Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from his media conglomerate.
After 70 years at the helm of Fox and News Corp., both companies announced the 92-year-old’s retirement on Thursday. Son Lachlan has been crowned his successor and the new sole Chair of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch is set to step down after a shareholders meeting in November and will be appointed Chairman Emeritus of both companies.
“We are grateful that he will serve as Chairman Emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel to both companies,” Lachlan stated in the company announcement.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 13, 2018.
At that time, Lachlan will assume his new role and continue to serve as Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Fox Corporation. He’s held his current titles since 2019, when he took over operations after the company sold the majority of 20th Century Fox to the Walt Disney Company, per The New York Times. The deal was reportedly worth $71.3 billion, according to NPR.
Keep scrolling for more details about the new boss at the news giant.
Who is Lachlan Murdoch?
Lachlan Murdoch, 52, is Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son. He was born in London butgrew up in the United States and graduated from Princeton University. He joined the family business at age 18, and by the time he was 34, he was one of the top three News Corp executives with control over the New York Post and several Fox TV franchises in the U.S., according to The Guardian.
In pop culture, he’s been rumored to be the real-life inspiration for Kendall Roy from the HBO show “Succession,” which tells the story of a founder of a news conglomerate struggling with the decision to hand over his company to one of his four children. Kendall, the not-technically-eldest-boy, had been pining for the job since the pilot. The show ended with afinal, fourth season in May, featured the siblings vying for the role.
It has long been rumored that the Murdoch children, namely Lachlan and his brother James,50, were both interested in taking over, as the duo were named co-chairmen of 21st Century Fox in 2015, per CNN.
Lachlan stepped in as the CEO of the Fox Corporation in 2019, before James left the company in 2020 citing “disagreements over certain editorial content” following the 2020 presidential election coverage, according to CNN.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Corp., arrives during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on Thursday, July 11, 2019.
Lachlan mainly resides in Australia, where he founded an Australian private investment company, Illyria. He married his wife Sarah in 1999, and the couple shares three children.
What is Lachlan Murdoch’s net worth?
Rupert Murdoch and his family have a combined net worth of $17.4 billion, per Forbes.
Lachlan’s total compensation for the fiscal year 2022 was $21,748,681, with a base salary of $3 million, according to an SEC filing. In 2021, his total compensation was $27,675,399.
There’s been no word on what his new paycheck will look like.
In addition to Lachlan, Rupert Murdoch is the father of five other children.
Rupert shares his eldest daughter, Prudence Macleod, with his first wife, Patricia Booker, per CNN. The two divorced in 1967. A few months later, he married Anna Torv.The couple had three children: Elisabeth,now 55, Lachlan, and James.
After 31 years of marriage, the pair divorced in 1999.That same year,Murdoch went on to marry Wendi Deng. The couple welcomed daughter Grace in 2001, and their daughter Chloe Murdoch in 2003. Deng and Murdoch divorced in 2013.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday dined with top Fox executives at his Bedminster golf club, during which Fox News president Jay Wallace and the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, encouraged him to participate in the first presidential debate the network is hosting later this month, two sources with knowledge told CNN.
Trump, who earlier in the evening had been indicted for a third time, did not commit to participating in the debate, which will take place in Milwaukee.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times first reported on the dinner.
Trump has privately and publicly floated skipping either one or both of the first two Republican presidential primary debates, and pointed to his commanding lead in the polls as one reason he is hesitant to share the stage with his GOP challengers.
“Why would we debate? That would be stupid to go out there with that kind of lead,” one Trump adviser previously told CNN. However, not all of Trump’s allies feel this way. Some worry that an absent Trump would give an opportunity for a lower tier candidate to have a breakout moment.
Trump’s dinner comes after RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and David Bossie, who is in charge of the debate committee, visited Trump at Bedminster in recent weeks to encourage him to participate, according to a Trump adviser. Trump was also noncommittal on his plans during this meeting.
Over the last year, Trump has trashed Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman and controlling shareholder of the company, for not being sufficiently supportive of him.
Murdoch, who privately holds disdain for Trump, attempted early on in the 2024 campaign to shine a bright light on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis while casting the former president on the sidelines. The hope appeared to be to seduce the Fox News audience into falling for another Republican candidate.
But the DeSantis campaign has struggled since it officially got off the ground this year. Last month, Murdoch debuted a new Fox News lineup comprised of pro-Trump propagandists, a move that seemed to acknowledge Trump’s likely selection as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.
Trump has also sharply criticized the way in which Murdoch has approached his legal problems, blasting the right-wing media mogul for not doubling down on his lies while in court.
Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but the network refused to put him on air, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against the company.
Still, Fox has amplified Trump’s lies about the validity of the 2020 election, even though Murdoch has said he did not believe Trump’s false statements, according to damning private messages revealed in the Dominion case. Murdoch floated the idea of having his influential hosts appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election. Such an act, Murdoch said, “Would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”
For two days, Prince Harry was in the witness box at London’s High Court in service of a civil suit that includes over 100 people against Mirror Group Newspapers, the owner of the DailyMirror, the Sunday Mirror, and the Sunday People. It was an historic occasion—the last senior royal to testify at the court was in 1891, and the future King Edward VII was done after about 20 minutes—so those of us following updates from the journalists inside the courtroom might have been surprised that Harry’s testimony centered largely on the distant past. He brought up stories published while his mother Princess Diana was still alive, his school days at Eton in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and his relationship with Chelsy Davy, his on-and-off girlfriend from 2004 to 2010. It feels like ancient history, and even the idea of leaving a voicemail seems archaic in 2023, but the wounds of the alleged phone hacking, which became a public concern in 2011, are still raw. Ultimately, Harry’s testimony proved how many unanswered questions remain about the controversial era in journalism.
Despite sticking to the past, Harry was clearly determined to make a point when he could. During cross-examination by Andrew Green KC (King’s Counsel), the lawyer representing MGN, Harry made a comment that both illustrated his fundamental problem with the tabloid press and gave a subtle homage to his purpose in taking the stand. In response to a question about teenage drug use and whether reporting on it had a legitimate purpose, Harry said, “There’s a difference between public interest and what interests the public.”
Whether or not Harry knew it, he was almost directly quoting the 2012 Leveson Report, the results of an inquiry led by Sir Brian Leveson into the phone hacking scandal that shuttered the Murdoch-owned tabloid News of the World and brought global attention to the practices of the British tabloid press. After admissions from a private investigator and royal editor that voicemail hacking had occurred at the NoTW, Leveson was tasked with investigating the wider press culture in the UK. Over the course of over a year, Leveson heard from hundreds of owners, editors, and journalists from across the industry about their practices, including those from Mirror Newspaper Group, who discussed the period in question at the current trial.
Though Leveson recommended vast changes in the way that the UK’s press is regulated, no other organization admitted to using unlawful methods of gathering information, and ultimately few others faced consequences. Denials even came from big names like Piers Morgan, who wrote that he had heard about the practice, which he called a “little trick,” in his 2005 memoir The Insider. Morgan, the editor of the DailyMirror from 1995 to 2004, part of the period covered by Harry’s claims in this suit, has denied vigorously that he knew of anyone using the tactic at his paper. At the beginning of the trial last month, MGN admitted that one story from Sunday People did use illegal methods to gain information about Harry’s activities at a nightclub, but denied any other unlawful acts.
So Harry’s testimony served to highlight the gap between those denials and the content of a handful of articles that ran in the DailyMirror, the Sunday Mirror, and the Sunday People, which his lawyers allege contain details which only could have been acquired using illegal methods, including phone hacking. Originally Harry’s lawyers submitted 148 different articles for which they alleged illegal methods must have been used, but at the request of Judge Timothy Fancourt, they narrowed it down to 33, which were addressed in Harry’s lengthy witness statement and his cross-examination.
Even those sympathetic to his plight might worry that Harry didn’t necessarily have solid evidence that a certain quote or detail did come from a specific voicemail. What Harry did have, however, were receipts. Throughout the last month, various invoices for the services of private investigators were entered into evidence, and in Harry’s witness statement and testimony, he connected them to specific dates and stories. He admitted that he didn’t know how each journalist acquired their information, but spoke about the details he believes he told no one other than a handful of people whose voicemails might have been hacked.
To understand why Harry’s receipts are so important, it might be helpful to look back to a cinema classic for a bit of context: Spice World (1997). Though the film follows the Spice Girls on their way to a major concert at Royal Albert Hall, there is a satirical subplot about Kevin McMaxford, a newspaper editor with a vendetta against the group played by Barry Humphries, and the private investigator he hires to dig up dirt. One team of journalists in the film, led by Alan Cumming, sticks to above-board if intrusive practices, like following the pop stars after they board a speedboat, but McMaxford’s spook Damien, played by a positively creepy Richard O’Brien, excels at spy-like and questionably legal practices, even pretending to be a doctor in a delivery room.
It’s telling that the general playbook of British tabloid culture was so established by the late 1990s that a parody could be expected to translate in a children’s movie. Still, the relationship between McMaxford and his investigator is relevant to the point Harry is trying to elucidate. In his quest for a negative scoop, McMaxford hires Damien for his expertise without detailing the methods he should use. As a proof of concept, Damien provides photos of the editor sniffing his socks and picking his nose earlier that day. Rewatching the film as an adult, I feel confident the investigator didn’t specifically invoice for “illegal services,” and I suppose some of the things he did were in fact legal. Still, how much leeway do we give McMaxford for not explicitly asking his investigator to break the law when we know the intent was to destroy the Spice Girls?
After Harry finished his testimony on Wednesday morning and the court broke for lunch, Jane Kerr, the former royal editor of the Mirror, took the stand. According to the BBC, she discussed her use of private investigators during her years covering the royals, and the instructions she would give them to acquire phone numbers or other information in a back and forth with Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne:
“I wouldn’t have expected them to do anything illegal.”
Prince Harry’s lawyer fires back: “Did you close your eyes and ears?”
“They were people who provided you with stories,” she responds. She did not know how they obtained information, she says.
“You didn’t care,” Prince Harry’s lawyer says.
“I assumed they would do what I would do,” Kerr says, accepting that she had a duty to work within the law.
Harry spent his own testimony discussing the individual stories, but Sherborne’s line of questioning makes it clear that the case is attacking a culture so broadly accepted that it has been satirized for decades. A decade ago, the government declined to consider many of the suggestions that Leveson made in his 2012 report and even canceled a planned sequel inquiry in 2018 that was supposed to probe the relationship between the press and the police, and that inaction has left Harry without an obvious remedy, even as the tabloid went on to intensify their vitriol against him and his wife, Meghan Markle. Ultimately, this case is an early attempt at a solution for the prince and the many other victims of alleged phone hacking, and here, Harry is meant to be just one representative plaintiff who have signed on to Sherborne’s case, including celebrities like former soccer player Ian Wright and the estate of George Michael.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy met with Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox News’ parent company Fox Corp., in late April in New York, according to two people familiar with the meeting who were not authorized to discuss private events.
One person described it as a “getting-to-know you session” and said Murdoch often meets with rising political figures.
Ramaswamy has been a frequent guest on Fox News and was long a regular guest on Carlson’s program. After Carlson left Fox News, Ramaswamy told Politico that Carlson should consider getting into the 2024 race, saying, “I think he’d be a good addition.”
While Murdoch has not weighed in on the Republican contest, several editorials in news outlets within Fox Corp. have criticized the former president, including an editorial in The Wall Street Journal with the headline, “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”
Ramaswamy’s meeting with Murdoch is the latest in a series of behind-the-scenes conversations the multimillionaire entrepreneur has had with major conservative leaders and business executives as he seeks the Republican nomination and casts himself in visits to early-voting states as a dynamic, 37-year-old contender who is in step with supporters of former President Donald Trump.
The New York Times noted this month that Ramaswamy recently dined with three of the GOP’s billionaire financiers: Steve Wynn, Ike Perlmutter, and Thomas Peterffy.
Even as Ramaswamy gains some traction, Trump has so far not made him a political target.
One longtime Trump associate told CBS News on Friday that Trump “sees Vivek being out there as a way of making everything a little more uncomfortable for [Ron] DeSantis.” Ramaswamy has made sharp comments about DeSantis, saying the Florida governor, who is expected to jump into the 2024 race in the coming days, “doesn’t have” what it takes to be an effective leader and is “deeply insecure.”
“I am pleased to see that Vivek Ramaswamy is doing so well in the most recent Republican Primary Poll, CBS YouGov,” Trump wrote in a social-media post earlier this month. “He is tied with Mike Pence and seems to be on his way to catching Ron DeSanctimonious. The thing I like about Vivek is that he only has good things to say about ‘President Trump,’ and all that the Trump Administration has so successfully done—This is the reason he is doing so well. In any event, good luck to all of them, they will need it!”
A spokesperson for Fox Corp. declined to comment.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy, declined to comment.
“I hate the way you talk to me, And the way you cut your hair. / I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare. / I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. / I hate you so much it makes me sick, It even makes me rhyme. / I hate the way you’re always right, I hate it when you lie. / I hate it when you make me laugh, Even worse when you make me cry. / I hate it when you’re not around, And the fact that you didn’t call. / But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you, Not even close, Not even a little bit, Not even at all.”
On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, host Brian Stelter talks to Gabriel Sherman and Bess Levin about the bombshell Fox dropped before the Dominion dust had even settled: theouster of prime-time star Tucker Carlson. “We wake up Monday and he’s out. It was just a total U-turn,” said Sherman, which “raises questions about Rupert Murdoch’s leadership of the media empire.” The Vanity Fair writers discuss what the decision means for the company, the viewers, and the host who seemed to have no boundaries.
For the last few years, Prince Harry has been pursuing legal action against various media companies, including one suit against News Group Newspapers, the publishers of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World, that originated in October 2019. During his ongoing battle with Associated Newspapers, the royal family has remained largely silent on his pursuit. But in a court filing Tuesday as part of the News Group suit, Harry’s legal team said that his brother, Prince William, privately settled his own claim over phone hacking with NGN in 2020 for a for a “very large sum of money.”
The revelation came in response to NGN’s request to strike Harry’s case, arguing that too much time had elapsed since Harry first learned about the alleged phone hacking for his claim to go forward. In filings, according to reports, Harry said he did not pursue legal action when he learned about potential hacking in 2012 because of a “secret agreement” between the palace and NGN not to publicly bring claims.
“The reason for this was to avoid the situation where a member of the royal family would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly-sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted,” Harry said, according to the BBC. “This agreement, including the promises from NGN for delayed resolution was, obviously, a major factor as to why no claim was brought by me at that time.”
When contacted by the Financial Times, NGN declined to talk about any “any confidential settlement with Prince William.” The company’s lawyer, Anthony Hudson KC, told the BBC that the claims of a secret agreement between the palace and the company were “flatly inconsistent” with other parts of his case and had “extreme vagueness” as to the parties and terms of the agreement.
According to The Guardian, Harry’s filings claim that the late Queen Elizabeth II had given her approval for Harry to seek an apology from News UK. According to the newspaper, the filing includes an email from Sally Osman, then communications secretary for Buckingham Palace, authorizing Harry to reach out to News Corporation’s CEO Robert Thomson and News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks in 2018. Ultimately, per The Guardian, no apology was forthcoming.
Though the details of the situation are vague, Harry’s claims give some context to the timing of Harry’s series of legal actions against the British media, and why he has pursued it with aggressiveness even as his family has not expressed its support. Harry’s case against NGN is only one of three ongoing cases against tabloids. He attended a hearing in his case against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, last month and is expected to testify in his case against Reach, the publishers of the Mirror and Sunday Mirror, in June.
Twenty-four hours after Fox News ousted its highest-rated host, the network has yet to explain one of the most shocking defenestrations in cable news history. “I’m not going beyond the release,” a Fox News spokeswoman texted yesterday when I asked her for comment. In this information void, multiple theories about why Fox fired Carlson circulated in the media. It was fallout from the $787.5 million Dominion settlement; punishment for vulgar text messages published in Dominion court filings; or a consequence of former Fox producer Abby Grossberg’s lawsuit, which alleged Carlson oversaw a hostile work environment. (Fox News has vowed to “vigorously defend” the company against “Grossberg’s unmeritorious legal claims.”)
But none of these potential reasons fully add up. Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromohyped Dominion conspiracies far more than Carlson did, and yet she remains on the air. Fox had access to Carlson’s texts and emails in the Dominion lawsuit for months, and didn’t punish him for it. Fox hosts sued for sexual harassment in the past were fired publicly for cause, but Carlson wasn’t. According to a source, Carlson wasn’t even fired and remains on the Fox News payroll.
So the mystery remains: Why did Fox News take its biggest star off the air?
A new theory has emerged. According to the source, Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch removed Carlson over remarks Carlson made during a speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala on Friday night. Carlson laced his speech with religious overtones that even Murdoch found too extreme, the source, who was briefed on Murdoch’s decision-making, said. Carlson told the Heritage audience that national politics has become a manichean battle between “good” and “evil.” Carlson said that people advocating for transgender rights and DEI programs want to destroy America and they could not be persuaded with facts. “We should say that and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates…I’ve tried. That doesn’t work,” he said. The answer, Carlson suggested, was prayer. “I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will,” he said. “That stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk,” the source said.
Carlson declined to comment. A spokesperson for Fox Corp. declined to comment.
It’s beenreported that Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott made the decision to fire Carlson on Friday night. Another source, a person close to Murdoch, has said something similar to me. Scott informed Carlson of the decision on Monday morning.
Rupert Murdoch was perhaps unnerved by Carlson’s messianism because it echoed the end-times worldview of Murdoch’s ex-fiancée Ann Lesley Smith, the source said. In my May cover story, I reported that Murdoch and Smith called off their two-week engagement because Smith had told people Carlson was “a messenger from God.” Murdoch had seen Carlson and Smith discuss religion firsthand. In late March, Carlson had dinner at Murdoch’s Bel Air vineyard with Murdoch and Smith, according to the source. During dinner, Smith pulled out a bible and started reading passages from the Book of Exodus, the source said. “Rupert just sat there and stared,” the source said. A few days after the dinner, Murdoch and Smith called off the wedding. By taking Carlson off the air, Murdoch was also taking away his ex’s favorite show.
Smith did not respond to a request for comment.
The 92-year-old mogul’s broken engagement is part of a string of erratic decisions he has made of late that raises questions about Murdoch’s leadership of his media empire. According to sources, executives at Fox are worried about Murdoch’s unsteady hand at the wheel of the company. “It’s like the King is senile but no one wants to say anything,” the source said. According to two sources, Fox settled with Dominion moments before the trial was set to begin because Fox’s lawyers didn’t want Murdoch to testify in public. “They were hoping and praying to settle for months, but they didn’t want to pay up,” the second source said. Once the trial began, the lawyers told Fox execs that Murdoch would be “disgraced on the stand, run out of the boardroom, and his testimony will expose him as a lunatic sliding into senility.” (The person close to Murdoch disputed this. “Rupert was very well prepared to testify.”)
On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off. According to a source briefed on the conversation, Carlson was stunned by his sudden ouster from his 8 p.m. show, the most watched program in cable news last month. Carlson was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his Fox News contract through 2029, the source said. As of last week, Carlson had told people he expected the contract to be renewed.
Carlson has told people he doesn’t know why he was terminated. According to the source, Scott refused to tell him how the decision was made; she only said that it was made “from above.” Carlson has told people he believes his controversial show is being taken off the air because the Murdoch children intend to sell Fox News at some point.
The network provided few details in a Monday statement: “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” it read. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment beyond the press release. Carlson declined to comment.
Details are emerging about Carlson’s exit. The Los Angeles Timesreported that “Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg,” a producer fired last month, and that the decision to fire Carlson came from Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. And TheWashington Postreported that Carlson’s comments about management, revealed in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems—which Fox settled last week for $787.5 million—“played a role in his departure.”
“This is a HUGE victory for American PATRIOTS…somehow. Because now Tucker can FINALLY SAY WHAT HE WANTS, which I guess he wasn’t doing before? Honestly, it seemed like he pretty much did and said whatever he wanted and it worked out pretty well, but now the DEEP STATE can’t MUZZLE TUCKER anymore, although frankly that didn’t seem to be the case previously? I mean, any honest reading of the situation would have to reckon with the reality that Tucker’s prominence at the network basically emboldened him to make whatever claims he wanted, although maybe the financial repercussions in this case finally worked against him. So that’s pretty much a matter of the market, rather than any issue with free speech. Which is why I am not totally sure why this is a GLORIOUS DAY for FREE SPEECH and REAL AMERICANS, but it definitely, totally, somehow is.”
He didn’t have much luck, because the network and its website barely mentioned it.
“What an oversight that is,” he said in mock surprise. “Man oh man, is Rupert Murdoch gonna be mad when he finds out about this.”
Kimmel said one big question remains now that Fox has settled.
“What happens to the MyPillow guy?” he said. “They’re suing Mike Lindell for basically the same thing.”
Lindell has already vowed he won’t settle.
“He’s much too delusional for that,” Kimmel said, then played a clip of Lindell claiming he wouldn’t take $1 billion to settle the suit.
“Hold on now: Why would they offer you a billion dollars?” Kimmel wondered. “Is it possible Mike thinks he’s the one suing Dominion? I’m not sure he understands how being sued works.”
And it only got weirder from there, which you can see in the Wednesday night monologue:
Late Tuesday afternoon, amid a swirl of confusion over why the Dominion v. Fox trial had been delayed for hours, Judge Eric Davis announced that the “parties had resolved the case,” thus marking an abrupt end to one of the most highly anticipated defamation trials in decades. Every major media outlet, many of which had correspondents in Wilmington, immediately jumped on news of the settlement and its $787.5 million price tag. But one outlet was noticeably loath to get in on the feeding frenzy.
Fox News, the network at the heart of the story, covered the settlement only three times in about four hours after news of the settlement broke, “amounting to about six minutes of coverage,” according to The New York Times’ Stuart Thompson. One such instance occurred during the final moments of Fox anchor Neil Cavuto’s 4 PM hour. “Fox has agreed to pay $787 million to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit,” Cavuto said, a figure that he said came “officially from the Wall Street Journal”—an outlet that, like Fox News, is owned by Fox Corp. And yet, as The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragonanoted, Fox media analyst Howard Kurtz claimed in a broadcast about an hour and a half later that he was unable to “independently confirm” the dollar figure of the settlement that Dominion’s lawyer gave reporters.
Kurtz—who, back in February, publicly voiced his disagreement with Fox’s decision to prevent him from covering the trial—went on to mention Dominion CEO John Poulos’ statement to reporters that “Fox has admitted telling lies about Dominion.” To which Kurtz added, “Now, both sides had an incentive to avoid a costly six-week trial. Dominion might have lost and gotten zero. Some of Fox’s top executives and Opinion hosts would have had to testify. But there’s undoubtedly disappointment at other networks that were relishing this spectacle.”
Meanwhile, during the Tuesday broadcasts of hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity—both of whom were expected to take the stand in the Dominion trial—no reference to the settlement was made, according to Reuters. (Statements made on both hosts’ shows back in 2020 were among the 20 specific broadcasts and tweets in question that Dominion had alleged were defamatory.)
As for atonement, Fox’s statement acknowledging that “certain claims” about Dominion were false is apparently as far as the network is going to go. Multipleoutletsreported that Fox will not have to issue an on-air apology or correction for the erroneous statements its stars made about Dominion as part of the settlement agreement. “There’s no doubt that the $787.5 million settlement is an emphatic win for Dominion. I can’t help but think, though, about the significance to Fox of not having to acknowledge, on air, that the network spread falsehoods,” tweeted media law professor Jonathan Peters. “Fox gets to duck *full* responsibility and avoid a head-on reckoning with its viewers.” That might have something to do, as Peters noted, with the fact that Fox “wanted to avoid statements that could be used against it in the future,” as the network is still facing another defamation lawsuit, filed by another election technology company, Smartmatic, over its 2020 election coverage.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Inside the Hive: Fox on Trial podcast now.
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems settled their case on Tuesday for $787.5 million, abruptly ending one of the most highly anticipated defamation trials in decades before anyone took the stand. “The truth matters,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelsontold reporters outside the courtroom. “Lies have consequences.”
Opening arguments were supposed to begin around 1:30 in the afternoon, after the court took a lunch break. But roughly an hour later, proceedings had yet to resume. “All lawyers appear to be in their seats, but the judge and jury are not seated. Still no updates on why we’re delayed,” tweetedThe Guardian’s Kira Lerner, reporting from Wilmington, Delaware. “The scene in the courtroom: It is sweltering, everyone is up from their seats, going in and out of the room. Fox’s lead lawyer, Dan Webb, has taken several phone calls. Some people are standing, all are talking, others gesticulating,” the Times’ Jim Rutenbergreported. Then one hour became two, and just before 4:00, Judge Eric Davis, took the bench and brought the jurors back in the room. “The parties have resolved the case,” he said.
The end of the Fox-Dominion standoff comes as swaths of reporters had descended this week upon Wilmington, Delaware, and variousoutlets—including this one—prepared special coverage for what was expected to be a six-week-long trial. Top Fox figures like hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, as well as Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdochhimself, were expected to take the stand, but no longer.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers that we serve,” CEO John Poulossaid at the presser outside the courtroom. “Nothing can ever make up for that. Throughout this process, we have sought accountability, and believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading lies. Truthful reporting in the media is essential to our democracy.”
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” Fox said in a statement. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
Dominion has been steeped in a legal fight with Fox since 2021, when the election-technology company sued the network for $1.6 billion over its 2020 election coverage. Dominion claimed the network amplified election lies pushed by Donald Trump and his allies and knowingly promoted false claims about the company’s role in the election for the sake of juicing ratings and profit. Fox argued its coverage was protected by free speech and press freedom rights, and that it was neutrally reporting on newsworthy claims by a sitting president. (It should be noted that Judge Davis, the Delaware Superior Court judge who was presiding over the case, ruled last week that Fox News could not argue that it broadcast false information about Dominion on the basis of newsworthiness. “Just because someone is newsworthy doesn’t mean you can defame someone,” said Davis.)
While the settlement means there will be no such spectacle, the discovery process leading up to this moment has already provided an unprecedented look inside Fox News. Through a deluge of internal communications and private text messages Dominion unveiled during the pretrial process, the public got to see top executives, producers, and stars mocking the unfounded claims and unreliable sources in Trumpworld. “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson told host Laura Ingraham of the conspiracy-peddling Trump lawyer. “Our viewers are good people and they believe it.” In another filing released as part of the suit, Murdoch is seen admitting that hosts Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and Lou Dobbs “endorsed” Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Murdoch said at one point in his deposition.
Davis appeared to repeatedly clash with Fox during the pretrial hearings. At one point last week he told a Fox News attorney that his team had a “credibility problem” upon learning that Fox has delayed the disclosure of Murdoch’s full role at Fox News, a technicality that prevented Dominion from getting access to documents they otherwise would have during the discovery process. It was also during the pretrial hearings that Davis sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence. Dominion lawyers asserted they’d found out about other documents and material that they should have received during discovery but didn’t. The judge said he would likely start an investigation into the matter.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated with additional developments.
Some of Fox News’ most recognizable anchors and Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch could take the stand this week as the network battles a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Votings Systems. Fox News is being sued for $1.6 billion, with Dominion alleging the network spread misinformation about the company and its voting machines. Scott MacFarlane reports.
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Washington — A high-stakes court fight between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News is set to kick off in Delaware superior court on Tuesday, as the voting technology company presses its claim before a jury that Fox knowingly aired false information about its voting machines and software in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
Jury selection started Thursday and was set to resume before opening statements Monday, but the start of the trial was delayed until Tuesday morning, the judge presiding over the case, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, said in a statement Sunday. The trial is predicted to last up to six weeks, during which Dominion has the burden of proving to the jury that Fox acted with actual malice in broadcasting the unfounded allegations about Dominion.
To show actual malice, the legal standard established by the Supreme Court for defamation cases, a public figure — Dominion in this case — must prove the publisher knew the offending statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
If the jury finds Fox News acted with actual malice, it will also determine whether Dominion is entitled to damages and if so, how much should be awarded.
The network’s top stars and top executives from Fox Corporation, Fox News’ parent company, are expected to feature prominently and could testify in-person during the trial.
Here are the key figures to know.
Fox Corporation
FILE — Lachlan Murdoch, left, and Rupert Murdoch attend the TIME 100 Gala, celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world, at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Time Warner Center on Tuesday, April 21, 2015, in New York.
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman and co-chairman and CEO, respectively
Dominion alleges that Fox Corporation’s top officers, including Murdoch, knew that the claims about Dominion were false, and that the evidence demonstrates Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch had editorial responsibility.
In their complaint, the company says that the Murdoch family “plays a central and public role in the managing and oversight of Fox News.”
file: Fox Corporation chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh.
Fox handout photo
Viet Dinh, chief legal officer and policy officer
Dominion claims that like the Murdochs, Viet Dinh knew the accusations about Dominion were false. He said in deposition testimony that he “sometimes” consults with shows before a particular guest appears because of legal concerns.
File: White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah takes questions from reporters during a press briefing at the White House on Monday, March 26, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Raj Shah, senior vice president
According to messages made public as part of the discovery process, Shah repeatedly indicated he knew the claims about Dominion were outlandish. Shah also led a “brand team” and notified senior leaders from Fox News and Fox Corporation that then-host Neil Cavuto’s pushback to the White House’s voter fraud claims posed a “brand threat.”
FILE: House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks to members of the media following a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018.
.Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Paul Ryan, former House speaker and Fox Corporation board member
Ryan joined Fox Corporation’s board in 2019 and he sent a message to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch on Dec. 6, 2020, urging “solid pushback” to Trump’s calls for an alternate slate of presidential electors, according to documents made public as part of the case.
“I think we are entering a truly bizarre phase of this where he has actually convinced himself of this farce and will do more bizarre things to delegitimize the election,” Ryan told the Murdochs of Trump. “I see this as a key inflection point for Fox, where the right thing and the smart business thing do line up nicely.”
Fox News Network
File: Fox News CEO, Suzanne Scott, attends the new All-American Christmas Tree lighting outside News Corporation at Fox Square on December 9, 2021 in New York City.
Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images
Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News
Dominion alleged in its lawsuit that Scott and executives were responsible for airing broadcasts that included the 20 statements the company alleges were defamatory. In court filings, Dominion said Scott elevated concerns about the audience’s backlash to its Arizona call for Joe Biden, and told Lachlan Murdoch in a text that the Arizona call “was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”
Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media
Wallace is among the executives who Dominion says was responsible for airing the challenged broadcasts. He spoke with Dominion’s representative on Nov. 17, 2020, and was told of the facts that refuted Fox’s claims, according to the company.
David Clark, senior vice president for weekend news and programming
Messages made public show that Clark received Dominion’s “Setting the Record Straight” emails and told a colleague on Nov. 14 that “I have it tattooed on my body at this point.” He was among the executives who participated in the editorial process and said he oversaw the bulk of programming on the weekends.
Meade Cooper, vice president of prime-time programming
Cooper oversees primetime show content, including Hannity’s, Carlson’s and Pirro’s shows.
Ron Mitchell, senior vice president of prime time programming and analytics
Mitchell advised Carlson’s, Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s primetime shows and said during deposition testimony that some of the claims about Dominion “didn’t sound credible to me.”
Lauren Petterson, president of Fox Business
Dominion alleges in court papers that Petterson “had decision-making authority” over what content could appear on Fox Business’s air.
Tom Lowell, executive vice president and managing editor of news
Lowell testified during a deposition that Fox does not “have evidence” to support the baseless allegations about Dominion.
Gary Schreier, senior vice president of programming for Fox Business Network
Schreier was Petterson’s second-in-command and oversaw Dobbs’ show. In a Dec. 13, 2020, email, he warned Dobbs’ producer not to book Sidney Powell and on Jan. 19, 2021, said “We cannot go near dominion. Not the same area code.”
Irena Briganti, senior executive vice president for corporate communications
Briganti wrote the evening that Mr. Biden was declared the winner of the election that “our viewers left this week after AZ,” and according to Dominion’s filings, said that Fox “Gave Powell & Giuliani platform with reach—all true they said crazy things.”
Bill Sammon, former senior vice president and managing editor of Fox’s Washington Bureau
Sammon received pushback from Trump’s team, including then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, after the network called Arizona for Mr. Biden. He exchanged text messages with Chris Stirewalt on Dec. 2, 2020, expressing concern about the claims that Fox was broadcasting.
“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the election,” he wrote. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”
He was let go by Fox News after the election.
Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor, during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Monday, June 13, 2022.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Chris Stirewalt, former politics editor
Stirewalt was the politics editor and member of the Decision Desk, led by Arnon Mishkin. Mishkin made Fox News’ Arizona call, which projected Mr. Biden would win the state. In a deposition, Stirewalt said that “no reasonable person” would have thought allegations Dominion rigged the election were true.
In the Dec. 2, 2020, exchange with Sammon, Stirewalt wrote, “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.” Like Sammon, he, too, is no longer with the network.
The Hosts
Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” poses for photos in a Fox News Channel studio on March 2, 2017, in New York.
Richard Drew / AP
Tucker Carlson
Carlson hosts the 8 p.m. show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and his Jan. 26, 2021, broadcast is among the 20 that included falsehoods about Dominion said were defamatory. That show featured Mike Lindell as a guest, and he claimed he found “machine fraud.”
File: Sean Hannity, host at Fox News, broadcasts from the Republican National Convention at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sean Hannity
Hannity is the host of the eponymous “Hannity,” airing at 9 p.m. His Nov. 30, 2020, broadcast contained challenged statements from Sidney Powell, who peddled baseless claims Dominion’s voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Mr. Biden.
Laura Ingraham seen speaking during the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, MD, on February 28, 2019.
Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Laura Ingraham
Host of the 10 p.m. show “The Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham exchanged messages with Carlson and Hannity calling Powell “a bit nuts,” and the three lamented about the backlash Fox News was receiving from viewers after its Arizona call.
File: Judge Jeanine Pirro of FOX News Network makes remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, February 23, 2017.
MIKE THEILER/AFP/Getty Images
Jeanine Pirro
Pirro hosted the show “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News until January 2022, when she became a permanent co-host for its show “The Five.” But two of Pirro’s broadcasts on her earlier show, on Nov. 14, 2020, and Nov. 21, 2020, contained statements that Dominion alleges were defamatory.
File: Host Maria Bartiromo with Lee Zeldin, former New York gubernatorial candidate as he visits “Mornings With Maria” at Fox Business Network Studios on Feb. 08, 2023, New York.
Roy Rochlin / Getty Images
Maria Bartiromo
Bartiromo’s show “Sunday Morning Futures” airs weekly on Fox News, and Dominion has identified her Nov. 8, 2020, broadcast as containing information about it that the network allegedly knew to be false.
That episode featured Sidney Powell claiming without evidence that Dominion used an algorithm to manipulate vote counts.
Before the interview, Powell sent Bartiromo an email with the subject line “Election Fraud Info,” which Powell received from a Minnesota woman claiming Dominion’s software flipped votes from Trump to Biden. The email also claimed the late Justice Antonin Scalia was killed in a “human hunting expedition,” and she receives messages from “the wind.”
File: Lou Dobbs interviews Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during “Lou Dobbs Tonight” at Fox Business Network Studios on Sept. 23, 2019 in New York City.
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Lou Dobbs
Dobbs, who is no longer with the company, hosted the show “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” airing on Fox Business Network. Dominion points to eight of Dobbs’ broadcasts that it said contained false information about it, as well as four of his tweets.
Will Cain
Cain co-hosts Fox & Friends Weekend, and on its Dec. 12, 2020, show, Giuliani was a guest and made accusations about Dominion’s voting machines. The company said that as of that date, the public record “clearly demonstrates” that those claims were false.
File: Bret Baier of “Special Report with Bret Baier” interrviews Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Jan. 05, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
Paul Morigi / Getty Images
Bret Baier
Baier is the chief political correspondent for Fox News and encouraged a fact-check of voter fraud allegations posted on social media by Bartiromo to Sammon, writing “We have to prevent this stuff. … We need to fact check.”
He also wrote in a text message on Nov. 5, made public in the case, that “there is NO evidence of fraud. None. Allegations—stories. Twitter. Bulls**t.”
Eric Shawn
Another Fox host, he was the subject of an email about a fact-check he did about voter fraud claims. In the email, Scott told Cooper, “This has to stop now. … This is bad business and there is clearly a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
The Producers
Alex Hooper, senior producer, Lou Dobbs Tonight
Jerry Andrews, executive producer, Justice with Jeanine
Abby Grossberg, former senior booking producer for “Sunday Morning Futures”
The three producers are identified as “responsible employees” who knew the statements airing on their respective broadcasts were “false or recklessly disregarded the truth.”
Grossberg, in particular, has emerged as a figure whose importance in Dominion’s case appears to be growing. She is a former employee of CBS News.
Grossberg filed a separate lawsuit against Fox News, Scott and its lawyers in Delaware state court alleging she was misleadingly coached and manipulated to deliver incomplete answers during a deposition taken as part of Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox.
In court filings Tuesday, she said Fox News had recordings, through an app called Otter, of separate conversations Bartiromo had with Giuliani and Powell that showed they had no evidence to support claims they amplified about Dominion on Fox’s air.
Fox turned over the recordings to Dominion last week, and during a pretrial conference Wednesday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the trial, sanctioned Fox’s attorneys for withholding evidence.
The Guests
File: Rudolph Giuliani, attorney for President Donald Trump, conducts a news conference at the Republican National Committee on lawsuits regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on Thursday, November 19, 2020.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Sidney Powell
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Lindell
The three appeared as guests of Carson, Hannity, Pirro, Bartiromo and Dobbs, where they raised the unfounded accusations about Dominion and its role in the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani and Powell were the subject of internal messages from Fox’s primetime hosts, who pushed back among themselves about the validity of the allegations.
A trial in a defamation suit brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems is set to begin this week. It could have significant ramifications for the right-wing cable channel.
Dominion is an election technology company. After former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Dominion alleged Fox pushed various pro-Trump conspiracy theories, including false and potentially damaging information about the company’s voting technology, because “the lies were good for Fox’s business.” Fox is arguing that it was merely reporting the claims made by the Trump administration and Donald Trump’s associates.
It filed a defamation lawsuit in 2021. The trial is set to begin Monday in Delaware.
Here are 5 things to know ahead of the trial.
Dominion wants the network’s star hosts and top executives to appear on the witness stand during trial, it said in a court filing in March.
Here’s who could appear as witnesses, if Dominion gets its way:
• Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO
• Jay Wallace, Fox News president
• Hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier
• Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News producer who alleged that the network’s lawyers coerced her into providing misleading testimony in a lawsuit filed March
“Both parties have made these witnesses very relevant,” Davis said, regarding the Murdochs. Fox was trying to block Dominion from having the Murdochs on the witness stand.
Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion in damages and additional punitive damages.
That could be a major financial hit to Fox. Fox Corporation, the right-wing news outlet’s owner, has an estimated $4 billion in cash on hand, according to its latest earnings statement. It’s also unclear how much insurance the company has, or what any insurance policy would cover.
Punitive damages are, however, uncapped in Delaware, with no legal maximum limit.
The network claims that number is a wildly overblown amount designed to grab attention in headlines.
Fox argued in a statement the case is about protecting “the rights of the free press” and a verdict in favor of Dominion would have “grave consequences” for the fourth estate.
“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished First Amendment rights,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement.
Defamation cases are hard to win in the United States, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. Defamation has to meet a high standard. An entity can’t have just lied, it must have known (or at least strongly suspected) it was lying at the time, and it has to have been done with “actual malice.” The court has already ruled on the first two, saying that Fox aired lies and knew they were lies, so instead of a question of truth, it’s about whether Fox did so maliciously.
Though major figures at Fox privately acknowledged reality – that former President Donald Trump had lost to President Joe Biden in 2020 – Fox continued to air conspiracies and lies in order to keep its large audience engaged.
A cache of private messages, emails and depositions revealed that Fox may not have upheld the journalistic responsibility to report the truth to audiences. The judge has rejected several of Fox’s First Amendment defenses and in pretrial rulings barred the network from arguing its guests’ alleged defamatory statements were “newsworthy” and deserving of coverage.
The damning behind-the-scenes communications were included in roughly 10,000 pages of court documents that have been made public as part of the lawsuit, many of which are likely to be shown in the trial.
For example, host Tucker Carlson said in one text message he “passionately” hates Trump. In one November 2020 exchange, Tucker Carlson said Trump’s decision to snub Joe Biden’s inauguration was “so destructive,” adding that Trump’s post-election behavior was “disgusting” and that he was “trying to look away.”
Murdoch emailed New York Post’s Col Allan, describing Trump’s election lies as “bulls**t and “damaging.”
Murdoch’s private messages revealed how his own thoughts contradicted what Fox espoused. “Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far,” Murdoch wrote in an email Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, apparently referencing election denialism after Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden.
The trial will begin Monday in Delaware at 9 am ET, with expected opening statements at some point during the day. Jury selection is also expected to wrap up Monday morning, ending with a panel of 12 jurors and 12 alternates. It’s anticipated that opening statements will begin immediately after the jury is seated. The trial is expected to last five to six weeks.
Dominion will need to convince the jury that Fox acted with “actual malice” — showing the right-wing network’s hosts and executives knew what was being said on-air was false but broadcast it anyway, or acted with such a reckless disregard for the truth that they should be held liable.
Ruppert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation
Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images
Fox News apologized to the Delaware judge presiding over the Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit for failing to properly define Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s formal role at the network, according to a letter filed with the court.
“We understand the Court’s concerns, apologize, and are committed to clear and full communication with the Court moving forward,” Fox attorney Blake Rohrbacher wrote in the letter Friday.
Dominion Voting Systems brought its defamation lawsuit against Fox and its TV networks, Fox News and Fox Business, in March 2021, arguing its hosts pushed false claims that Dominion’s voting machines were rigged in the 2020 presidential election that saw President Joe Biden triumph over former President Donald Trump.
Fox’s apology comes on the eve of the trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis expressed frustration with the network Tuesday for its failure to accurately disclose Murdoch’s leadership role there. Fox lawyers had repeatedly claimed Murdoch did not have an official title at Fox News, only to later reveal that he serves as the Fox News Executive Chair.
“This is a problem,” Davis said, according to a court transcript. “I need to feel comfortable when you represent something to me that is the truth.”
On Wednesday, Davis sanctioned Fox for withholding evidence and reportedly said if depositions or anything else needed to be redone, it would come at a cost to the company.
“This was a misunderstanding,” Fox’s attorney Blake Rohrbacher wrote in the letter. “We should have updated the Court following the April 5 hearing with a complete answer, and we should have taken care before the hearing to ensure that our written submissions reflected all listed corporate titles for the individuals at issue for both Fox entities.”
Once the trial begins, Fox will have to pay to defend itself against Dominion’s claims and, if it loses, pay possible damages to Dominion, upwards of $1.6 billion. No matter the outcome, an appeal is likely.
Fox, which has denied the claims made by Dominion and said it is protected by the First Amendment, has opposed the amount of damages that the voting machine maker is seeking. Davis recently said it would be up to a jury to decide the matter.
— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.
“Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” the then-91-year-old billionaire’s message began, according to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, who said he had viewed a screenshot of the June 2022 email. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do…My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.”
Hall, now 66, reportedly received the email as she was waiting for her husband to meet her at their estate in Oxfordshire, England. The two married in 2016.
According to Vanity Fair, Hall told friends she was blindsided by the email.
Murdoch revealed in March that he had proposed to his new girlfriend, Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist. Just two weeks later, news broke that the wedding had been called off.
It would have been his fifth marriage. Hall was previously the longtime partner of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with whom she had four children.
Comparisons between “Succession” character Logan Roy and real-life media baron Rupert Murdoch and former President Donald Trump have been a dime a dozen since the hit HBO show first burst onto TV screens in 2018.
But actor Brian Cox, who portrays mogul Roy in the hit series, has pointed out a key difference between the billionaire he portrays and the IRL ones his character is often likened to.
“The big difference between Logan and all those guys is he’s self-made, he didn’t inherit anything. It all came from nothing,” Cox told CNN ahead of the show’s fourth and final season.
“Logan is a misanthrope, he’s a really unhappy man and his problem is, it would be much easier if he didn’t love his children. That’s his problem, that’s his Achilles heel, he loves his children,” Cox explained. “Again, it’s a satire, it’s such a reflection on our life at the moment. That sense of entitlement that those kids have.”
Cox in 2021 likened the show to the “entitlement that we’ve seen of the horrific Trumps and Kushner and all of that.”
The 92-year-old executive chairman of News Corp recently announced his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith. This is the fifth time Murdoch will stroll down the aisle.
Murdoch first went public with the news in an interview with gossip columnist Cindy Adams in the New York Post, a tabloid he owns. He said he popped the question to his bride-to-be on St. Patricks Day in New York.
“I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy,” he said.
Smith, 66, began her career as a dental hygienist and has also been a model and a singer.
Her first marriage to wealthy attorney John B. Huntington made her a multimillionaire socialite overnight. But the emotionally abusive relationship ended badly, and she lost almost everything—thanks to a prenup, she told the Christian Broadcast Network.
Her second marriage to country music star Chester Smith went much more harmoniously until he died in 2008 from a heart attack. The two recorded an album together.
Like Murdoch, Smith was also a radio and TV executive. He founded Sainte Television Group, the largest privately-owned broadcast company with stations. He died in 2008.
“I’m a widow 14 years,” said Smith. “My husband was a businessman… So I speak Rupert’s language. We share the same beliefs,” she said.
After her husband’s death, Smith became a police chaplain for the San Francisco Police Department.
“When I go on my calls, and I’m dealing with people who are in a lot of pain, I say, ‘I’ve been here. I’ve been here, and you can get out.’ It gives them hope,” she said.
They met at a party
Murdoch and Smith first connected at a bash Murdoch hosted at his vineyard Moraga in Bel Air, California, a few years ago. She and her husband were also in the wine business and knew the Murdochs.
Last year, when there were 200 people at my vineyard, I met her, and we talked a bit. Two weeks later, I called her,” Murdoch explained.
The couple went public with their romance a few months after Murdoch, and his former wife, Jerry Hall, finalized their divorce.
According to Adams, they plan to tie the know at the end of the summer.
“It’s not my first rodeo. Getting near 70 means being in the last half. I waited for the right time,” Smith said.
Murdoch seems equally enthusiastic. “We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together,” he said.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Corp.,
