Earlier this month, Fox Corp settled a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, setting off a whirlwind of rumors and speculation about the network and its future.
Dominion had filed a lawsuit against Fox after the 2020 election, seeking $1.6 billion in damages. The lawsuit alleged the network knowingly aired inaccurate information about the company. The left cheered the news, believing Fox News had received its comeuppance.
“Fox could change tomorrow. They can hire hundreds of journalists. They can choose to be a reality-based network with down-the-middle reporting, 24 hours a day,” former CNN host Brian Stelter told NewsNation’s Dan Abrams after the settlement was announced. “It’s not going to happen, though, so they have to be held accountable.”
That’s rich coming from Brian Stelter, whose former network, CNN, promoted the Trump/Russia collusion hoax despite knowing it was bogus.
In 2017, Project Veritas released undercover video of a CNN producer admitting that his network’s coverage of the Trump/Russia collusion story was driven by ratings, not provable facts.
The video shows CNN producer John Bonifield discussing the network’s editorial approach towards investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and acknowledging that CNN prioritized covering the Russia story for ratings, even though there was no proof.
“Could be bulls—t. I mean, it’s mostly bulls—t right now,” Bonifield says in the video.“Like, we don’t have any giant proof. Then they say, well, there’s still an investigation going on. And you’re like, yeah, I don’t know. If they were finding something we would know about it. The way these leaks happen, they would leak it. They’d leak. If it was something really good, it would leak…. The leaks keep leaking and there’s so many great leaks, and it’s amazing. I just refuse to believe that if they had something really good like that, that wouldn’t leak because we’ve been getting all these other leaks. So, I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, ‘Look, you are witch-hunting me. You have no smoking gun. You have no real proof.’”
“I haven’t seen any good evidence to show the president committed a crime,” Bonifield added.
The Project Veritas video also depicted Bonifield explaining that CNN’s leadership and management gave endless coverage to the Russian collusion story despite the lack of concrete evidence for ratings. “Our ratings are incredible right now,” he said.
“I think there are a lot of liberal CNN viewers who want to see Trump really get scrutinized,” Bonifield explained. “I think if we would have behaved that way with President Obama and scrutinized everything he was doing with as much scrutiny as we applied to Donald Trump, I think our viewers would be turned off. I think they would have felt like we were attacking him.”
CNN also spent months downplaying Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell,” the authenticity of which was obvious to anyone. It has since been confirmed as such by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
So, where’s the accountability for CNN and other media outlets that shamelessly pushed the Trump/Russia collusion hoax knowing it was bogus? It’s true that in October of last year, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN, seeking $475 million in damages.
“Beyond simply highlighting any negative information about the plaintiff and ignoring all positive information about him, CNN has sought to use its massive influence, purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source, to defame the plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically,” the lawsuit states.
Does anyone believe CNN will suffer the same way Fox has? There are countless liberals who still believe Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election and the media that pushed this hoax, knowing it was bogus, should be held accountable.
