Fox News Channel hosts repeatedly singled out the election-tech company Dominion Voting Systems for "rigging" the 2020 presidential election and "flipping" votes from President Donald Trump to Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
But as NPR and other news outlets reported, the Fox hosts did so without evidence to back up the claims. And has now been reported, internal communications and private messages show the network's talent and executives agreed that the claims were "ludicrous" and "bs."
Those internal and private messages came out in court documents filed by Dominion, which is suing the network for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion.
Fox says Dominion cherry-picked quotes and took them out of context.
Shop Talk is a weekly panel discussion about journalism issues. This week’s program featured Will Buss, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University and advises the student editors at the Western Courier and the students at student radio station The Dog: Jessica Martin, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University and is news director of NEWS3-TV at WIU; and TSPR News Director Rich Egger.
