Politics

Media mogual and billionaire Rupert Murdoch is under fire after admitting the 2020 election was not stolen

Fox News Co-Founder and CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted the election was not stolen.

A photo of people in line to early vote in Georgia's runoff election.

People wait in line to early vote in Georgia's runoff election. (Photo courtesy of AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By Narayan Pereda, Veronica Garza and Alexa Hernandez Diaz

Earlier this week, Fox News Co-Founder and C-E-O Rupert Murdoch said in a deposition that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Even though it was reported that media mogul knew the hosts of his Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud. And... he did nothing to stop it.

This news comes a couple years after a 1.6 billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting System.

The public will be watching the verdict on this lawsuit. Michael Overing is a Journalism and Communications Professor at at the University of Southern California. He says that there is uncertainty whether Dominion can actually win this lawsuit.

OVERING: I would be very surprised if Dominion wins. That summary judgment doesn’t mean that there won’t be a trial, doesn’t mean there won’t be a settlement. But the bottom line is, at least at this point, it looks to me like Fox really, even if they did not believe Donald Trump, not believing him is not the same thing as acting with a conscious disregard for the truth. They just reported what Donald said. Donald is newsworthy. So it makes sense for us.

Like Fox News, many news organizations have an agenda that they want to follow. That is why Overing believes there is not much of a problem when it comes to reporting on news.

OVERING: That’s news and that’s always been news. If you’re CNN, you’re going to point to this and say, look, it’s all Fox is all about. Making a buck for Fox is all about getting the president to come on their show. Fox is all about being able to sell to advertisers, but there’s nothing wrong with getting ratings. There’s nothing wrong with making money with advertisements. There is nothing wrong so long as you’re reporting on a newsworthy event.

Fox News denies their executives knowingly perpetrated lies about the election.

A trial is set for April 17th, after the court denied Fox’s request to dismiss the case.

For Annenberg Media, I’m Narayan Pereda.