What type of a legitimate "news" organization conducts itself as such? Oh, when the lead personalities own stock and are paid in stock options as part of their compensation packages. Yea, no reason there to lie to your audience. Ratings, stock value decline, you know, motive. And you have to love all the case law references to back their allegations. Pages 87-91.
V. Fox Acted with Actual Malice.
Over and over again—as the Introduction and Factual Background
demonstrate—Fox witnesses have admitted in their own words they knew the
allegations about Dominion were “false” or “crazy” or “reckless” or “nuts” or “bs.”
Yet Fox continued to broadcast them. Repeatedly. Over nearly three months.
Actual malice exists when a statement is made with “knowledge that it was
false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Palin, 940 F.3d at
809 (internal quotation marks omitted). Of course, a plaintiff can prove actual malice “through the defendant’s own actions or statements.” Celle, 209 F.3d at 183
(internal alterations and quotation marks omitted). “The subjective determination of
whether [the defendant] in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the
statement may be proved by inference, as it would be rare for a defendant to admit
such doubts.” Solano, 292 F.3d at 1085 (quoting Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union,
692 F.2d 189, 196 (1st Cir. 1982); see also Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 170
(1979) (noting that “plaintiffs will rarely be successful in proving awareness of
falsehood from the mouth of the defendant himself” in the context of allowing
plaintiffs to explore circumstantial evidence of knowledge of falsity). This is the
rare case where such direct evidence exists.
A plaintiff also can prove actual malice through circumstantial evidence,
rather than “from the mouth of the defendant,” because defendants “are prone to
assert their good-faith belief in the truth of their publications.” Lando, 441 U.S. at
170. Circumstantial evidence of actual malice comes in many forms. Categories of
such evidence include evidence that the defendant: (1) relied on inherently
improbable or obviously unreliable sources, see St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S.
727, 732 (1968); Zuckerbrot v. Lande, 167 N.Y.S.3d 313, 335-336 (N.Y. Sup. Ct.
2022); (2) possessed a financial motive to lie about the plaintiff, see Harte-Hanks
Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 668 (1989); Gilmore v. Jones,
2021 WL 68684, at *8 (W.D. Va. Jan. 8, 2021); (2) relied on inherently improbable or obviously unreliable sources, see St. Amant, 390 U.S. at 732; Zuckerbrot v. Lande,
167 N.Y.S.3d 313, 335-336 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2022); (3) departed from journalistic
standards, see Harte-Hanks, 491 U.S. at 667-68; Eramo v. Rolling Stone, LLC, 209
F. Supp. 3d 862, 872 (W.D. Va. 2016); (4) conceived of the false narrative before
publication, see Palin, 940 F.3d at 813; Harris v. City of Seattle, 152 F. App’x 565,
568 (9th Cir. 2005) (unpublished); and (5) refused to retract, and continued to repeat,
statements that had been proven false, see Nunes v. Lizza, 12 F.4th 890, 900-901 (8th
Cir. 2021); Zerangue v. TSP Newspapers, Inc., 814 F.2d 1066, 1071-1072 (5th Cir.
1987). See generally Restatement (Second) of Torts §580A cmt. (d). No one factor
need be conclusive, and actual malice can be demonstrated by the “accumulation”
of circumstantial evidence. Celle, 209 F.3d at 183; see Stern v. Cosby, 645 F. Supp.
2d 258, 278 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).
An organizational defendant, just like any other, is subject to liability when it
acts with actual malice. Because an organization necessarily acts through
individuals, in such cases, “the state of mind required for actual malice” must “be
brought home to the persons in the [defendant’s] organization having responsibility
for the publication.” Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 287. This requirement, which stems from
Sullivan itself, prevents the imposition of liability against a corporate entity solely
because some person, somewhere within a vast media organization, possesses
knowledge that contradicts the defamatory allegations. Id. (concluding that the “mere presence” of news stories in the Times’ files that contradicted details in the
accused advertisement did not establish actual malice, as no individual responsible
for the advertisement copy would have had knowledge of the prior news stories).
But so long as actual malice is brought home to “at least” one individual who is
responsible for the publication of the defamatory statement, the actual malice
requirement is satisfied. Page v. Oath Inc., 270 A.3d 833, 850 (Del. 2022); see also
Solano, 292 F.3d at 1086 (editorial staff members’ concerns about defamatory
statements satisfied actual malice even if staffers were not “the final decisionmakers
as to the content”).
As discussed extensively in the Introduction and Factual Background, supra,
this case is the rare defamation case with extensive direct evidence of actual malice.
The very fact that Fox understood it had to “thread the needle” of appeasing viewers
on the one hand, and not spreading election fraud conspiracy theories on the other,
demonstrates that Fox knew these claims about Dominion were false. Ex.252.(Three lines redacted). Ex.330. Fox’s many, many
other documents and testimony all confirm the same.
Section A below establishes that Fox had the facts necessary to debunk the
accused statements about Dominion, from extensive public record sources and direct communications from Dominion pointing to that evidence, and Fox either
knowingly or recklessly disregarded those facts.
Section Bexplains how individuals throughout Fox’s organization knew the
statements were false, illustrating at minimum the reckless disregard of their
colleagues who nevertheless broadcast those lies. Together, parts A and B
sufficiently establish Fox’s actual malice; but the evidence does not stop there.
Section C discusses the executives responsible for the accused programs’
knowledge or reckless disregard of the truth, and Section D walks through the team
of hosts and producers, as well as the aforementioned executives, responsible for
each program and highlights additional evidence—on top of what has already been
set forth in the Factual Background above and Sections A and B below—
demonstrating they likewise knew or recklessly disregarded the truth.
Though unnecessary in light of the overwhelming evidence in Sections A
and B, plus the additional evidence in Sections C and D, Section E provides
circumstantial evidence further underscoring Fox’s actual malice.
Actual malice requires knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard by any one
of the people sharing responsibility for a broadcast. Page, 270 A.3d at 850; Solano,
292 F.3d at 1086; Speer v. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., 828 F.2d 475, 477 (8th Cir.
1987). Here, every person acted with actual malice.
Sounds like in this case there is one side of the story backed up with evidence and testimony and another side backed up by unhinged lunatics with no proof, that desperately want to be correct.
What type of a legitimate "news" organization conducts itself as such? Oh, when the lead personalities own stock and are paid in stock options as part of their compensation packages. Yea, no reason there to lie to your audience. Ratings, stock value decline, you know, motive. And you have to love all the case law references to back their allegations. Pages 87-91.
V. Fox Acted with Actual Malice.
Over and over again—as the Introduction and Factual Background
demonstrate—Fox witnesses have admitted in their own words they knew the
allegations about Dominion were “false” or “crazy” or “reckless” or “nuts” or “bs.”
Yet Fox continued to broadcast them. Repeatedly. Over nearly three months.
Actual malice exists when a statement is made with “knowledge that it was
false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Palin, 940 F.3d at
809 (internal quotation marks omitted). Of course, a plaintiff can prove actual malice “through the defendant’s own actions or statements.” Celle, 209 F.3d at 183
(internal alterations and quotation marks omitted). “The subjective determination of
whether [the defendant] in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of the
statement may be proved by inference, as it would be rare for a defendant to admit
such doubts.” Solano, 292 F.3d at 1085 (quoting Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union,
692 F.2d 189, 196 (1st Cir. 1982); see also Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 170
(1979) (noting that “plaintiffs will rarely be successful in proving awareness of
falsehood from the mouth of the defendant himself” in the context of allowing
plaintiffs to explore circumstantial evidence of knowledge of falsity). This is the
rare case where such direct evidence exists.
A plaintiff also can prove actual malice through circumstantial evidence,
rather than “from the mouth of the defendant,” because defendants “are prone to
assert their good-faith belief in the truth of their publications.” Lando, 441 U.S. at
170. Circumstantial evidence of actual malice comes in many forms. Categories of
such evidence include evidence that the defendant: (1) relied on inherently
improbable or obviously unreliable sources, see St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S.
727, 732 (1968); Zuckerbrot v. Lande, 167 N.Y.S.3d 313, 335-336 (N.Y. Sup. Ct.
2022); (2) possessed a financial motive to lie about the plaintiff, see Harte-Hanks
Communications, Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657, 668 (1989); Gilmore v. Jones,
2021 WL 68684, at *8 (W.D. Va. Jan. 8, 2021); (2) relied on inherently improbable or obviously unreliable sources, see St. Amant, 390 U.S. at 732; Zuckerbrot v. Lande,
167 N.Y.S.3d 313, 335-336 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2022); (3) departed from journalistic
standards, see Harte-Hanks, 491 U.S. at 667-68; Eramo v. Rolling Stone, LLC, 209
F. Supp. 3d 862, 872 (W.D. Va. 2016); (4) conceived of the false narrative before
publication, see Palin, 940 F.3d at 813; Harris v. City of Seattle, 152 F. App’x 565,
568 (9th Cir. 2005) (unpublished); and (5) refused to retract, and continued to repeat,
statements that had been proven false, see Nunes v. Lizza, 12 F.4th 890, 900-901 (8th
Cir. 2021); Zerangue v. TSP Newspapers, Inc., 814 F.2d 1066, 1071-1072 (5th Cir.
1987). See generally Restatement (Second) of Torts §580A cmt. (d). No one factor
need be conclusive, and actual malice can be demonstrated by the “accumulation”
of circumstantial evidence. Celle, 209 F.3d at 183; see Stern v. Cosby, 645 F. Supp.
2d 258, 278 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).
An organizational defendant, just like any other, is subject to liability when it
acts with actual malice. Because an organization necessarily acts through
individuals, in such cases, “the state of mind required for actual malice” must “be
brought home to the persons in the [defendant’s] organization having responsibility
for the publication.” Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 287. This requirement, which stems from
Sullivan itself, prevents the imposition of liability against a corporate entity solely
because some person, somewhere within a vast media organization, possesses
knowledge that contradicts the defamatory allegations. Id. (concluding that the “mere presence” of news stories in the Times’ files that contradicted details in the
accused advertisement did not establish actual malice, as no individual responsible
for the advertisement copy would have had knowledge of the prior news stories).
But so long as actual malice is brought home to “at least” one individual who is
responsible for the publication of the defamatory statement, the actual malice
requirement is satisfied. Page v. Oath Inc., 270 A.3d 833, 850 (Del. 2022); see also
Solano, 292 F.3d at 1086 (editorial staff members’ concerns about defamatory
statements satisfied actual malice even if staffers were not “the final decisionmakers
as to the content”).
As discussed extensively in the Introduction and Factual Background, supra,
this case is the rare defamation case with extensive direct evidence of actual malice.
The very fact that Fox understood it had to “thread the needle” of appeasing viewers
on the one hand, and not spreading election fraud conspiracy theories on the other,
demonstrates that Fox knew these claims about Dominion were false. Ex.252.(Three lines redacted). Ex.330. Fox’s many, many
other documents and testimony all confirm the same.
Section A below establishes that Fox had the facts necessary to debunk the
accused statements about Dominion, from extensive public record sources and direct communications from Dominion pointing to that evidence, and Fox either
knowingly or recklessly disregarded those facts.
Section Bexplains how individuals throughout Fox’s organization knew the
statements were false, illustrating at minimum the reckless disregard of their
colleagues who nevertheless broadcast those lies. Together, parts A and B
sufficiently establish Fox’s actual malice; but the evidence does not stop there.
Section C discusses the executives responsible for the accused programs’
knowledge or reckless disregard of the truth, and Section D walks through the team
of hosts and producers, as well as the aforementioned executives, responsible for
each program and highlights additional evidence—on top of what has already been
set forth in the Factual Background above and Sections A and B below—
demonstrating they likewise knew or recklessly disregarded the truth.
Though unnecessary in light of the overwhelming evidence in Sections A
and B, plus the additional evidence in Sections C and D, Section E provides
circumstantial evidence further underscoring Fox’s actual malice.
Actual malice requires knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard by any one
of the people sharing responsibility for a broadcast. Page, 270 A.3d at 850; Solano,
292 F.3d at 1086; Speer v. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., 828 F.2d 475, 477 (8th Cir.
1987). Here, every person acted with actual malice.
Sounds like in this case there is one side of the story backed up with evidence and testimony and another side backed up by unhinged lunatics with no proof, that desperately want to be correct.
Wow, imagine that? Pay particular attention to Footnote number 16 and the sentence it refers to. Also know that the section immediately following it has been redacted. Why is that? Ongoing criminal investigation or criminal/civil liability? Again, why anyone chooses this network to be "informed" is beyond me. Pages 127-128. Oh, and LSD, cocaine, heroin and shrooms, oh my!
c. November 16 Broadcast
On November 16, Powell returned to Dobbs’ program and repeated the same
falsehoods about the creation of Dominion’s software, claiming that a “high-ranking
military officer” was present when the software was designed to “change the vote of
each voter without being detected.” Ex.8 at DOM_0071654722. When Dobbs
prompted her about the relationship, she cut him off and said “Smartmatic owns
Dominion,”16 to which he replied “yes.” Id. at DOM_0071654724. See ¶179(h);
Appendix D (fraud, algorithm, and Venezuela lies).
Earlier that very same day, Field and Hooper had received an email from Fox
colleague Eric Schaeffer with the subject line “AP ON WHO OWNS DOMINION,”
linking to an AP article debunking ownership claims about Dominion and citing in
the body of the email Dominion’s CEO John Poulos’s Congressional testimony that
an American private equity firm majority-owns Dominion, and Poulos (a Canadian) owns 12%. Ex.439.
16
The produced transcripts omit this statement in the exchange between Dobbs and
Powell. However, one can hear it clearly made in the video (as noted in Appendix
D). Ex.27 at 04:20-4:24.
Fawcett likewise had reason to doubt Powell’s
credibility, texting others at Fox prior to the November 16 broadcast that he believed
Powell was “doing lsd and cocaine and heroin and shrooms.” Ex.442. But none of
Dobbs’ producers prevented Powell from spouting the lies on air that evening, or
corrected her claims in the rebroadcast.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Illustration by Franziska Barczyk; Source photograph courtesy Katherine Abughazaleh
On a recent episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a prime-time show on Fox News, Tucker Carlson introduced his first guest, Mark McCloskey, at the end of a long segment on how “self-defense is becoming illegal” in America. McCloskey and his wife, Patricia, were the St. Louis couple made briefly and ignominiously famous for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their Midwestern palazzo. “So they’re racist,” Carlson said, with a squeaky, cartoonish emphasis.
“There’s that stupid voice,” Kat Abughazaleh, a twenty-three-year-old senior video producer for the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, said. She and I were watching Carlson’s show in side-by-side cubicles at her organization’s offices, in Washington, D.C. Abughazaleh, a pair of sunglasses perched on her head and a vape pen always within reach, was flagging moments from the episode to post online. One clip, of Carlson declaring that “the F.B.I., as an organization, has joined in the hunt for Christians,” went immediately to Twitter. “I was so excited to hear that hilarious Christian line—it was so good,” she told me during a commercial break. Another clip, an interview with the “pro-life Spider-Man”—a baby-faced young man who climbs buildings without ropes to protest abortion—was saved for an end-of-week roundup. (“Abortion is just like climbing a skyscraper,” the pro-life Spider-Man had said. “It’s a matter of life or death.”) Abughazaleh films her roundups on Fridays and posts them to TikTok, where she’s building a following. Her most popular video, which includes a clip of a Fox News host comparing Washington, D.C., to Somalia, has just under a million views.
“I watch Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to,” the bio spaces of her social-media accounts read. Abughazaleh has been professionally watching Carlson, who has around three million viewers a night, for nearly two years. “You don’t know Fox News until you are watching it for a job,” she said. “You see all these patterns emerge.” The Fox universe is a place with a different “news” sense than most of the country, she said—narratives about I.R.S. armies, food shortages, race wars, and predatory trans activists—but its niche story lines are likely predictive of what we’ll be talking about over the next two long campaign years. Though, in Abughazaleh’s view, Carlson has floundered a bit since the midterms. “I think he’s still kind of lost right now,” she said. “He’s not really sure what direction to take it.”
Others members of the Media Matters team who watch Fox’s prime-time lineup seemed to agree. “He’s pro-smoking all of a sudden,” Andrew Lawrence, the deputy director of rapid response, said. Even serious topics often come with a gimmick attached. A recent theme on Carlson’s show is food shortages supposedly caused by the war in Ukraine; Tiara Soleim, a.k.a. the Chicken Lady, a throaty-voiced blonde who was once a contestant on “The Bachelor,” has come on to talk about it. On a recent show, Carlson spent a segment dissecting a kiss hello between Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff at the State of the Union; the accompanying graphic read “Wife Swap.” Carlson’s show, aside from the opening monologue, is manically paced, and guests often have trouble getting a word in edgewise. This, paired with Carlson’s elastic face and goofy voices, can lend the hour a carnival feel. But the show’s rhetoric is muscular and alarmist. On the episode I watched with Abughazaleh, the conservative media pundit Matt Walsh was a guest, talking about his anti-trans testimony before the Tennessee state legislature. “He’s in favor of cutting the breasts off girls?” Carlson said, of one legislator. “I mean, how could anybody get to a place where that’s O.K.?”
To Abughazaleh, the often-ludicrous quality of Carlson’s show is exactly what makes it so dangerous. “People need to know that the scary things are stupid as well,” she said. “They either go all in on ‘Oh, my God, this is so funny’ and ‘Fox News is technically entertainment,’ or they go all in on ‘This is so scary, blah blah blah.’ It’s both things. Two things can be true at once.” At the same time, perhaps because she follows him so closely, Abughazaleh is skeptical of the conventional wisdom that Carlson is one of the most powerful people in the United States. She and the other Media Matters researchers all seemed convinced that it was more the 8 p.m. Fox time slot that bestowed power. For millions of viewers, “it’s just a Pavlovian response to put on Fox News at eight o’clock,” Lawrence said. “Tucker needs the eight-o’clock hour on Fox News way more than Fox News needs Tucker.”
Fox News has been the country’s most watched cable channel for twenty-one years. That impressive streak belies how few Americans actually watch it—the network averaged 1.49 million viewers a night in 2022—but it remains something of a thought leader for the conservative movement. The network, its producers, and opinion hosts are adept at sussing out which culture-war wedge issues will keep viewers tuning in. Those viewers seem to represent the G.O.P.’s primary voter base—often older, more dedicated partisans—that has propelled increasingly extreme candidates into the mainstream over the past two decades. The network’s stars, such as Carlson, are savvy operators, eager to keep ratings up, even if what they’re peddling is patently false.
A new legal filing in the Dominion Voting Systems $1.6-billion defamation suit against Fox includes text and e-mail messages from a range of Fox stars, including Carlson, showing that they privately disbelieved Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election, even while they put those messages on the air in an effort to keep Trump’s dedicated followers tuning in. Part of the utility of watching and documenting Fox News’ lies in 2023—when most of the country is familiar with the network’s schtick—the Media Matters team said, was to provide a paper trail of hard evidence. The organization’s work, they pointed out, was cited not just in the Dominion complaint but in the Sandy Hook families’ lawsuit against Alex Jones and in various legislative hearings.
Abughazaleh is a seventh-generation native of Dallas on her mother’s side—her grandmother was a G.O.P. political operative who gave the coat she wore to Richard Nixon’s Inauguration to Abughazaleh—and more native to Fox News than her followers might expect. The network was an ever-present background noise while growing up, and Abughazaleh was a Republican through high school. But her college years, at George Washington University, were dominated by the Trump Administration. She graduated, in 2020, both disgusted and fascinated by politics. “There was a lot of really icky stuff going on,” she said. “So I was looking for more progressive jobs.”
Abughazaleh has become something of a figure of intrigue for portions of Carlson’s audience. She told me that one of the show’s producers, Gregg Re, occasionally replies to her tweets. In January, Phil Labonte, a right-wing influencer, posted a screenshot of Abughazaleh’s Tinder profile in a tweet: “I haven’t even gotten the key to my apartment yet and tinder is already tryin to hook me up with the Media Matters Tucker Carlson explainer girl.” Abughazaleh later made a visual of the demeaning, sexually explicit comments that the tweet elicited and posted it to her feed: “POV: You’re a 23-year-old woman who researches right-wing extremism and a 47-year-old conservative commentator posts your dating profile on Twitter.” In the following weeks, Abughazaleh told me, her Twitter following grew from around fifty thousand followers to more than a hundred thousand.
“I decided that I’m just sick of ignoring some of the weird shit people say about me, and I’m going to call it out whenever horny old men try to embarrass me or make me feel creeped out,” she said. Abughazalah is blond and telegenic—exactly the sort of woman that her conservative Twitter haters might be used to seeing when they tune in to cable news. Her YouTube audience is seventy-five-per-cent male, Abughazaleh told me, and on TikTok it’s sixty-five per cent. It’s not so much that Abughazaleh is seeking male attention; it’s more that she’s using herself as live bait—a way to point out misogyny and sexism in real time, or to simply tweak the conservatives who hate-follow her. In November of last year, she briefly joined the conservative-dating Web site the Right Stuff and tweeted about her experience. She wrote at the time, “The dms were very boring which just confirms the belief that conservative guys have no game.”
If it is a live-bait gambit, it also seems like a slightly risky one. When I asked John Whitehouse, Media Matters’ news director, how he handles threats to staff safety, he declined to get into specifics. For her part, Abughazaleh has sought advice about dealing with trolls from the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, another woman who has attracted the ire of many on the right, including Carlson. “He hasn’t talked about me yet,” Abughazaleh said, of the Fox News host. “There’s so much stuff you could pick on me for. Like, literally any picture on my Instagram.”
The glee Abughazaleh takes from needling—and being needled—is perhaps indicative of the sort of progressive who would voluntarily immerse herself in Fox News’ world. “I think it takes a certain type of personality to do this job,” Alicia Sadowski, Media Matters’ research manager, said. “A lot of times, it can be taxing, it can be consuming, in a sense that you’re living in a reality that the people around you are not.” The researchers talked about the need to both compartmentalize the part of their lives spent with Fox News and hold on to their feelings of outrage at the network. “The anger propels you,” Abughazaleh said. “I feel like I’m doing something in a world where it’s so easy to feel like you’re not doing anything.” ♦
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
These are testimonies during the deposition phase and as filed in Dominion’s request for a summary judgement. Having read the whole document filing, me thinks Faux is fucked if this goes to trial. The case that Dominion makes is a strong one but as one of our Gateway Punditeers put it, “there’s two sides to every story.”
The NY case law cited and the documentary evidence provided is overwhelming, IMHO. These people act like facts don’t exist.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I hope this case results in Fox rethinking their model and gives warning to Newsmax, OAN, etc.
i would have thought with all of the 10s of millions fox has had to pay out to settle sexual harassment claims that they would not have money set aside to pay out other judgements like this one. what is this one, 2 billion or something?
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I'm surprised at Tucker's stance on the J6 footage given all the fucking trouble that network is in. Doesn't make sense.
He knows his audience! What can happen to him?
Yeah...we all knew Bill Barr was being dishonest in his response to the Mueller report but to the entire crowd it was just "exoneration.'
Why would this be any different?
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After hearing about Tucker's show on 1/6, I watched some of it last night. I'm not going to say they were all peaceful or just tourists. But can we agree that it was completely weird how the police were leading the shaman guy around and opening doors for him? Even if they had to search through 40,000 hours of footage to find 5 minutes of that, that was really strange.
After hearing about Tucker's show on 1/6, I watched some of it last night. I'm not going to say they were all peaceful or just tourists. But can we agree that it was completely weird how the police were leading the shaman guy around and opening doors for him? Even if they had to search through 40,000 hours of footage to find 5 minutes of that, that was really strange.
After hearing about Tucker's show on 1/6, I watched some of it last night. I'm not going to say they were all peaceful or just tourists. But can we agree that it was completely weird how the police were leading the shaman guy around and opening doors for him? Even if they had to search through 40,000 hours of footage to find 5 minutes of that, that was really strange.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
c. November 16 Broadcast
On November 16, Powell returned to Dobbs’ program and repeated the same falsehoods about the creation of Dominion’s software, claiming that a “high-ranking military officer” was present when the software was designed to “change the vote of each voter without being detected.” Ex.8 at DOM_0071654722. When Dobbs prompted her about the relationship, she cut him off and said “Smartmatic owns Dominion,”16 to which he replied “yes.” Id. at DOM_0071654724. See ¶179(h); Appendix D (fraud, algorithm, and Venezuela lies).
Earlier that very same day, Field and Hooper had received an email from Fox colleague Eric Schaeffer with the subject line “AP ON WHO OWNS DOMINION,” linking to an AP article debunking ownership claims about Dominion and citing in the body of the email Dominion’s CEO John Poulos’s Congressional testimony that an American private equity firm majority-owns Dominion, and Poulos (a Canadian) owns 12%. Ex.439.
16 The produced transcripts omit this statement in the exchange between Dobbs and Powell. However, one can hear it clearly made in the video (as noted in Appendix D). Ex.27 at 04:20-4:24.
Fawcett likewise had reason to doubt Powell’s credibility, texting others at Fox prior to the November 16 broadcast that he believed Powell was “doing lsd and cocaine and heroin and shrooms.” Ex.442. But none of Dobbs’ producers prevented Powell from spouting the lies on air that evening, or corrected her claims in the rebroadcast.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/watching-tucker-carlson-for-work
On a recent episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a prime-time show on Fox News, Tucker Carlson introduced his first guest, Mark McCloskey, at the end of a long segment on how “self-defense is becoming illegal” in America. McCloskey and his wife, Patricia, were the St. Louis couple made briefly and ignominiously famous for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their Midwestern palazzo. “So they’re racist,” Carlson said, with a squeaky, cartoonish emphasis.
“There’s that stupid voice,” Kat Abughazaleh, a twenty-three-year-old senior video producer for the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, said. She and I were watching Carlson’s show in side-by-side cubicles at her organization’s offices, in Washington, D.C. Abughazaleh, a pair of sunglasses perched on her head and a vape pen always within reach, was flagging moments from the episode to post online. One clip, of Carlson declaring that “the F.B.I., as an organization, has joined in the hunt for Christians,” went immediately to Twitter. “I was so excited to hear that hilarious Christian line—it was so good,” she told me during a commercial break. Another clip, an interview with the “pro-life Spider-Man”—a baby-faced young man who climbs buildings without ropes to protest abortion—was saved for an end-of-week roundup. (“Abortion is just like climbing a skyscraper,” the pro-life Spider-Man had said. “It’s a matter of life or death.”) Abughazaleh films her roundups on Fridays and posts them to TikTok, where she’s building a following. Her most popular video, which includes a clip of a Fox News host comparing Washington, D.C., to Somalia, has just under a million views.
“I watch Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to,” the bio spaces of her social-media accounts read. Abughazaleh has been professionally watching Carlson, who has around three million viewers a night, for nearly two years. “You don’t know Fox News until you are watching it for a job,” she said. “You see all these patterns emerge.” The Fox universe is a place with a different “news” sense than most of the country, she said—narratives about I.R.S. armies, food shortages, race wars, and predatory trans activists—but its niche story lines are likely predictive of what we’ll be talking about over the next two long campaign years. Though, in Abughazaleh’s view, Carlson has floundered a bit since the midterms. “I think he’s still kind of lost right now,” she said. “He’s not really sure what direction to take it.”
Others members of the Media Matters team who watch Fox’s prime-time lineup seemed to agree. “He’s pro-smoking all of a sudden,” Andrew Lawrence, the deputy director of rapid response, said. Even serious topics often come with a gimmick attached. A recent theme on Carlson’s show is food shortages supposedly caused by the war in Ukraine; Tiara Soleim, a.k.a. the Chicken Lady, a throaty-voiced blonde who was once a contestant on “The Bachelor,” has come on to talk about it. On a recent show, Carlson spent a segment dissecting a kiss hello between Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff at the State of the Union; the accompanying graphic read “Wife Swap.” Carlson’s show, aside from the opening monologue, is manically paced, and guests often have trouble getting a word in edgewise. This, paired with Carlson’s elastic face and goofy voices, can lend the hour a carnival feel. But the show’s rhetoric is muscular and alarmist. On the episode I watched with Abughazaleh, the conservative media pundit Matt Walsh was a guest, talking about his anti-trans testimony before the Tennessee state legislature. “He’s in favor of cutting the breasts off girls?” Carlson said, of one legislator. “I mean, how could anybody get to a place where that’s O.K.?”
To Abughazaleh, the often-ludicrous quality of Carlson’s show is exactly what makes it so dangerous. “People need to know that the scary things are stupid as well,” she said. “They either go all in on ‘Oh, my God, this is so funny’ and ‘Fox News is technically entertainment,’ or they go all in on ‘This is so scary, blah blah blah.’ It’s both things. Two things can be true at once.” At the same time, perhaps because she follows him so closely, Abughazaleh is skeptical of the conventional wisdom that Carlson is one of the most powerful people in the United States. She and the other Media Matters researchers all seemed convinced that it was more the 8 p.m. Fox time slot that bestowed power. For millions of viewers, “it’s just a Pavlovian response to put on Fox News at eight o’clock,” Lawrence said. “Tucker needs the eight-o’clock hour on Fox News way more than Fox News needs Tucker.”
Fox News has been the country’s most watched cable channel for twenty-one years. That impressive streak belies how few Americans actually watch it—the network averaged 1.49 million viewers a night in 2022—but it remains something of a thought leader for the conservative movement. The network, its producers, and opinion hosts are adept at sussing out which culture-war wedge issues will keep viewers tuning in. Those viewers seem to represent the G.O.P.’s primary voter base—often older, more dedicated partisans—that has propelled increasingly extreme candidates into the mainstream over the past two decades. The network’s stars, such as Carlson, are savvy operators, eager to keep ratings up, even if what they’re peddling is patently false.
A new legal filing in the Dominion Voting Systems $1.6-billion defamation suit against Fox includes text and e-mail messages from a range of Fox stars, including Carlson, showing that they privately disbelieved Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election, even while they put those messages on the air in an effort to keep Trump’s dedicated followers tuning in. Part of the utility of watching and documenting Fox News’ lies in 2023—when most of the country is familiar with the network’s schtick—the Media Matters team said, was to provide a paper trail of hard evidence. The organization’s work, they pointed out, was cited not just in the Dominion complaint but in the Sandy Hook families’ lawsuit against Alex Jones and in various legislative hearings.
Abughazaleh is a seventh-generation native of Dallas on her mother’s side—her grandmother was a G.O.P. political operative who gave the coat she wore to Richard Nixon’s Inauguration to Abughazaleh—and more native to Fox News than her followers might expect. The network was an ever-present background noise while growing up, and Abughazaleh was a Republican through high school. But her college years, at George Washington University, were dominated by the Trump Administration. She graduated, in 2020, both disgusted and fascinated by politics. “There was a lot of really icky stuff going on,” she said. “So I was looking for more progressive jobs.”
Abughazaleh has become something of a figure of intrigue for portions of Carlson’s audience. She told me that one of the show’s producers, Gregg Re, occasionally replies to her tweets. In January, Phil Labonte, a right-wing influencer, posted a screenshot of Abughazaleh’s Tinder profile in a tweet: “I haven’t even gotten the key to my apartment yet and tinder is already tryin to hook me up with the Media Matters Tucker Carlson explainer girl.” Abughazaleh later made a visual of the demeaning, sexually explicit comments that the tweet elicited and posted it to her feed: “POV: You’re a 23-year-old woman who researches right-wing extremism and a 47-year-old conservative commentator posts your dating profile on Twitter.” In the following weeks, Abughazaleh told me, her Twitter following grew from around fifty thousand followers to more than a hundred thousand.
“I decided that I’m just sick of ignoring some of the weird shit people say about me, and I’m going to call it out whenever horny old men try to embarrass me or make me feel creeped out,” she said. Abughazalah is blond and telegenic—exactly the sort of woman that her conservative Twitter haters might be used to seeing when they tune in to cable news. Her YouTube audience is seventy-five-per-cent male, Abughazaleh told me, and on TikTok it’s sixty-five per cent. It’s not so much that Abughazaleh is seeking male attention; it’s more that she’s using herself as live bait—a way to point out misogyny and sexism in real time, or to simply tweak the conservatives who hate-follow her. In November of last year, she briefly joined the conservative-dating Web site the Right Stuff and tweeted about her experience. She wrote at the time, “The dms were very boring which just confirms the belief that conservative guys have no game.”
If it is a live-bait gambit, it also seems like a slightly risky one. When I asked John Whitehouse, Media Matters’ news director, how he handles threats to staff safety, he declined to get into specifics. For her part, Abughazaleh has sought advice about dealing with trolls from the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, another woman who has attracted the ire of many on the right, including Carlson. “He hasn’t talked about me yet,” Abughazaleh said, of the Fox News host. “There’s so much stuff you could pick on me for. Like, literally any picture on my Instagram.”
The glee Abughazaleh takes from needling—and being needled—is perhaps indicative of the sort of progressive who would voluntarily immerse herself in Fox News’ world. “I think it takes a certain type of personality to do this job,” Alicia Sadowski, Media Matters’ research manager, said. “A lot of times, it can be taxing, it can be consuming, in a sense that you’re living in a reality that the people around you are not.” The researchers talked about the need to both compartmentalize the part of their lives spent with Fox News and hold on to their feelings of outrage at the network. “The anger propels you,” Abughazaleh said. “I feel like I’m doing something in a world where it’s so easy to feel like you’re not doing anything.” ♦
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Rupert just put a nail in the coffin I think...
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
The NY case law cited and the documentary evidence provided is overwhelming, IMHO. These people act like facts don’t exist.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Good thread....
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Why would this be any different?
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
I'm not going to say they were all peaceful or just tourists.
But can we agree that it was completely weird how the police were leading the shaman guy around and opening doors for him? Even if they had to search through 40,000 hours of footage to find 5 minutes of that, that was really strange.
google interviews with capitol police officers.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14