(CNN) Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott sounded the alarm within the company about the financial consequences the right-wing network would suffer if it continued to aggressively fact-check then-President Donald Trump’s lies after the 2020 election, according to messages that were made public. public on Wednesday.
In one instance, Scott emailed Meade Cooper, executive vice president of prime-time programming, and expressed frustration after correspondent Eric Shawn appeared on Martha MacCallum’s show and fact-checked Trump and a guest Sean Hannity.
“This needs to stop now,” Scott said in a Dec. 2, 2020, message.
“It’s bad for business and there’s a lack of understanding of what’s going on at these shows,” Scott added. “Audiences are mad and we’re just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
A Fox News spokesperson told CNN that Scott had no problem checking the facts, but said the issue was about “one host calling another,” apparently referring to the fact that MacCallum and Shawn fact-checked a guest who appeared on Hannity’s. show.
The email to Cooper was disclosed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Like several documents made public Wednesday, the email had previously been redacted in previous court filings. The new emails were included in a presentation Dominion showed at a hearing last week in Wilmington, Delaware. The voting technology company publicly released the full slide show on Wednesday, per court order. Fox News, which denies any wrongdoing, has accused Dominion of cherry-picking emails to present a self-serving narrative about what the right-wing network did after the 2020 election.
“These documents demonstrate once again Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement. “The fundamental right to a free press is at stake, and we will continue to vigorously defend the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news.”
In another email Scott wrote to correspondent Kristin Fisher, who now works at CNN, about her alleged “dismissive tone” in November 2020 after the presidential contest, the Fox News chief revealed the company had “lost 25,000 subscribers from FOX NATION.” Its streaming service.
In previous court filings, Fox Nation subscription records were redacted.
The messages underscore the panic that engulfed Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, when its viewers rebelled against the channel for correctly calling the election for President Joe Biden.
Other newly released emails showed network producers discussing how putting Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on the air boosted ratings. At the time, Powell, Giuliani and host Lou Dobbs were promoting disingenuous conspiracy theories that Dominion had rigged the 2020 election by throwing away millions of votes.
“Every day with Rudy and Sidney is guaranteed gold!” wrote Dobbs’ producer. In another email, another Dobbs producer wrote, “to keep this alive we really need Rudy or Sidney.”
Complete email chains are not publicly available.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott was sounding Kristin Fisher’s “dismissive tone” in a 2020 email, not host Dana Perino. The exchange Scott was referring to happened when Fisher was on Perino’s show.
