Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on Tuesday that Fox News will not pivot “further right” despite suffering a slump in ratings.
Fair and balanced?: Speaking on an earnings call, Murdoch said Fox News’ “post-election audience pullback” had been anticipated and would pass, according to The Associated Press.
- “We fully expect that the overall news audience will normalize, and our share of ratings will dominate,” he said.
- “We don’t need to go further right,” Murdoch added. “We don’t believe America is further right. And we’re obviously not going to pivot left. All of our significant competitors are to the far left. So we’ll stick where we are.”
Also on Tuesday, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott signed a new contract with the company.
The elephant in the room: Murdoch’s comments notably excluded Newsmax and One America News from among his company’s “significant competitors.”
- Following the election, the two upstart cable news networks cut into Fox News’ ratings with programming in support of former President Donald Trump’s allegations of election fraud.
- Fox News, meanwhile, angered Trump and his supporters with sometimes-oppositional election coverage.
- “.@FoxNews daytime is not watchable. In a class with CNN & MSDNC,” then-President Trump tweeted in December. “Check out @OANN, @newsmax and others that are picking up the slack.”
Facing lawsuits from voting technology companies, all three cable channels have lately run segments distancing themselves from some of the unproven claims of election fraud they broadcasted.
- Fox Corp. on Monday filed a motion to dismiss a $2.7 billion lawsuit brought by one of the companies, Smartmatic.
- On Friday, a day after the lawsuit was filed, Fox Business Network dropped Lou Dobbs, one of the Fox News hosts named in the suit.
