Democratic leaders in Congress are calling on Fox News to stop hosts from promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, demanding the outlet admit on live television that they “were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a letter to Fox News executives on Wednesday, accusing the network of publicly promoting conspiracy theories while privately conceding that former President Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election.
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“The leadership of your company was aware of the dangers of broadcasting these outlandish claims,” they wrote. “Despite that shocking admission, Fox News hosts have continued to peddle election denialism to the American people.”
The letter comes in response to testimony from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who told prosecutors he had the opportunity to stop network hosts from promoting false claims the 2020 election was rigged in favor of President Joe Biden — but he chose not to, according to court documents released on Monday.
Schumer and Jeffries decried Fox News for ignoring “basic journalistic principles,” pressing network executives to admit their wrongdoings publicly.
“We demand that you direct Tucker Carlson and other hosts on your network to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior,” they wrote.
It’s not clear whether Fox News executives will instruct their hosts to make such statements on the air, and the network has not responded to a request for comment by the Washington Examiner. When asked how Democratic leaders would respond if Fox refuses to comply with their demands, Jeffries said they would “cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Everyone seems to clearly understand that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election [and] that Donald Trump perpetrated a big lie to the American people that has had dangerous consequences, including a rise in political violence and insurrection,” Jeffries said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Perhaps it’s time to move past that big lie, and an important step would be for those who know it was a big lie to publicly repudiate it.”
The lawmakers underscored the importance of such an admission, especially as Carlson has been given exclusive access to surveillance footage documenting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has allowed Carlson’s crew to sift through more than 40,000 hours of camera footage taken from several angles on the Capitol grounds, prompting concerns among Democratic lawmakers.
“Sharing that footage is a grave mistake that risks emboldening the supporters of the big lie,” Schumer said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Fox News executives and hosts all have a choice — a very important choice. They can continue broadcasting lies about our elections and further erode trust in our democracy or they can admit their mistake, start telling the truth, and move beyond this shameful chapter in their company’s history by coming clean with their viewers and with the American people.”
Murdoch’s testimony was taken as part of a $1.6 million defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox in 2021 accusing the network of knowingly spreading false claims about its voting software. As part of its lawsuit, Dominion alleged that Fox News hosts continue to promote theories of voter fraud to increase ratings despite internal knowledge they were false.
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Fox has pushed back on those allegations, arguing its hosts covered Trump’s voter fraud allegations the same way any other outlet would.
“Far from reporting the allegations as true, hosts informed their audiences at every turn that the allegations were just allegations that would need to be proven in court in short order if they were going to impact the outcome of the election,” lawyers for the outlet wrote in their filings. “And to the extent some hosts commented on the allegations, that commentary is independently protected opinion.”