Producer sues Fox News, claims he was fired for challenging Jan. 6 coverage
A former Fox News producer is suing the network in federal court, alleging that he was fired for challenging its coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the false claims of voting fraud that circulated after the 2020 election.
Jason Donner worked at Fox News for 12 years until he was fired from his job as a Capitol Hill producer in September 2022. According to his lawsuit, management said that it dismissed him for failing to show up for work one day.
But Donner claims that he was part of a Fox “purge” of journalists who “would not get in line with the directive to only report information that appease the [Donald] Trump supporters and former president Trump.”
Donner initially sued Fox for wrongful termination in D.C.’s Superior Court in September, but the case was moved into federal court Monday. Fox did not respond to a request for comment.
In his lawsuit, Donner cites text messages between Fox executives that were revealed during a defamation lawsuit against the network from voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems. In one exchange, Fox CEO Suzanne Scott wrote that the network was facing backlash from viewers who believed the election was stolen and that it needed to change its coverage to show that “we hear them and respect them.”
Donner, now a staffer for Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), alleges in his lawsuit that, while he disagreed with much of Fox’s opinion coverage during his time at the network, he didn’t feel management pressure on his reporting on Capitol Hill until 2020, after Trump lost the election. Soon after Trump’s loss, Donner claims, he was criticized by Fox managers after he posted a tweet suggesting that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was making inconsistent claims about election fraud.
Donner’s clashes with management escalated dramatically on Jan. 6, 2021, he says. The producer, who was in the Capitol as rioters broke into the building, claims in his lawsuit that he was stunned to see Fox anchors describing them as “peaceful” protesters who were merely “severely disappointed” in the election results. Furious, Donner claims he called into Fox’s control room and told them to stop airing coverage downplaying the violence, saying “you’re gonna get us all killed,” according to the lawsuit.
Fox continued to welcome Trump allies onto its airwaves who floated bogus allegations of election fraud that frequently went unchallenged — the trigger for Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, which the network eventually settled this year for $787.5 million. In October 2021, Fox’s streaming site aired a Tucker Carlson series, “Patriot Purge,” that offered sympathetic portrayals of several Capitol riot participants.
Donner said he complained about the series but claims he was told news editors couldn’t do anything about it because “Tucker had gotten bigger than the network and was out of control.” Fox fired Carlson in April.
Donner claims his criticism of the coverage led to his firing, after he took a sick day to recover from taking the coronavirus vaccine. While management told him his termination was because he had missed work, Donner alleges in his lawsuit that he was punished for dissenting from the network’s editorial line on the Capitol riot and election denial.
“Our lives were endangered that day,” Donner wrote in an internal complaint in May 2022 about Fox’s coverage of the Capitol attack, according to the lawsuit. “My colleagues and I put our lives at risk covering the story and yet my employer continually allows these lawbreakers to continually be portrayed as victims.”
