Here's what Fox News was trying to hide in its Dominion lawsuit redactions

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Here's what Fox News was trying to hide in its Dominion lawsuit redactions​

Emails after the 2020 election show Fox's own "Brain Room" concluding the voting myths about Dominion were false, according to previously redacted slides released Wednesday.

March 29, 2023, 12:37 PM CST / Updated March 29, 2023, 5:12 PM CST

By Amanda Terkel, Jane C. Timm and Dareh Gregorian

Ten days after the 2020 election, Fox News' so-called Brain Room looked into conspiracy theories that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the presidential election against Donald Trump.

The fact-checking and research division of the network came back with a clear decision: Those claims were false. But the misinformation went on the air anyway.

Details of the Brain Room's fact-check were revealed Wednesday in newly released slidesfrom a presentation by Dominion, which the company showed at last week's pretrial hearing in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp. The slides cite internal communications and testimony.

Fox News had redacted the Brain Room findings, but the judge ordered Tuesday that they be made public.

Fox News' "Brain Room" looked into claims about Dominion Voting Systems and found them false.Dominion Voting Systems

Even though the Fox News Brain Room found the election rigging claims false, hosts and guests talked about them on the air. Dominion Voting Systems

Testimony from Fox’s own executives underscored the importance of the Brain Room’s role in verifying information that goes on the air.

“If the brain room had concluded that the charges were, in fact, false, they never should have been aired, correct?” a Dominion lawyer asked David Clark, Fox News’ senior vice president for weekend news and programming, in a deposition on Oct. 21.

“Correct”, Clark said.

Dominion argues that it was severely damaged by claims put forward by Fox News hosts and guests suggesting the voting machine company tipped the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.

“These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case. The foundational right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to fiercely advocate for the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news," a Fox spokesperson said in a statement.