The $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News became the top media story of last week when portions of a court filing by the company became public, including testimony from Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch, who was forced to admit under oath that some of the network’s hosts did indeed lie when they told viewers the 2020 presidential election had been “stolen” from Donald Trump.
Portions of that filing, however, were redacted (i.e. blacked out) at the request of Fox News, and that is leading some legal and media experts to suggest that things are about to get significantly worse for Fox when the redacted sections are made public.
Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple has looked closely at the redactions and writes they suggest the biggest bombshells are still hiding beneath those black boxes.
Impenetrable black expanses in the filing thwart a complete understanding of what was happening as Fox News faced down a ratings collapse. We do know what happened when White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a stolen election claim made by Trump: Host Tucker Carlson advocated for her firing. Similar tensions arose when anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference at which Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, was inveighing against the election. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto said on air. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”
There are about 35 redacted passages in the “opening narrative” of Dominion’s lawsuit, Wemple notes, all of which were made at the request of Fox, and that alone tells us Fox is trying to hide something. But what, exactly?
The New York Times and NPR have filed a motion to unseal the redacted sections, and given that the lawsuit was filed in Delaware, which has very strong laws supporting press freedom, it seems we’ll know what’s behind those blacked out portions before much longer.
Dominion also wants to see those redactions made clear for all to see:
In a Feb. 17 filing, Dominion itself challenged the confidential treatment of material in three recent briefs by itself, Fox News and Fox Corp. “All the redactions across all three briefs are there at the Fox Defendants’ request,” the document notes.
Given what we already know regarding Fox’s lies in the days after the election was called for President Joe Biden, it’s safe to assume that the redactions could be what finally results in the complete financial meltdown of the Fox empire. And that would be a very good thing for American democracy.
