Veterans group: Ban Fox News on military bases

A progressive veterans group has commissioned a new ad calling for Fox News to be banned on military bases, citing recent revelations made as part of a legal fight the network faces over its coverage of the 2020 election.

The two-minuted ad from group VoteVets blasts the network for its leading hosts’ public embrace of former President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud despite their private acknowledgement the claims were false.

A narrator for the ad says Fox engaged in “information warfare that divides the troops, hurts unit cohesion, weakens our readiness and threatens our national security.”

“There’s no excuse for allowing anti-American, anti-democracy anti-military disinformation in the barracks, in the chow hall or anywhere our troops serve,” the ad says.

Fox is currently facing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which alleges the network knowingly aired false claims about the company.

Recent court filings show top hosts and executives at Fox throwing cold water on assertions about voter fraud being made by Trump and his top associates but worrying how the conservative media giant’s audience might be turned off by fact checks of those claims.

Fox has so far unsuccessfully moved to have the case dismissed on First Amendment grounds.

“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims,” the network said in its most recent statement about the case.

“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”