Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News may change the way news networks are held accountable for what they report. Fox famously claimed that the election technology company helped rig the 2020 presidential election, which was untrue. However, that’s not the only falsehood the network promoted. Here is a roundup of its most heinous lies.
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who hosts the show Tucker Carlson Tonight, has pushed the heinous notion of “great replacement” theory for years. It states that white people are in danger of becoming a minority in the US due to immigration policies and social movements. This racist rhetoric was connected to the motive behind the violent Buffalo massacre that target Black people last year.
In 2020, Fox News was under scrutiny for saying the response to coronavirus was nothing more than unwarranted hysteria. It also emphasized the death toll of the seasonal flu, which essentially deceived their audience into thinking that the coronavirus was receiving more attention because it was new, while the flu in fact kills more Americans and was more cause for panic. “If you are over the mass hysteria, if you’re over politicizing and weaponizing of the coronavirus, you are not alone,” Fox host Sean Hannity had stated. The network also used covid as an opportunity to discuss the disease’s origins in a racist way.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson couldn’t help himself when he said that the 2020 police brutality protests were “definitely not about Black lives.” He didn’t stop there as he added: “Remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will. Anyone who has ever been subjected to the rage of the mob knows the feeling. It’s like being swarmed by hornets.” The backlash Carlson faced was imminent.
The reason Dominion Voting Systems’ is currently suing Fox News is for saying that the election technology company helped rig the 2020 presidential election (a claim that Donald Trump notoriously asserted). Recently, Rupert Murdoch’s testimony was made public as part of the lawsuit. The chairman of Fox News’s parent company admitted in a deposition that “some of our commentators were endorsing” the lie that the election was stolen.
Last year, Tucker Carlson went on a tirade on how the hiring rules have become altered under the Biden administration and that Karine Jean-Pierre, like Kamala Harris and Ketanji Brown Jackson, was picked for the role of White because she satisfies a Democratic diversity quota—and nothing else. “It’s really simple. Show us your picture, and we’ll tell you if you’re qualified for the job,” he stated.
In 2019, Laura Ingraham—host of Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle”— rallied behind white supremacists who she believed were unfairly censored on social media. This included the likes of Alex Jones, Candace Owens and Milo Yiannopoulos. Although hate should always be de-platformed, Fox rallied behind Ingraham. “Anyone who watches Laura’s show knows that she is a fierce protector of freedom of speech,” the network said.
A lot of ridiculous things have come out of Megyn Kelly’s mouth—she notoriously defended blackface after all. Back in 2013 during her show “The Kelly File,” she declared that Jesus is white. “I just want the kids watching to know that,” she said. “How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy, of the story, and change Santa from white to Black?” Even though evidence has shown that Jesus was born in Palestine, racism always defines logic.
Shortly before he was fired by Fox News in 2017, Bill O’Reilly spent years saying that racism is not a real problem in America and that if it is, it’s white folks who suffer. During his “Talking Points Commentary” in 2016, O’Reilly said that “the left in America is demanding that the Electoral College system put into place in 1787 be scrapped” since “the left wants power taken away from the white establishment.” He also said that the biggest desire for Democrats is that “white working-class voters [becoming] marginalized.”
In 2016, Michelle Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in which she talked about the progress American society had made by referring to the fact that the White House was built by slaves. In response, the opportunistic racist that O’Reilly is couldn’t help but say that those same slaves “were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.” In addition, he said that “Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House” but “there were others working as well.”
In 2022 during a broadcast, Fox News host Harris Faulkner told viewers that migrants at the southern border “make our country look like what they left” and “our people” are now forced to clean up their “excrement.” “The Faulkner Focus” often mimics the views of Tucker Carlson, pushing the horribly racist ideology that immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier.”
Fox host Jesse Watters has always used his platform to promote racist stereotypes of Asian people. In 2016, he did a series of mocking interviews in New York’s Chinatown. It was so horrible that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the segment. Two years later, Watters used his show to make jokes about a New York Times editorial board hire, Sarah Jeong. Watters later apologized.
In 2019 during his impeachment trial, Donald Trump tweeted: “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here—a lynching. But we will WIN!” Of course, Fox News couldn’t wait to side with the delusional former president. Host Lisa Boothe agreed with the statement, saying: “I think the context and the point that President Trump was trying to make is that this is a terribly unfair process. Objectively, it is. I mean, you have Democrats holding this impeachment inquiry in secret, selectively leaking certain information.” The network always manages to grossly outdo themselves whenever it gets the chance.