Bloomberg Retracts Story Claiming Fox News Employees Refused to Turn Over Documents in Dominion Lawsuit
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Bloomberg has retracted a story which claimed employees at Fox News refused to hand over documents amid ongoing litigation between the network and Dominion Voting Systems.
Thursday morning, the outlet noted in a story that it had gotten the facts wrong.
“Bloomberg retracted a story published today saying that some Fox News executives and hosts had failed to hand over documents in a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems Inc,” the retraction stated. “Fox News says it met a July 1 deadline to hand over records. Bloomberg regrets the error.”
A similar story published Wednesday by The Independent is also gone.
The outlet published a story that was headlined, “Fox News still hasn’t turned over records in Dominion lawsuit, company says.”
A preview of the story still on Google reads, “Dominion claims that hosts at the network have missed two deadlines to hand over relevant evidence.”
A click on the story directs to a page which states, “Sorry – we can’t find that page… The address could have been entered incorrectly, or the page could have gone missing.”
Fox News has not commented publicly on either story. Dominion sued Fox News for $1.6 billion in 2021 after its voting machines became the subject of numerous conspiracy theories about fraud and the 2020 election.
“Lies have consequences,” attorneys for Dominion wrote when the suit was filed. “Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.”
The New York Times reported:
Fox News and its parent company have denied that the statements in question were defamatory in the first place, arguing that what was said on Fox broadcasts about Dominion was, in part, protected expressions of opinion.
Included were various unsubstantiated allegations from Fox News hosts and guests that Dominion was somehow complicit in a conspiracy to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump.
UPDATE: Fox News provided the following comment to Mediaite regarding the Dominion lawsuit:
We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.
