Fox News President Jay Wallace refused to air the results of the 2020 election in Nevada because it would show that Joe Biden won the election, according to text messages obtained by the New York Times.
According to the report, the network’s decision desk was ready to call Nevada for Biden on Friday Nov. 6, which would have cemented Biden’s victory in the election, but Wallace refused to air it.
“I’m not there yet since it’s for all the marbles — just a heavier burden than an individual state call,” Wallace wrote in a text message.
Fox ended up being the last network to call the election for Biden on Nov. 7.
Wallace was reluctant to be the first network to declare Biden as the winner of the election because he wanted to avoid a repeat of the backlash from Trump and their viewers on election night when they were the first to call Arizona for Biden.
In a November 16, 2020 meeting, top executives reportedly considered going back to an older, less accurate system for elections projection, considered accounting for viewer reactions instead of just relying on numbers when projecting a winner, and discussed delaying calls in general, according to NYT.
Fox News is currently facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for allegedly defaming the company in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Court documents show that the network’s top anchors and executives knew that the claims of election fraud were false but invited guests on their program to peddle these lies anyway.
