Fox News Declines to Air Ad Slamming Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham’s Election Texts: ‘They Lied to You!’
Fox News has been accused of forbidding a progressive organization from running an ad on the network that accuses their hosts of knowingly amplifying lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Politico Playbook reported that Fox wouldn’t air an ad from the progressive PAC, MoveOn, focusing on the accusations the network faces from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit. The ad gravitates explicitly around the unflattering revelations of leaked emails and text messages from the network’s top brass and most prominent figures.
“Texts show they lied to you about the 2020 election for profit,” the ad states. The video cycles through Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham privately trashing Sidney Powell as a “complete nut,” while Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity commented similarly about Rudy Giuliani.
The messages came from a recently unsealed filing from Dominion’s defamation suit against Fox News. Since the 2020 election, Dominion has accused Fox of damaging the company’s reputation by airing conspiratorial claims that they rigged the election against former President Donald Trump. While Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages, Fox has filed a counterclaim arguing that Dominion has not financially suffered due to the network’s coverage.
Politico acknowledged that “it would, of course, be a stretch to expect any network to run ads that directly criticize it. And Fox has criticized Dominion for having ‘cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.'” Mediaite heard from a Fox News insider who called the ad a “tired and predictable publicity stunt for far left-wing groups.”
The report on the ad comes after Fox News MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz addressed critiques about Fox’s silence in covering the lawsuit against them. Kurtz said, “I believe I should be covering it,” given his role at the network, but “the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision. But as an employee, I have to abide by it.”
Watch above via MoveOn.
