Fox News employees expressed concerns about the network’s editorial standards and the conduct of top hosts in an internal survey conducted in the summer and fall of 2020, with one going as far as to wonder if they had sold their “soul to the devil”, according to legal filings.
The employees’ statements were excerpted in a 771-page filing released last week, made public as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.
The comments come from an anonymous internal survey – the “Fox News 2020 Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey” – of 1,040 employees conducted between 24 August 2020 and 8 September 2020. Several employees expressed concerns that the network was intentionally aiding Donald Trump and the Republican party.
One anonymous employee said that Fox should “change the misogynist, racist, rightwing content”, adding: “Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican party NOT a news organization and should be acknowledged as such. It is embarrassing to tell people that I work here as even conservatives know [Fox News Channel] and [Fox Business Network] are biased information sources – not news.” While the employee called the work environment “great”, they said “the content is hateful and has made the world a more divided and angry place”.
“I sometimes go home fighting back tears,” an employee said. “This network made me question my morals. Have I sold my soul to the devil?”
An employee said the network should “get out of Trump’s pocket” and realize that its most prominent hosts – including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity – “are a total embarrassment, peddling BS and conspiracy theories”. “Many days I feel like I am part of the problem and FNC is contributing to hatred in this country,” the person said.
“This company aligns itself with the current administration and has lost its integrity,” an employee said. “I wish there was purpose for what we do other than pushing the brand, ideology and political will of [the president],” another comment read.
Many of the comments dealt specifically with the network’s conservative opinion hosts, rather than its news division. “I wish that management would crack down on conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric spewed by such hosts,” an employee said. “We need to stand up for our real journalists and have more focus on news gathering and reporting to change our credibility and the way we are perceived.”
An employee asked for “a commitment from opinion hosts/producers to only tell viewers the truth, and to bolster their arguments with hard, proven facts given in full context, rather than spin or reckless conjecture that causes harm to real people”.
Fox has said that the survey responses are irrelevant to Smartmatic’s case because they were made months prior to the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election, which was the basis of the lawsuit. “There is no connection between these comments and the states of mind of the individuals responsible for the at-issue statements,” the network said in response, referring to the on-air comments made by such hosts as Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs. The organization that conducted the survey, Great Place to Work, ultimately certified Fox as one of the best places to work in 2020, with the vast majority of network employees endorsing it as an employer. It’s also not clear whether the quotes cited in the filing come from a wide swath of employees or from a few particular ones.
But Smartmatic believes the critical comments from employees provide evidence that Fox executives were on notice of internal concerns about what the network was airing. The company has also argued that Fox’s board of directors failed to act on the results of the survey, which it said provided a “stark warning” about the network’s programming.
A few employees quoted in the survey called directly for the imposition of new editorial guidelines. “I would suggest FOX put in some general ethical guidelines or positions overseeing editorial content so that we can limit the spread of insensitive and/or false information, racism and xenophobia,” one said.
One employee expressed a belief that “there’s a fear that we cannot anger the president or his most zealous supporters, and have abdicated all pretense of truthful reporting”, a comment in line with Smartmatic’s contention that Fox pivoted to a strategy of embracing Trump’s election-denying claims out of a fear of alienating viewers. (Fox has denied such a “pivot” and argued that it did not defame Smartmatic in its coverage of the 2020 election.)
skip past newsletter promotion
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
after newsletter promotion
In a legal document responding to Smartmatic’s assertions, Fox did not dispute the employee quotes but said that many of them are “incomplete”.
Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox, which was filed back in 2021, has proceeded slowly. Later this year, the parties are scheduled to appear in front of a New York judge and petition him to grant their motions for summary judgment, asking him to rule on key aspects of the case before it ever reaches a jury.
But in a wrinkle on Thursday, Smartmatic was formally added to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice last year against a few company executives, accusing them of participating in a scheme to bribe election officials in the Philippines related to the country’s 2016 elections.
“We can now categorically deny those allegations,” a Smartmatic spokesperson said. “This is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. We will contest the claims, and we are confident we will prevail in court.”
While the indictment might not have a direct impact on the merits of the case, which hinges on whether Smartmatic can prove that Fox hosts and guests made knowingly false statements about the company’s conduct during the 2020 US election, the charges could theoretically factor into estimates about the value of the company and how much it might be owed in damages if a jury finds in its favor.
Judicial hearing officer Alan C Marin ruled on Thursday that Smartmatic must produce documents regarding the effect of the alleged conduct on the company’s business. Fox has repeatedly said that Smartmatic’s estimated damages are wildly inflated.
