four seconds to the entire event, treating it as a footnote before moving on to interview a Democratic senator.”
Conservative media noticed, spurring commentators to claim Fox is full of “fair weather friends” who were abandoning the president, and prompting one to ask, “What is up with Fox News?” But as Tesfaye explained, Fox has good reason.
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“The network famously got burned by Trump’s earlier election claims, agreeing in April 2023 to pay a staggering $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems,” explained Tesfaye. “That blockbuster settlement came after months of grueling discovery exposed embarrassing internal communications revealing that Fox executives, producers and star hosts privately mocked and disbelieved the false claims about rigged voting machines, even as they broadcast them to millions of viewers in an obvious effort to prevent audience defection to rival networks like Newsmax.”
Worse yet, “the Dominion settlement was not just a historic financial blow; it was a devastating institutional humiliation that left Fox exposed to continuing legal danger, including an ongoing $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic. Having paid nearly $800 million echoing Trump’s 2020 falsehoods, Fox’s corporate leadership appears to have drawn a firm, permanent line. The network’s legal department now clearly wields a veto over its newsroom and primetime opinion stars. When Trump steps to a podium to claim that Chinese software, stolen voter files or rigged machines altered the course of American democracy, Fox’s lawyers see a multi-million-dollar liability walking onto television screens.”
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