The dominos are continuing to fall for Fox News.
One month after firing its most prominent host and election fraud peddler Tucker Carlson — and settling a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million — the network is reportedly dissolving its investigative unit and laying off reporters.
“The rank and file journalists are getting let go,” one Fox employee told Rolling Stone in an article published Friday. “Meanwhile, upper management are sitting pretty while they are the execs responsible for the Dominion debacle. We are the sacrificial lambs.”
Dominion originally sued for $1.6 billion in damages and accused Fox News of intentionally airing lies that the 2020 election was rigged for President Joe Biden. The network is currently also facing another expensive lawsuit from another voting systems company.
The lawsuit notably revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox News’ parent company, urged the network’s CEO, Suzanne Scott, to be “helping any way we can” to sway the U.S. Senate race in Georgia for Republican candidates in 2020.
Scott, a 22-year Fox News veteran who became the network’s first female CEO in 2018, has since been accused of fostering a toxic workplace for women. However, she wasn’t the only figure named in the lawsuit that staffers have gripes about.
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
“The outrage is that Suzanne Scott and Maria Bartiromo keep their jobs,” another staffer told Rolling Stone about the CEO and a Fox News opinion host who notably shared her interview questions with then-President Donald Trump ahead of her 2020 interview.
“Meanwhile, the journalists get let go,” the staffer continued. “We are in shock.”
Another staffer confirmed the layoffs and told Rolling Stone they “have happened” and “continue to happen.” A former employee, meanwhile, speculated the network is letting people go “to get money off the books” to “save money because of the lawsuit.”
One source told the outlet that there’s no connection between the Dominion settlement and the layoffs and claimed that some of the people purportedly fired were merely reassigned away from the network’s investigative unit.
Fox News certainly appears to be in trouble, however, as the Smartmatic defamation lawsuit — currently in the discovery phase — is seeking a whopping $2.7 billion in damages.