Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum have had a busy week of interviews promoting their roles moderating Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, the first of the 2024 cycle. Most of their comments amid the public relations blitz have been fairly banal, focused on the role former president and 2024 front-runner Donald Trump will play at a debate he reportedly will skip. But Baier did offer a significant disclosure when he told The Wall Street Journal that Fox’s Dominion Voting Systems scandal is “past us.” 

The Dominion saga has dogged Fox for years because it illustrates the network’s corruption and malfeasance. After several Fox hosts bent on supporting Donald Trump’s “rigged election” lies smeared Dominion following the 2020 presidential election, the election technology company filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox in response. Legal disclosures in the suit produced damaging evidence that its top executives and stars knew at the time that Trumpian election fraud claims were false, and Fox ultimately agreed to pay a record $787.5 million settlement that crushed its latest earnings report.

It’s no wonder Baier hopes the public will forget Dominion. A Fox veteran who anchors Fox’s flagship “straight news” show, Special Report, Baier maintains a largely unearned reputation as a straight shooter who would fit in at a mainstream TV network. During Trump’s presidency, Fox’s PR team often touted him, alongside fellow anchors Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace, as it sought to convince journalists and advertisers that the network was more than the bigoted propaganda of its biggest stars.

The Journal’s write-up suggested that Dominion’s lawsuit was largely a problem for the right-wing opinionators whose commentary triggered it. In reality, its revelations also exposed Fox’s lie that there is a firewall between Baier’s “news side” and the network’s “opinion side.” And, further, they showed that Baier himself is the consummate company man when it counts, more concerned with assuaging Fox’s viewers to maintain profitability than providing them with responsible reporting. 

Fox’s bogus attacks on Dominion came as the network tried to fend off a frenzied audience revolt. Its decision desk declared Democratic nominee Joe Biden the winner of Arizona’s electoral votes on election night, well before its counterparts at other networks did. While Fox’s call was ultimately correct, its early announcement narrowed Trump’s potential path to victory and infuriated the then-president and his campaign advisors — as well as many Fox viewers. 

Panicked Fox stars and executives floundered as the network’s ratings tanked and the audiences of its right-wing competitors swelled. Fox hosts strove to regain market share by aiding Trump’s election subversion campaign and — unhindered by the network brass — pushed outrageous falsehoods about Dominion.

Baier’s response, while lower in profile, was nearly as incendiary. On November 5, 2020, as the right-wing anger against Fox had hit a fever pitch, he pleaded for the network to respond by pulling its Arizona call and instead telling viewers Trump had won the state. 

In an email to Fox president Jay Wallace and Decision Desk overseers Bill Sammon and Chris Stirewalt — first reported by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser and subsequently produced via the Dominion lawsuit — Baier passed along comments from a viewer angered by the network’s Arizona call and remarked that “this situation is getting uncomfortable” and that “it seems we are holding on for pride.” 

He added: “It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it - even if it gives us major egg [on our faces]. And we put it back in his [Trump’s] column. The better we are.”

The Daily Beast subsequently reported on text messages sent later that day between Baier and then-Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson that were part of redacted Dominion court filings. The network’s “news” and “opinion” stars were apparently aligned at the time by fears that Fox’s Arizona call had damaged its reputation with its “core audience.” From the Beast:

Baier’s efforts, as he described to Carlson, were apparently successful in getting Fox to “slow walk Nevada.” Baker and Glasser reported that Jay Wallace “overruled the Decision Desk team including Bill Sammon, Arnon Mishkin, and Chris Stirewalt, refusing to let them call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, a level of interference that had been unheard of in past elections. … Wallace did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.”

The Fox anchor continued working behind the scenes to ensure that Fox’s election calls were made with the best interests of the network in mind. The New York Times reported that in a November 16, 2020, Zoom meeting with Fox’s top executives as well as the Decision Desk’s Mishkin and Sammon, Baier and MaCallum argued that the network should consider, in making its election calls, whether viewers would be angered. From the Times:

Meanwhile, Baier’s on-air handling of Trump’s election fraud lies drew criticism from the network’s dissidents — including internally. Sammon and Stirewalt were scathing in a series of internal messages produced through the Dominion lawsuit.

“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud,” Sammon wrote during Baier’s hour on December 2, 2020. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”

“It’s a real mess,” Stirewalt replied. “But sadly no surprise based on the man I saw revealed on election night.”

Sammon went on to write that the network was facing “the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically.”

Three years later, Fox’s journalistic “crisis” is still underway. 

Fox paid to make the Dominion lawsuit go away, but future legal liability is inevitable given the network’s desperate need to keep its conspiracy-minded MAGA viewers happy. What’s changed is that many of the employees who fought hardest after the election to oppose such conspiracy theories are gone: Sammon and Stirewalt were summarily fired, while other “news side” stalwarts who drew internal ire over their election reporting exited soon after Biden took office. 

These moves follow years of the network demolishing its “news side,” cutting its hours and casting off its employees in favor of more Trumpist propaganda and conspiracy theories. 

Smith, Wallace, and other colleagues responded by leaving and denouncing the network’s actions. 

Baier responded by extending his contract.