Despite the negative press that Fox News has had in the weeks and months headed into this trial, its ratings have been just fine. Better than fine, in fact.
As The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum reported, “In February, as Fox News faced harsh headlines from the Dominion case, its total audience grew 7 percent from the month prior, according to Nielsen. Its viewership in prime time, the most lucrative part of the broadcast day, rose 25 percent among adults between the ages of 25 and 54, the most relevant demographic for advertisers.”
And even though Fox News’ ratings decreased slightly in March, the network’s average viewership still was better than MSNBC and CNN combined.
There are two big questions when it comes to Fox News viewers and this case. One, are its regular viewers even paying attention or getting all the information on this lawsuit? As I already mentioned, Fox News itself has barely covered this case. And, two, do hardcore Fox News viewers even care about how this all turned out, that Fox News admitted it lied?
While this case is specifically about false things said on Fox News’ airways about Dominion, many casual observers think the trial was just general thoughts about the 2020 election being rigged. Polls have shown that Republicans who watch Fox News are more likely to believe that Biden’s election was illegitimate than Republicans who don’t watch Fox News.
Other media news …
There was media news Tuesday outside the Fox News-Dominion story. Let’s continue with items from two of my Poynter colleagues. First, Annie Aguiar, Poynter’s audience engagement producer, with news from Oklahoma.
A shocking conversation
A jaw-dropper of a headline in a small Oklahoma newspaper this week has shocked residents, officials and press freedom watchers across the country: “County officials discuss killing, burying Gazette reporters.”
“On March 6 at a county commissioners’ meeting, sheriff’s officers and commissioners discussed beating, killing and burying Gazette reporters Chris Willingham and Bruce Willingham,” opens the story in the McCurtain Gazette-News, the first of a series into McCurtain County commissioners’ private meetings conducted after the public had left, a violation of the state’s open meeting law.
In the released audio of the off-the-books meeting, commissioners appear to reference “two deep holes” and discuss knowing hitmen. At one point, they say that if anything “happened to Chris Willingham, they would likely be blamed.”
Officials also appear to complain of no longer being able to use racist law enforcement practices from “back in the day,” referencing a location for lynchings as well as a former sheriff beating a Black man before putting him in a cell.
Another section has the commissioners making light of a woman’s death in a fire, comparing the recovery of her body to barbecue.
The McCurtain County community, the mayor of the city of Idabel and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stint are calling for the resignation of the officials who appear in the recording.
Bruce Willingham, who is Chris Willingham’s father and the longtime publisher of the paper, attended the public portion of the March 6 county commissioners’ meeting. Suspecting there were private meetings happening, he left a voice-activated recorder in the room to capture the off-the-books discussion.
Though Oklahoma law requires all parties consent to recording conversations, the Gazette-News contends the recording is legal since it was of a public meeting and in a public building.
“I talked on two different occasions to our attorneys to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Bruce Willingham told The Associated Press.
The Gazette-News published the story with a public document that points to audio snippets and transcriptions of the off-the-books meeting so readers could listen for themselves. The audio is the first of three the newspaper plans to release as the series unfolds, but the paper provided the full audio to the FBI and the Oklahoma attorney general’s office for investigation.
In a Facebook post, the McCurtain County sheriff’s office claimed its preliminary investigation indicated the audio has been altered. In the same post, the sheriff’s office said there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act,” alluding to potential felony charges for the Willinghams.
The rift between McCurtain County officials and the Willinghams is long-running. Chris Willingham has written numerous articles alleging corruption at the McCurtain County sheriff’s office in recent years, KJRH-TV reports.
30 journalists finish a slain Colombian reporter’s work
For this item, I turned it over to my Poynter colleague Amaris Castillo.
More than two dozen journalists from multiple media outlets have continued the work of Rafael Moreno, a Colombian investigative journalist who was assassinated on Oct. 16, 2022, over his relentless reporting on corruption and other matters in the region of Córdoba.
The 30 journalists’ effort was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based nonprofit devoted to pursuing the work of journalists around the world who are threatened, jailed or killed.
“Through our analysis of documents Moreno left behind, as well as other public contracts obtained through freedom of information requests in the municipalities Moreno reported on, ground reporting and interviews with dozens of sources, our consortium can reveal a massive system of cronyism in the province of Córdoba and the probable embezzlement of up to several million dollars across five municipalities — a vast scheme Moreno had spent his career trying to take down and may have paid for with his life,” the report read.
During a Facebook Live last July, Moreno defied his detractors and predicted his own demise, according to the Forbidden Stories article. Dressed in a white polo shirt with the name of his online news outlet — Voces de Córdoba — he said forcefully in Spanish, “If you have to kill me, kill me. But I am telling you to your face: you won’t silence me.”
Before his killing, Moreno had been in contact with Forbidden Stories. Laurent Richard, executive director and founder of the collaborative journalism network, told Poynter that Moreno was very concerned about some threats he’d received.
“And this is how he decided, at some point, to share with us what he was investigating, and his main leads,” Richard said. He added that Moreno had conversations with his team on how to secure his information through the Safebox Network, which allows threatened journalists to upload and protect sensitive information. Should something happen to a journalist under threat, it allows Forbidden Stories to pursue their work.
Richard said that when Moreno was alive, the Colombian journalist covered corruption, money laundering, embezzlement and environmental crimes. Forbidden Stories reported that Moreno’s Voces de Córdoba, launched in 2018, spared no one, including local politicians, mining companies and paramilitary groups.
“He was investigating very important topics and issues for the general interest, so our goal was to make sure that we can continue his work and we can publish the information that Rafael’s killers wanted to silence,” Richard said. “And to tell them, as well, that killing the journalist won’t kill the story.”
Richard suggested it could even be worse for the subjects because the story is now published in the United States, Europe, the Philippines and many countries in Africa and South America. Moreno’s assassin is still at large as of the publication of this story.
Read the full investigation here.
Evan Gershkovich update
