Maria Bartiromo’s Downfall at an Increasingly Cautious Fox News
The network this week took Maria Bartiromo off the air, pulling one of the last hosts whose coverage of Dominion Voting Systems drew an expensive defamation lawsuit.
In July, as President Trump was preparing a prime-time speech on election security, word went out from executives at Fox News: The network would avoid covering his stock claims about a stolen election.
Fox had landed in serious legal trouble in 2021 after amplifying false assertions by Mr. Trump’s allies about vote-stealing election machines, culminating in an extraordinary $787 million defamation settlement.
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Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
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