Former Fox executives express ‘deep disappointment’ for helping build ‘disinformation machine’
A trio of former Fox executives said in a joint statement Wednesday that they are disappointed in themselves for helping build up the corporation in its early days, labeling Fox a “disinformation machine.”
“For what little it may, or may not, be worth at this point, Preston Padden, Ken Solomon and Bill Reyner wish to express their deep disappointment for helping to give birth to Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox Television that came to include Fox News Channel — the channel that prominently includes news that, in the words of Sidney Powell’s counsel, ‘no reasonable person would believe,’” the three former executives wrote in a blog post.
The trio’s post is titled “How Our Efforts to Bring Competition To Television Unknowingly Helped Create the Fox Disinformation Machine”.
During Fox’s early development in the 1990s, Padden served as its top Washington lobbyist, Solomon was the executive vice president of network distribution and Reyner was the lead outside counsel. At the time, there was no Fox News Channel, and none of the executives had ever worked on it, the blog post noted.
The three major broadcast networks at the time were ABC, CBS and NBC. After helping Fox win multiple legal battles that the three former executives said were “critical in establishing Fox to become the long-sought fourth broadcast television network,” they said they helped Fox grow through acquiring more local television stations.
“At the time of our work in the 1990’s, we all greatly admired Rupert Murdoch and his vision and bold efforts,” they wrote. “We genuinely believed that the creation of a fourth competitive force in broadcast television was in the public interest.”
The former executives also blasted Fox over its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, in which Fox News agreed to pay a $787 million settlement over the network’s coverage of former President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become,” they wrote. “In a 120 page Court Order, backed by extensive record evidence including voluminous emails from inside Fox, the Judge in the Dominion case found that Fox repeatedly presented false news. Fox did not appeal the decision but instead acknowledged it and paid nearly $800 million in damages to Dominion.”
They said that the Fox News Channel “has had many negative impacts on our society,” adding that “the worst has been Fox’s role in promoting Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ about alleged widespread fraud in the 2020 election” and “contributing to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that undermined our democracy.”
The executives concluded their post by saying other former employees of Fox in the 1990s “share our resentment that the reputation of the Fox brand we helped to build has been ruined by false news.”
The Hill has reached out to Fox for comment.
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