‘Tremendous Job’: Lachlan Murdoch Gives Strong Endorsement of Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott Amid Dominion Scandal
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Lachlan Murdoch heaped praise on Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott while dismissing the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit the network faces from Dominion Voting Systems.
The Fox Corporation CEO and eldest son of News Corp Founder Rupert Murdoch spoke at a business conference in San Francisco on Thursday. In his remarks, Murdoch reportedly backed Scott, commented on Fox News’ purpose, and offered little-to-no concern about the “noise” surrounding Dominion’s lawsuit against the network.
“I think a lot of the noise that you hear about this case is actually not about the law, and is not about journalism, and is really about the politics,” Murdoch said, according to The Daily Beast. “And that’s, unfortunately, more reflective of a polarized society that we live in today.”
Here’s the part where Murdoch declared his praise for Scott:
It’s doing very well. The position of Fox News is and if you research or you talk to either focus groups with any of our viewers, they see Fox News as not just a news channel, but really a channel that speaks to sort-of middle America and respects the values of middle America as a media business that is most relevant to them as opposed to simply a news channel. So, the brand is incredibly strong… The position of the channel is very strong and doing very well. And this is really important — it’s a credit to Suzanne Scott and all of her team there. They’ve done a tremendous job at running the business and building this business…This is a hard business to run. And I think, you know, Suzanne Scott has done a tremendous job.
Murdoch’s comments come as Fox News higher-ups have pushed back on speculations that Scott’s job is at risk because of the Dominion lawsuit. Nonetheless, the network remains under massive scrutiny as Dominion accuses them of damaging the company’s reputation by amplifying conspiratorial claims that they helped rig the 2020 election against Donald Trump.
Scott has been under criticism amid recent reports that she lamented how Fox would’ve gotten bigger ratings with their 2020 election coverage if they didn’t (accurately) call the battleground state of Arizona for President Joe Biden. Scott and other prominent Fox Newsers also suggested it might’ve been better for them to have left the Arizona result in suspense, rather than call it when they did.
As for Dominion, troves of filings have been released from the lawsuit, which put numerous Fox News hosts and members of the network’s top brass in a bad light.
Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that Fox News personalities promoted election lies, and he worried that they might be held responsible for January 6th.
Meanwhile, Fox News’s opinion hosts were waging war with the news division for pushing back on the Trump’s election claims despite knowing they were lies.
Lachlan Murdoch was also among the Fox executives who chastised their own reporters over their “smug” Trump fact checks.
