According to a recent report, Fox News is laying off employees; however, the scope of the redundancies and the reasoning behind them are still debatable.
The Fox News investigative unit was purportedly abolished on Friday, according to a report in Rolling Stone.
According to the article, the reductions were related to the $787.50 million settlement Fox reached with Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion Voting Systems had filed a defamation suit against Fox.
“The rank and file journalists are getting let go. Meanwhile, upper management are sitting pretty while they are the execs responsible for the Dominion debacle” Rolling Stone cited a source that it said was an unnamed Fox journalist. “We are the sacrificial lambs,” the source added.
“I think producers, management, et cetera [are being laid-off],” a former Fox staffer whose name was not used is quoted as saying. “They are trying to get money off the books before June 30. They have to save money because of the [Dominion] lawsuit.”
The New York Daily News published an article with a contrary viewpoint.
According to a “source with knowledge of the situation” quoted by the Daily News, changes to the investigative unit have “nothing to do with Dominion.”
The Daily News reports that the unit was not abolished, but rather reformed.
“There were three employees in the seven-person unit impacted, while four employees were offered different positions within the company,” the Daily News quoted its source as saying.
According to the source, the majority of the investigative unit’s employees were employed in other departments and were not conducting investigations.
In contrast, the article from Rolling Stone alluded to tensions within Fox News.
“The outrage is that Suzanne Scott and Maria Bartiromo keep their jobs. Meanwhile, the journalists get let go. We are in shock,” one of its employee sources was quoted as saying, referring to the Fox News CEO and a high-profile host.
Since Fox News took host Tucker Carlson off the air a month ago, the network has been in disarray. According to a claim published in Variety, Fox News allegedly made an unspoken agreement with Dominion to dismiss Carlson.
According to Variety, which cited “multiple sources with knowledge of the conversation,” Tucker Carlson learned why his show was terminated during a conversation with a member of the Fox News board on April 26.
Carlson was informed by the board member, who remained anonymous, that his dismissal was an unwritten condition of the settlements.
According to the Variety article, Dominion informed Fox that the settlement was off the table if it refused to make Carlson collateral damage and that Fox News would have to face its chances in front of a jury if it continued to refuse. Dominion and Fox have both responded by disputing the claim.