The American media landscape underwent a profound transformation this past April when Fox News agreed to a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. This financial agreement concluded a defamation lawsuit that had loomed over the network, centered on allegations that Fox personalities repeatedly aired discredited election-fraud claims regarding Dominion’s voting machines in the 2020 election. To establish that Fox News hosts knowingly propagated falsehoods, extensive internal texts and emails were subpoenaed, revealing a striking contrast between the network’s public messaging and the private concerns of its leading figures.
Shortly after the settlement, the media industry was shaken by the surprising departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. While no direct connection was officially confirmed, this event closely followed the disclosures emerging from the Dominion case. The internal communications, covering the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, provide unprecedented insight into the perspectives of Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Rupert Murdoch. These documents expose their critical assessments of Fox management, personal views on election fraud, and calculated apprehensions about the network’s audience and business model. Collectively, they reveal internal turmoil, strategic calculations, and deep anxieties within a major media entity confronting a significant crisis of identity and viewer loyalty.
Central to the initial upheaval was Fox News’s decision to call Arizona for President Biden on November 4, 2020—before any other major network. Although this call was factually accurate, it triggered a politically charged backlash among the network’s conservative viewers. Text messages reveal immediate panic among top hosts who anticipated severe repercussions for both their audience and the network’s business interests.
Tucker Carlson, in a text exchange with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on November 4, immediately expressed concern that the network was “getting hammered” due to the Arizona call. Scott, seeking to reassure him, responded that Fox needed to “let the data folks defend their decision.” Despite this, Carlson’s apprehension deepened, as he told Bret Baier, “I continue to think the company isn’t taking this seriously enough. We need to do something to reassure our core audience. They’re our whole business model.”
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott herself acknowledged the commercial repercussions of the decision. In a Zoom meeting on November 16, she stated, “If we hadn’t called Arizona during those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been higher.” She remarked that “The mystery would have been still hanging out there,” indicating a clear understanding that prolonging uncertainty could have benefited viewership despite the factual accuracy of the call.
The Arizona call created a tangible division within Fox News, causing prime-time hosts to feel alienated and betrayed by their own news division. This internal discord escalated into sharp accusations, revealing a deeply fractured corporate atmosphere. The anger extended beyond a disputed electoral call to a sense of abandonment toward their core audience.
In a group text conversation on November 16, just weeks after the election, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson expressed profound disillusionment. Ingraham bluntly stated, “We are officially working for an organization that hates us.” Hannity, echoing the sentiment, questioned, “Why would anyone defend that call?” Carlson added, with distinct frustration, “My anger at the news channel is pronounced,” lamenting, “We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland Vittert wreck it.”
This internal critique extended to the network’s bookings strategy. Suzanne Scott advised Fox News president Jay Wallace to be “careful about bookings next 2 months – especially in news hours,” noting that “Audiences don’t want to see too much of the Mayor Pete’s and Coons etc in the news hours.” This directive underscored a conscious effort to align content with audience preferences, even if it meant limiting diverse perspectives.
Amidst the internal turmoil, a profound concern for ratings and audience loyalty emerged as a dominant theme. The unsealed messages reveal a network grappling with an “existential crisis” of its own making, where the pursuit of viewership collided directly with journalistic integrity. The hosts, acutely aware of their influence, saw themselves as the bulwark against further audience erosion.
Laura Ingraham, reflecting on her collective influence with Carlson and Hannity, asserted, “I think the three of us have enormous power. We have more power than we know or exercise.” This statement highlights a perceived capability to steer the network’s direction, particularly in placating an agitated audience. Carlson’s suggestion to Bret Baier to interview Fox News Decision Desk Director Arnon Mishkin on his show was a clear attempt to “help calm our viewers down” and mitigate the damage from the Arizona call.
Raj Shah, Fox Corporation senior vice-president, conveyed the gravity of the situation in an internal message, sharing a survey that showed the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” He clarified, “We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network,” indicating that the true competitive threat came from more aggressively pro-Trump outlets. In a memo to Lachlan Murdoch on November 13, he warned of “a brand crisis” and “open revolt,” emphasizing that the “precipitous decline in Fox’s favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”
Perhaps the most striking revelations from the Dominion lawsuit documents involve the private skepticism—and at times outright derision—expressed by Fox News’s leading figures toward the election fraud claims repeatedly broadcast on the network. These private communications sharply contrast with their public personas, revealing a deliberate choice to amplify narratives they internally regarded as baseless.
Tucker Carlson, despite publicly questioning election integrity, privately conveyed profound frustration with the key proponents of these theories. On November 4, he texted a colleague acknowledging “no doubt there was fraud,” but quickly added, “But at this point, Trump and Lin and Powell have so discredited their own case, and the rest of us to some extent, that it’s infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.” On November 9, he dismissed Sidney Powell’s software claims as “absurd,” though he stated on television that evening, “We don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don’t know. We ought to find out.”
Carlson’s disdain for Powell intensified significantly. Around November 16, he texted a producer that “Sidney Powell is lying” and described her as an “unguided missile,” “dangerous as hell,” and a “crazy person.” On November 18, he told Laura Ingraham, “Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”
Sean Hannity, in a deposition, confirmed his skepticism, stating, “That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” and privately referred to Powell as a “lunatic.” Laura Ingraham agreed, noting, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Even Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox Corporation, harbored deep misgivings about the election fraud narratives. On November 19, the day of Rudy Giuliani’s infamous press conference where hair dye ran down his face, Murdoch wrote to a friend, characterizing Giuliani’s performance as “stupid and damaging.” He described Giuliani as “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad.” Raj Shah, Fox Corporation senior vice-president, reacted with similar disbelief, texting during the press conference, “This sounds completely crazy, by the way,” and after a Fox News reporter cast doubt on Giuliani’s claims on air, Shah remarked, “This is the kind of coverage that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we undermine it with all the skepticism.”
The internal communications also reveal a complex and evolving relationship between Fox News figures and then-President Donald Trump. While publicly many hosts maintained a supportive stance, their private messages disclose profound disillusionment, and in Carlson’s case, outright hostility. This dynamic posed a significant challenge for the network, which relied heavily on a pro-Trump audience while its key personalities privately grew weary of his actions.
On January 4, 2021, just two days before the Capitol riot, Tucker Carlson’s frustration with Trump reached a peak. He texted a producer, “I hate him passionately. … I can’t handle much more of this.” Reflecting on Trump’s presidency, he added, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.” He further expressed, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
Rupert Murdoch also grappled with Trump’s post-election conduct. On Biden’s Inauguration Day, he emailed reflecting on McConnell’s remarks, concluding, “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25 percent of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan. 6th.” Murdoch advised, “Best we don’t mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him.” On January 12, he even speculated that Trump’s business was “ruined” and his brand “poison” following the January 6th riot.
Maria Bartiromo, however, remained steadfast in refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory. A week after the election, she texted Steve Bannon, “I want to see massive fraud exposed,” and confirmed she had instructed her team not to refer to Biden as “president-elect” on air or in scripts “until this moves through the courts.” Her producer, Abby Grossberg, reinforced this, texting Bartiromo that “Our audience doesn’t want to hear about a peaceful transition” and that Fox viewers “still have hope.”
The internal discourse at Fox News, as revealed by the Dominion documents, points to a profound journalistic dilemma. The pressure to maintain ratings among a conservative audience that felt “betrayed” by accurate election reporting led to a perceived compromise of journalistic standards, as lamented by veteran journalists within the organization. The imperative to satisfy audience expectations outweighed, for many, the commitment to objective reporting.
Bill Sammon, who oversaw the Fox News Decision Desk on Election Night and retired shortly after amid criticism, articulated the severity of the situation in a text to editor Chris Stirewalt. On December 2, 2020, a month after the election, Sammon observed, “More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud—a month after the election. It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.” He concluded, “In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis—at least journalistically.”
Chris Stirewalt, who was removed from his position in January 2021 due to his role in calling Arizona for Biden, echoed Sammon’s concerns. He remarked, “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.” This candid assessment underscores the internal tension between catering to an increasingly extreme segment of the audience and maintaining broader journalistic credibility.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott demonstrated a clear understanding of the audience’s emotional state, texting Lachlan Murdoch two days after the election that “Viewers [are] going through the five stages of grief.” She confirmed a strategy to “highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them,” signaling a deliberate effort to rebuild trust without necessarily correcting the underlying misinformation. However, this approach carried consequences, as revealed when Scott emailed a network vice-president in early December about anchor Eric Shawn’s fact-checking of Trump, stating, “This has to stop now. This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding of what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
The extensive cache of internal communications unveiled through the Dominion lawsuit offers more than a behind-the-scenes look at a major news organization; it exposes the intricate pressures and calculated decisions that shaped the post-2020 election media landscape. The private panic, assertions of internal disloyalty, and candid admissions of prioritizing ratings over rigorous fact-checking paint a complex portrait of a network in crisis, struggling to reconcile its journalistic mission with the demands of a fiercely loyal yet volatile audience.
These revelations raise profound questions about the nature of truth in media, the responsibilities of news organizations, and the delicate balance between commercial interests and journalistic integrity. The lawsuit and its fallout underscore Dominion’s assertion that Fox News “took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” suggesting that the widespread dissemination of known falsehoods caused tangible damage far beyond the immediate electoral context.
As the dust settles from the settlement and the unsealing of these documents, the media world and the public it serves are left to contemplate the implications. The raw, unfiltered sentiments of Fox News’s most powerful personalities serve as a potent reminder of the unseen forces shaping public discourse. It compels a reevaluation of how news is consumed, how trust is earned and lost, and the enduring challenge of distinguishing verifiable fact from politically expedient fiction in an increasingly fragmented information ecosystem. The path forward for media, and for an informed citizenry, demands a deeper commitment to transparency and an unwavering pursuit of objective reality, regardless of commercial or political currents.
