Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News empire is going on trial for airing false 2020 election fraud claims, even as it continues to struggle over its relationship with the man who most stoked those conspiracy theories: Donald Trump.
ox Corp and the Fox News network are now facing a possible $1.6bn (€1.5bn) damages award in a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which was accused by hosts and guests on the conservative network of rigging the election for Joe Biden.
The 92-year-old Mr Murdoch could be called to the witness stand as early as Monday, to be grilled about his failure to rein in the network despite his own belief that Trump’s claims were baseless.
Jury selection in the Delaware state court starts on Thursday, and a verdict could be costly.
Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that if the jury finds Fox liable, it could award Dominion damages of about $375m.
Even that fraction of the $1.6bn the voting machine maker is seeking would be one of the biggest defamation awards of all time and would amount to roughly two-thirds of Fox’s adjusted profit in its most recent quarter.
There’s also the potential for courtroom humiliation.
Besides Mr Murdoch, the trial is expected to see his son Lachlan, Fox Corp’s chief executive officer, as well as Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and superstar hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, take the stand away from their carefully controlled studio environments and sworn to tell the truth.
Yet, to judge by recent programming, none of that has forced a rethink of Fox News’s approach to politics, or to Mr Trump. The network and other Murdoch-owned media outlets like The Wall Street Journal sought earlier this year to promote Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as their preferred 2024 Republican candidate.
But Fox has begun hosting the former president in its programming again as polls show him soaring among GOP primary voters, and especially since he was indicted by a grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Panic among Fox News executives and hosts about the potential business consequences of losing Trump supporters spurred them to broadcast wild election lies, Dominion alleges.
Emails, text messages and deposition testimony obtained by Dominion in the course of the litigation appear to bear that out, and are certain to be shown to the jury repeatedly during the six- to eight-week trial.
Shortly after the network called the pivotal state of Arizona for Biden, infuriating Trump diehards, Mr Carlson texted his producer with a warning about the potential rise of right-wing competitor Newsmax.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Mr Carlson said. “We’re playing with fire, for real... an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
If those fears moved the network to promote the plot served up by Trump stalwarts Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, though, Mr Carlson was among the Fox hosts and executives who privately rolled their eyes at the lurid theory.