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☆ Fox's not allowing Tucker Carlson to say goodbye to viewers is the equivalent of 'execution' says fired CNN anchor
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Natalie Musumeci | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Tucker Carlson's abrupt ousting from Fox News is more like an "execution," according to a fired CNN anchor. "Not being given a chance to sign off is the television equivalent of an execution," Brian Stelter said in Vanity Fair. Yet Carlson, Fox News' top-rated host, never got the chance to say goodbye to his audience, thanks to his sudden ousting on Monday by the conservative media powerhouse. Advertisements featuring Fox News personalities, including Tucker Carlson, adorn the front of the News Corporation building, March 13, 2019. "The takeaway, at least for some TV insiders, is that Carlson was shoved— hard—by Fox management," Stelter wrote in Vanity Fair.

☆ Media insiders would often gossip about which anchor was about to leave Fox News. None of them guessed Tucker Carlson.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The Dominion lawsuit was an embarrassment to Fox, airing text messages the company would rather have kept private. Tucker Carlson's departure is a huge surprise. Like a plot twist in "Succession," the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News is one we didn't see coming. The news of Carlson's departure almost immediately wiped close to $1 billion off of Fox Corporation's market capitalization. Upon confirmation that Carlson had left Fox, veteran media reporter Sarah Ellison simply wrote: "Incredible."

☆ Opinion | Tucker Carlson’s Great Replacement
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Michelle Goldberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“Don’t Expect Fox News to Change After Massive Dominion Payout,” said a Vanity Fair headline. “Will Fox Settlement Alter Conservative Media? On Monday, news broke that Tucker Carlson, Fox News’s highest-rated and most demagogic prime time host, was out, and wouldn’t even get a final show to say goodbye. Grossberg describes an environment in which women of all political persuasions were constantly discussed in terms of sexual desirability. One of Carlson’s bookers, she alleges, was told that she should sleep with Elon Musk to secure an interview.

☆ It's judgment day: Shocking exits of Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Jeff Shell rock the TV industry
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Nathan Mcalone | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

NBCU CEO Jeff Shell, Fox News' Tucker Carlson, and CNN's Don Lemon are all out. Shell's bombshell exit took many insiders by surprise, Insider's Claire Atkinson reported on Sunday. Fox News declined to comment beyond its press release saying it had agreed to "part ways" with Carlson. Media watchers had been primed for a Lemon exit for weeks. With all the news of the past 24 hours, media insiders have barely even gotten a chance to drill down into the second wave of layoffs at Disney, which will number in the thousands.

Despite having the backing of the late Queen Elizabeth to take on the Murdoch group, Harry said attempts to get an apology from them had been stonewalled. "This goes to prove the existence of this secret agreement between the institution and senior executives at NGN." William's office said it could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings and NGN had no comment on the deal with William. The queen gave her backing for him to pursue his case and seek an apology from Murdoch himself, he said. Harry, who now lives in California with his family, was not in court, but would be watching proceedings by videolink, his lawyer David Sherborne said.

☆ Tucker Carlson's texts from the Dominion lawsuit reveal the real Fox News
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Brent D. Griffiths | Rebecca Zisser | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Private texts reveal incredible detail about Fox News' inner workings. Among the messages is a thread where Tucker Carlson privately bashes Trump. Top Fox News hosts, including Tucker Carlson, privately insulted Chris Wallace and hatched a plot for a rebellion — November, 16, 2020. In a group chat between the three biggest hosts, Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham, few colleagues, including then-"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, were spared. In a group chat between the three biggest hosts, Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham, few colleagues such as then-"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace were spared.

☆ Tucker Carlson and the Tragedy of Fox News - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In the summer of 2011, Rupert Murdoch stopped by my small office at The Wall Street Journal, where I was a columnist and editor. The scandal ultimately resulted in the closure of News of the World, at one point one of the world’s biggest-selling English-language newspapers. It was to leave no trace that investigators might use for evidence against him, his family or his favorite lieutenants. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way,” Carlson told fellow host Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020, referring to the infamous election conspiracy theorist. “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear,” Murdoch told the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott.

Community competes with a bevy of different types of services vying for space in your text inbox, from Attentive to Twilio to Zendesk. “With Community, once they text the number, we now have a way to stay in touch directly. Using text messages to connect with customers, for all its promise, poses unique challenges. And customers may want to hear from fewer brands in their text inbox than they do in their email inbox. “As opposed to email, when you have to scroll to the bottom of the thing and hit the link that says unsubscribe, if you don’t like the text messages you’re getting, you only have to write one word: Stop,” Mr. Kutcher said.

☆ A Chastened, Humbled Fox News? Don’t Count on It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Jeremy W. Peters | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. Murdoch said then that he wanted to make Mr. Trump a “non person.” And as recently as January, when he was deposed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox, his feelings hadn’t changed. “I’d still like to,” Mr. Murdoch said. But Fox’s audience — the engine of its profits and the largest in all of cable — may not let him. And there probably won’t be much of a shift in the way the network favorably covers Mr. Trump and the issues that resonate with his followers. “You can’t tell people, ‘Do anything to get a rating, but don’t cover the most popular figure in the Republican Party.’”

☆ Lachlan Murdoch drops defamation lawsuit against Australian news website
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Byron Kaye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SYDNEY, April 21 (Reuters) - Fox Corp (FOXA.O) CEO Lachlan Murdoch dropped a defamation lawsuit against an Australian news site over an opinion piece he said accused him of complicity in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying the defendant was trying to generate publicity. A lawyer for Private Media, Michael Bradley, said Murdoch had discontinued his Federal Court claim without warning and that Murdoch would pay Private Media's costs. "It's complete vindication of their stand on the principle of press freedom," Bradley said in an email, referring to Crikey and its employees. Fox and its top-rated cable channel Fox News on April 18 settled a defamation lawsuit by ballot machine operator Dominion Voting Systems, on what was to be the first day of a trial where Lachlan's father, Fox Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, had been expected to testify. In the Australian lawsuit, which was scheduled to go to trial in October, Lachlan Murdoch had accused Private Media and four employees of damaging his reputation in a June 29, 2022, opinion piece that described the Murdochs as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the effort by Trump supporters to overturn his election loss.

Fox can take a tax deduction from the settlement, Lever News reports. U.S. tax law allows companies to write off at least some portion of settlement fees as part of the cost of doing business. (There are some exceptions, including for cases involving accusations of sexual harassment or abuse with nondisclosure agreements; Fox News has paid out settlements involving those in the past.) It is unclear how much Fox will save, though a spokesman confirmed that tax deductibility is at play. Lever News estimated that the company could reap as much as $213 million in tax savings.

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - The co-head of the private equity firm that owns Dominion Voting Systems said the company's $787.5 million settlement with Fox Corp (FOXA.O) held Fox accountable for spreading lies even if it did not apologize or admit wrongdoing. The settlement came with no apology or admission of wrongdoing on behalf of Fox, just an acknowledgement of the court's rulings finding some claims about Dominion to be false. Dominion and Staple Street achieved their goals by exposing the truth and Fox News' "offensive" actions and getting the media company to pay for them, Yaghoobzadeh said. In a statement following Tuesday's settlement, Fox said it was committed to the highest journalistic standards. Dominion funded the litigation through its own resources, without Staple Street or a third party providing financial backing, Yaghoobzadeh said.

☆ Senate Republicans who backed Trump's election fraud claims say Fox News settling Dominion case leaves things 'a little murky'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Warren Rojas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Several Senate Republicans predicted the settlement wouldn't change much at Fox or in journalism. "A bad settlement is a lot better than going to court," one Trump backer told Insider. "I think that it leaves a few things a little murky," Braun said while walking through the Senate subway. "The trial was likely to be pretty ugly," Cruz told Insider. "It's no problem — if you don't lie," Romney told Insider between votes.

"Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and our customers," Poulos said in a statement. Fox anchor Neil Cavuto broke into his news show "Your World" about 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time to report the settlement. In February court filings, Dominion cited a trove of internal communications in which Murdoch and other Fox figures privately acknowledged that the vote-rigging claims made about Dominion on-air were false. Dominion said Fox amplified the untrue claims to boost its ratings and prevent its viewers from migrating to other media competitors on the right. ANOTHER LAWSUIT PENDINGAdding to the legal risks for Fox, another U.S. voting technology company, Smartmatic, is pursuing its own defamation lawsuit seeking $2.7 billion in damages in a New York state court.

☆ Breakingviews: Fox is not out of the woods yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NEW YORK, April 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Rupert Murdoch’s Fox will find that a damaged beast attracts more foes. The media company which operates cable network Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday for approximately half of the $1.6 billion sought in damages by the plaintiff, Dominion Voting Systems. In a statement, Fox acknowledged the court’s ruling “finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”Fox has some $4 billion in cash, so it can easily scratch a check for the $788 million penalty. And while Fox is flush now, Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch has noted the company needs more scale, given it’s vulnerable to cord cutters and a tepid advertising environment. The $17 billion Fox has survived this round, yet the hunt is still on.

☆ Fox is not out of the woods yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The tech company will begin its latest round of layoffs today, in its Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Reality Labs units, according to Vox, with up to 4,000 positions possibly set to go. Disney will cut thousands of jobs next week, as part of the C.E.O. Commentators and investors said the moves were a long-awaited recognition that Goldman should focus on its strengths. The online chatboard company told The Times that it would start making others pay to use its application programming interface, the method that allows outside entities to download its vast offering of user discussions. projects by tech giants — which must be trained on huge amounts of data — as a reason for the move.

☆ Fox's $787 million settlement won't restore damage to US democracy
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Stephen Collinson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

CNN —Fox News will pay $787.5 million for transmitting lies that a small voting technology firm helped steal the 2020 election. And Trump himself is facing several criminal probes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the run-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. And is there any chance that Fox’s humiliation can repair some of the damage from the disastrous election aftermath in 2020? That missing moment of accountability will be important because claims that the 2020 election was corrupt are not some artifact of recent history. No single case can repair the damage of 2020The extent to which Trump’s falsehoods and conspiracy theories harmed democracy is open to debate.

☆ Who won the Fox-Dominion case? Lawyers and an obscure private-equity fund
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

That remains true in the case of Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, which averted a trial with an 11th-hour deal Tuesday. Money aside, Fox had to acknowledge the court’s ruling that “certain claims about Dominion” that Fox perpetuated on-air were in fact false. The Neutral-to-Positive Winner: Dominion Voting SystemsFor more than two years, Dominion spent untold amounts of money building a defamation case against one of the most popular TV networks on the planet. Davida Brook, left, Justin Nelson, second from left, and Stephen Shackelford, attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, exit the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday. But for a company that’s valued somewhere between $30 million and $80 million, it’s quite a deal.

☆ With historic settlement, Rupert Murdoch is paying the price for Trump’s election lies
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Oliver Darcy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The country suffered the consequences of Donald Trump’s election lies on January 6th. And Rupert Murdoch suffered the consequences of those same lies on April 18. But while it is the largest publicly known defamation settlement by a U.S. media outlet ever, the hefty price tag won’t be enough to change Fox News at its core. In some ways it is fitting that the statement Fox News issued as a result of its dishonest conduct was dishonest in and of itself. Outside the embarrassment Fox News would have suffered, the settlement also spared the company and its executives of being bound by the laws of reality during trial.

☆ 16 takeaways from Fox News' historic $787.5 million settlement with Dominion
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

In the moments after I watched the judge announce the settlement in court, 16 things went through my mind:1. Evidence obtained by Dominion in the lawsuit and filed to court ahead of the settlement appeared to support that theory. There's always the Smartmatic case. In court filings ahead of the settlement, Fox complained about the $1.6 billion price tag Dominion put on the lawsuit. "Would be pretty unreal if you guys like 20x'ed your Dominion investment with these lawsuits," read one text to a Staple Street executive cited in a Fox court filing.

☆ Dominion isn’t Rupert Murdoch’s costliest legal defeat. Not even close
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Julia Horowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

But for now, the price tag attached to the Dominion case isn’t the worst Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch has had to stomach. A phone hacking scandal involving Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper empire in the United Kingdom has proven much more costly over the past decade or so. It looked at legal fees and damages, as well as expenses tied to the subsequent restructuring of Murdoch’s UK media empire. The last big Murdoch legal fightThe editor of Murdoch’s News of the World and a private investigator were convicted of conspiracy to hack the voicemails of British royals in 2007. Britain’s Prince Harry and actor Hugh Grant are among those who have filed legal challenges against The Sun tied to phone hacking.

☆ Podcast: Fox digs deep to avoid court and Tesla’s China challenge
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. A pricey, 11th hour settlement saves Rupert Murdoch from taking the stand but is it the end of Fox News’ troubles? As the Shanghai auto show gets underway we look at why Tesla has ended up in the slow lane in China. Plus, the messy battle between Ron DeSantis and Disney is set to get…messier. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Defamation suit settlement will hold Fox accountable for election claims, Dominion negotiator says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Natasha Piñon | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The last-minute $787.5 million settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. was a major step toward making Fox News answer for false claims that Dominion's machines influenced the 2020 election, a key negotiator of the deal said Wednesday. Yaghoobzadeh was one of the people who cut the settlement deal. He declined to disclose when Fox had made its first offer, saying only that the initial sum "was not enough." CNBC previously reported that anchors will not have to acknowledge the settlement or apologize on air, according to people familiar with the matter. The massive settlement sum will go to legal fees and taxes first, Yaghoobzadeh said.

The voice on the other end asked Roscoe if he would serve as an eleventh-hour mediator in the massive defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. “I said yes,” Roscoe told CNN on Wednesday, recalling advice his father gave him at the age of 16 about accepting work assignments while on vacation. Eduardo Munoz/Reuters/Eric Lee/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesIn the lead up to the last-second deal, attorneys for both Fox News and Dominion were fully expecting a trial. Last week, Dominion had notified Fox News that one of its first witnesses would be Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old Fox Corporation chairman, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. “Presence in the courtroom often tends to crystalize the focus of the risks and benefits of litigation,” Roscoe told CNN.

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