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‘Propaganda Network’: Media Reporter Says Dominion Filing Exposes Fox News as ‘Void of the Most Basic Journalistic Ethics’

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The bombshell court filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News has exposed the right-wing cable channel as “a propaganda network like never before.”

That’s according to CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy, who told viewers Friday morning, “I think these messages really just expose Fox News as a propaganda network. That’s what they do at the core.”

Darcy was referring to the damning text messages, emails, and other communications and testimony related to Fox News’ handling of Trump’s “Big Lie” and other false election fraud claims in Dominion’s nearly 200-page court filing that has been widely reported overnight. That document includes comments from the network’s top personality Tucker Carlson, showing him as more worried about how one reporter’s tweet was affecting the company’s stock price than the substance of her remarks: fact-checking Donald Trump.

READ MORE: A ‘Demonic Force’: Bombshell Text Messages Reveal How Tucker Carlson Really Felt About Trump

Possibly one of the most damning portions is an excerpt about Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the board of Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News. The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer highlights a portion where Murdoch directs Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to “concentrate” on the Georgia Senate races to help Republicans “any way we can.” While the text does not show Murdoch using the word “Republicans,” there no other way to legitimately interpret those remarks.

Indeed, Sommer calls the almost 200-page filing “one of the most remarkable documents I’ve ever seen,” and adds: “Filled with private texts between Fox stars like Hannity and Carlson, plus Murdoch, all admitting they knew Fox’s stolen election claims were lies.”

CNN’s Darcy apparently agrees, telling “CNN This Morning” co-hosts, “I mean, they show in excruciating detail that the highest ranking executives at Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Suzanne Scott, the CEO, as well as some of the top hosts, like you just mentioned, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram. They knew, they privately knew these election fraud claims from the Trump team were nonsense. They use very harsh language to describe them.”

READ MORE: ‘Will Not Tolerate’: New York Times Warns Its Own Journalists After Intense Criticism of Its Reporting on Transgender People

Darcy says, “they allowed these lies to take hold on the network’s air and they show, these messages show, that the talent over at Fox News and the executives were very worried after the election of the audience rebelling, that they were going to Newsmax. You’ll remember that Donald Trump was attacking Fox News saying, ‘turn the channel go to this Newsmax channel,’ which is saturating the airwaves with election denialism. They were worried about this, and not only did they turn a blind eye to the election lies, but they even in some cases, tried cracking down on those who were fact checking Trump.”

Sommer also highlights the contempt and disdain top Fox personalities, and even Murdoch, privately had for Rudy Giuliani.

“The Dominion filing offers the best look inside Fox’s internal operations that we’ve had in years, maybe ever,” Sommer concludes. “It shows Fox operating as many suspected: no compunctions about lying to viewers, and desperately tacking right to avoid losing market share to competitors like Newsmax.”

In similar remarks, Darcy points to a portion of the Dominion filing that states: “Remarkably, Fox News has no written editorial guidelines.”

READ MORE: ‘Radical Gender Ideology’: Mike Pence Goes to Iowa to Attack Transgender Children in the Name of God (Video)

“This is also really remarkable,” Darcy says in a tweet, “and distinguishes Fox News from actual news organizations. I’ve asked Fox for years what the network’s editorial standards are. Apparently, they don’t have any written down.”

Darcy, on Twitter, points to his reporting at CNN, and concludes that the Dominion “court document provided a mountain of evidence exposing Fox News as a right-wing talk channel void of the most basic journalistic ethics.”

Watch CNN’s Oliver Darcy below, view tweets above, or all at this link.

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Extremist Group Targets Florida High School’s Yearbook Over Inclusion of LGBTQ Students Section

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The publication of a Florida high school yearbook that included an LGBTQ section has drawn rebuke from a conservative group, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

Lyman High School’s 256-page yearbook includes two pages that highlight the school’s LGBTQ students and features gender identity terms such as “genderfluid” and “nonbinary.”

The Seminole County Public Schools in response to the criticism is offering to issue refunds or reprint the yearbook without the LGBTQ section that the conservative Seminole County Moms for Liberty claims is offensive.

“They shouldn’t have any sexual definitions in a yearbook,” the group’s chapter chair Jessica Tillmann told The Sentinel.

“This is a yearbook that goes to every student as young as 14.”

The school’s yearbook is stirring controversy for a second straight year after the district in 2022 considered putting stickers over photos of a student walkout protesting the so-called “don’t say gay” law, the report said.

The Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher reports that “An LGBTQ+ section in this year’s yearbook includes a picture of members of the student’s Gay-Straight Alliance, definitions of key LGBTQ+ terms, a passage on the evolution of pronouns and a profile of a student who advocates for the LGBTQ+ community.”

Danielle Pomeranz, the school yearbook’s faculty advisor, isn’t on board with the district’s decision to remove the LGBTQ content.

“They are definitions,” Pomeranz told The Sentinel.

“They are not teaching anything about sex at all. … Nobody is teaching anybody about sex acts. It is ridiculous.”

Pomeranz has since resigned from her position in the district, citing in part the Sunshine State’s political climate and an unsupportive district, the report said.

“We’ve always had the LGBTQ+ spread in there,” she said.

“Our job as journalists and members of the yearbook staff is to provide coverage of the entire school and that includes all of the communities, including the LGBTQ+ community.”

Read the full article here.

Image via Shutterstock

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Watch Live: President Biden to Deliver Rare Address to the Nation on Bipartisan Debt Ceiling Agreement

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President Joe Biden will make a rare address to the nation Friday evening, to share with the American people the results of successful negotiations with Republicans to avert what could have been not only a national but global economic disaster had the debt ceiling crisis not been averted.

Biden is being credited for smart and savvy negotiations while keeping out of the public eye and allowing Republicans to control the narrative, while steering the agreement to one best for the American people.

Even Speaker Kevin McCarthy “conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them ‘very professional, very smart’ and ‘very tough at the same time,'” HuffPost reported Wednesday.

Many extremist House Republicans were hoping for a default, and over the past several weeks they made clear they did not understand what the consequences would have been.

RELATED: ‘Objectively Amazing’: Economists Cheer ‘Extraordinarily Robust’ and ‘Close to Unprecedented’ Jobs Report

Watch President Biden below at 7 PM ET, or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Republicans Got Outsmarted by a President Who Can’t Find His Pants’: GOP Congresswoman Throws Debt Ceiling Tantrum

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FBI Agrees to Brief Top House Oversight Leaders on Unsubstantiated Allegation Against Biden

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Under threat of a contempt of Congress referral against FBI Director Chris Wray, the Bureau has agreed to allow a briefing for the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee on a years-old unsubstantiated allegation, which has been called a second-hand tip, accusing then-Vice President Joe Biden of a supposed wrongful act.

The existence of the lone, unclassified document, called an FD-1023 form, until recently was not even verified by the FBI.

Chairman Jim Comer (R-KY) and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “will receive a briefing from the FBI and review the FD-1023 form behind closed doors in a secure SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility at the Capitol rather than going to FBI headquarters, as the bureau had initially offered,” CNN on Friday reported.

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

“While the document contains the allegations made by an unnamed whistleblower, it doesn’t provide proof that they are true, people briefed on the matter said. The FBI and prosecutors who previously reviewed the information couldn’t corroborate the claims.”

Chairman Comer, who has been accused of using his position on the powerful Oversight Committee aid Donald Trump’s efforts to regain the presidency, late last month appeared to validate that accusation.

The unverified FD-1023 form “has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020, people briefed on the matter said,” CNN notes.

“According to Comer,” CNN adds, the FD-1023 form, “dated June 30, 2020, says [a] foreign national allegedly paid $5 million to receive a desired policy outcome, based on unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures.”

On Thursday, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has teamed up with Chairman Comer, came under fire for admitting he does not care whether or not the accusations against President Biden are true or not, he wants to pursue them regardless.

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

CNN earlier this week reported that even then-Attorney General Bill Barr questioned the validity of the alleged document.

“The allegations of wrongdoing by the then-vice president, many originating from sources in Ukraine, were dubious enough that Attorney General William Barr in early 2020 directed that they be reviewed by a US attorney in Pittsburgh, in part because Barr was concerned that Giuliani’s document tranche could taint the ongoing Hunter Biden investigation overseen by the Delaware US attorney.”

Ranking Member Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, in a statement this week characterized the FD-1023 as containing “unsubstantiated, second-hand claims,” and called it a “tip.”

Raskin has also accused Comer of being determined to send a contempt of Congress referral for Director Wray to the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

“It is increasingly clear that Committee Republicans have always planned to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress to distract from the obvious fact that they do not have evidence to support their unfounded accusations against President Biden. This latest political maneuver underscores Chairman Comer’s determination to use the Committee to help former President Trump’s reelection efforts and pander to extreme MAGA Republicans.”

Last month, The New Republic reported, the “House GOP accused Joe Biden and his family … of engaging in business with foreign entities—but were unable to provide any actual evidence linking the president to any wrongdoing.”

“House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer released a 65-page memo detailing a sprawling investigation into Biden and some of his relatives, particularly his son Hunter Biden. Nowhere in the massive document was there a specific allegation of a crime committed by Biden or any of his relatives.”

 

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