The Dominion Voting Systems trial against Fox News hasn’t even started, but so much detail surrounding the $1.6 billion defamation suit has already come to light.
There have been thousands of pages of exhibits, filings and depositions released pretrial, giving people a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes as Fox News gave on-air credence to the baseless theory that former President Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him.
Some of that information was made public despite Fox News’ attempts to keep it hidden. When internal communications from Fox News were initially released last month, there were significant redactions to texts, emails and other communications.
A spokesperson for Fox News argued at the time that the redactions were “consistent with the law and court rulings” and “in accordance with the reporters’ privilege.” The network has also criticized Dominion’s filings for relying on “cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case.”
Fox News did not return a request for additional comment for this article.
The judge, however, eventually agreed with lawyers for Dominion and media organizations that Fox News had blacked out too much information and more of it was made public.
What came out was information that cast Fox News in a bad light, with some hosts disparaging their guests and acknowledging that the election conspiracy theories were off base.
Jury selection began in a Delaware courtroom this week, and the trial is scheduled to begin Monday. Dominion will attempt to convince a jury that Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., acted with “actual malice” — knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — when it aired conspiracy theories about Dominion’s voting machines and the 2020 election. Fox News has argued that the case is about the “First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news.”
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