Fox News’ Seth Rich Reports Could Hurt Parent Company’s Mega-Merger Deal

Seth Rich Image by Linkedin

Allegations that Fox News colluded with the Trump White House to promote conspiracy theories about the death of a former Democratic National Committee staffer could have global implications, with British media regulators reportedly looking into the matter as they review parent company News Corp.’s bid to take full control of the British TV company Sky.

“There is no way that the British government can make a decision to approve this $14-billion takeover of Europe’s largest pay-TV operator without assessing the seriously damaging allegations that Fox News colluded with the White House in a massive coverup,” Will Davies, an activist working on media issues, told the Los Angeles Times.

According to the newspaper, Karen Bradley, the United Kingdom’s secretary of state for culture and media, sent a letter to the state media regulator, asking for the Sky deal, which has been preliminarily green-lighted, to be re-examined. News Corp, chaired by Rupert Murdoch, currently owns 39% of Sky.

Fox has come under fire — and is now facing a lawsuit in the United States — over allegations that it worked with the Trump administration to push a discredited narrative that Seth Rich, a former DNC staffer, was murdered in circumstances that could have implicated the Hillary Clinton campaign or the Democrats. Rich’s murder remains unsolved.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter, @DanielJSolomon