Ex-Fox Execs Are Now Appalled By 'Disinformation Machine' They Helped Create
Three former executives of Fox say they now regret their role in setting the stage for the right-wing news network that’s come to dominate the media landscape today.
In a joint statement, Preston Padden, Ken Solomon and Bill Reyner expressed “deep disappointment for helping to give birth to Fox Broadcasting Company.”
In the 1990s, Reyner was lead counsel while Padden was a lobbyist as they worked to get waivers from restrictions against foreign ownership and cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast, allowing Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch to establish his fledgling network.
Solomon, as vice president of network distribution, recruited affiliates.
“We all greatly admired Rupert Murdoch and his vision and bold efforts” at the time, they said. “We genuinely believed that the creation of a fourth competitive force in broadcast television was in the public interest.”
None of the three ever worked for Fox News, but they expressed regret that the Fox Broadcasting Company they helped create led to the right-wing media network.
“We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become,” they wrote, adding that the judge in the Dominion lawsuit found the network had spread false news.
“Fox did not appeal the decision but instead acknowledged it and paid nearly $800 million in damages to Dominion,” they wrote.
The trio also called out the network’s role in promoting Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election and slammed Fox News for “contributing to” the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“In fact, the connection between Fox and the January 6 attack is so strong that multiple Jan 6 defendants have pleaded not guilty arguing they were suffering from ‘Foxitis’ — a disease caused by watching false news on Fox!” they wrote.
