Why Does the Fox News CEO Still Have a Job?

Under Suzanne Scott's "leadership" Fox has paid millions to settle lawsuits -- and it ain't over yet.

Suzanne Scott, the Fox News CEO, has been known to tell her staff to “Respect the audience.” By that she doesn’t mean, “Tell them the truth” — but rather, “Don’t make them unhappy by reporting news they don’t want to hear.” That’s her idea of … respect.

If her boss, Rupert Murdoch, cared about honest journalism and not just maximizing ratings and the ad revenue they bring, he would have found someone with more journalistic integrity to run Fox News.

But he didn’t and now he’s paying dearly for his allegiance to Ms. Scott. And by paying dearly, I mean that literally.

During her leadership — a word I use loosely in Ms. Scott’s case — Fox settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems … for just under $800 million. While Scott apparently was keeping a close eye on FNC’s ratings, her staff was putting out information about Dominion they knew was false, but put it out anyway. That’s what Dominion alleged and it’s apparently why Fox settled.

During her leadership, Fox faces a another defamation lawsuit, this one brought by a second voting technology company, Smartmatic — for $2.7 billion.

Fox also faces two more lawsuits, these by shareholders.

Fox recently settled a lawsuit from a former producer who worked for Tucker Carlson. That one cost Fox $12 million.

And now they’re facing yet another lawsuit related to its coverage of the 2020 election — this one filed by Ray Epps, “the man at the center of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” according to the New York Times. Epps accuses Fox News and Tucker Carlson of defamation for promoting a “fantastical story” that Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to smear President Trump and his supporters.

Suzanne Scott let the lunatics, so to speak, take over the asylum. So-called journalists at Fox were behaving like political propagandists while Scott was busy with other things — like making sure her staff was “respecting the audience.”

I never met Suzanne Scott. She may be a very nice person. I’m sure she’s kind to puppies. But she’s not a journalist … and she either doesn’t understand what journalism is about … or simply doesn’t care. Either way, she’s the wrong person to head up a news operation.

Maybe, after Rupert Murdoch gets finished paying off everybody who’s suing Fox News, he’ll come to his senses and do what he should have done a long, long time ago — fire Suzanne Scott.

Too bad there’s not someone who can then fire Rupert Murdoch.