US media entrepreneur and Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch has admitted that some Fox News anchors supported and propagated the lies of losing candidate Donald Trump after the 2020 presidential election that the election was “stolen”. Fox News has tried to “stretch the balancing act between spreading conspiracy theories on the one hand and showing the fact that they are actually wrong on the other hand,” Murdoch said in his testimony, which has now been published in court documents.
Murdoch made the statement as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Fox News by voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, which alleges that Fox News intentionally made false statements about the voting machines and the integrity of the election. The release of Murdoch’s statement comes less than two weeks after a court filing revealed communications by many Fox News executives, anchors and producers who also said the claims about Dominion were unfounded. That included Murdoch himself, who called Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s statements “crazy stuff” and “harmful.”
When Fox News confirmed Joe Biden’s election victory on November 7, 2020, according to Dominion Voring Systems records, Rupert Murdoch “complained” to his son Lachlan, co-chairman of Fox Corporation, that things should have been done differently. “We should and could have been the first to announce the result, but being second at least saved us a Trump explosion,” the elder Murdoch said, according to the filing.