USA · Bias: Right
Murdoch family (Fox Corporation)
Founded by Rupert Murdoch and the late Roger Ailes in 1996, Fox News is the most-watched network in American cable news, and it has been for a very long time. It kept the crown again in the third quarter of 2026, averaging about 2.06 million primetime viewers and beating CNN and MS NOW combined. The same Nielsen numbers show the audience shrinking: primetime was down 17% on a year earlier, and September 2026 alone was down about a third (Nielsen figures reported by Adweek and Deadline, October 2026). Still No. 1, just a smaller No. 1. That dominance came at a price: in April 2023, Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over its airing of false 2020 election-fraud claims, the largest known media defamation settlement in U.S. history. Its statement acknowledged the court's rulings that certain claims about Dominion were false. OWNERSHIP AS OF OCTOBER 2026 Short answer to "who owns Fox News": Fox Corporation, a publicly traded company, and in practice Lachlan Murdoch. Fox News is one unit of Fox Corporation (stock tickers FOXA and FOX). Ordinary investors own most of the shares, but only the Class B shares carry votes, and that's where control sits. On 8 September 2025, the Murdoch family settled its two-year fight over the family trust. Under the deal, a new holding company called LGC Holdco took about 36.2% of Fox's Class B voting stock, with voting control resting solely with Lachlan Murdoch until 2050. His siblings Prudence, Elisabeth and James gave up their stakes, and about 16.9 million Fox Class B shares were sold to pay them out (Fox Corporation press release, 8 September 2025). Chloe and Grace Murdoch stay in as beneficiaries, with no vote. The 2026 paperwork confirms the setup. Fox's proxy statement says voting of the LGC Holdco shares is "decided solely by the managing director of Cruden 2 appointed by Lachlan Murdoch" (Fox Corporation proxy statement, 17 September 2026). In the Roku merger filing, LGC Holdco and Cruden 2 together are listed as holding about 38.76% of the Class B stock (Fox/Roku joint proxy statement, September 2026). Lachlan Murdoch's pay for the year to June 2026 was about $31 million, down from $33 million the year before (TheWrap, 17 September 2026). The big new thing: Fox is buying Roku. On 15 June 2026, Fox Corporation announced a deal to buy the streaming platform for about $22 billion in cash and shares. Roku shareholders get $96 in cash plus 0.9693 Fox Class A shares for each Roku share, and would end up owning about 27% of Fox. Roku founder Anthony Wood stays on and joins Fox's board (Fox station reports of the company press release, 15 June 2026; joint proxy statement). Fox's Class B holders vote on it at a special meeting on 14 October 2026, and the Murdoch vehicles signed an agreement to vote yes. The companies expect to close in the first half of 2027, if the vote passes and regulators agree. For a reader, the Roku deal does not change who controls Fox News. It changes how many living rooms Fox's remote control reaches. Who runs it day to day: Lachlan Murdoch is Fox Corporation's executive chair and CEO. Suzanne Scott has been CEO of Fox News Media, which covers Fox News Channel, Fox Business, Fox News Digital and Fox Nation, since May 2018 (Fox Corporation leadership page; Fox News statement on the channel's 30th anniversary, October 2026). IS FOX NEWS LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading: right. Its opinion lineup is openly conservative, and on our beat the news side leans the same way more often than not. Where we notice it most is in the small words: who gets a "claims," whose vocabulary becomes the headline, and which dead soldiers get the loud questions. Eight dated examples from our archive: On 5 October 2026, Ireland and Israel both wore black armbands at a football match in Serbia. Fox's report called Israel's armbands remembrance and Ireland's a "stunt," in a piece written up as news, not opinion. Ireland's football association had said its armbands were for "all lives lost in the conflict." On 27 September 2026, Fox's headline said the White House would "yank 750,000 fraudsters off ObamaCare." The government's own press release went after agents and brokers, not enrollees, and Vice President Vance told Fox in the same story that some of those people "were probably legitimate." Three months earlier, Fox's own headline on the same scheme had said "alleged." On 26 September 2026, the Washington Post reported that more US troops had died in the Iran war than the Pentagon had admitted. Reuters, NPR and the Daily Wire covered the dispute. We checked Fox's site maps and live blogs for ten days and found nothing on it. In April 2026, Fox had run a Gold Star father's doubts about the Afghanistan withdrawal review as a headline. On 24 September 2026, a Fox headline said Macklemore was banned over "antisemitic rants." The same article, further down, called them "anti-Israel rants." In 2023, Fox's headline on the same singer had said he "was accused of antisemitism." The "accused" went missing somewhere. On 16 September 2026, Fox headlined that a Washington Democrat "claims" most recent immigration arrestees posed no threat. The New York Times had already found, in federal data, that most people ICE arrested in July had no criminal charge or conviction. Fox's own story said the same thing further down. On 10 September 2026, credit where it's due: Fox's headline on Trump's $5,000 "dividend" promise sat the pledge right next to the $40 trillion national debt. When the friendly channel prints the math, the math is loud. On 5 September 2026, the UN voted 164-1 for a map that shows Africa at its true size. Fox's article explained the map clearly. Its headline led with the one country that voted no. On 4 September 2026, Fox parted ways with Maria Bartiromo after 12 years. The company called it a "business decision," and her lawyer disputed reports that she was fired. Other newsrooms covered it as news. Fox's own site ran a short statement about who takes over her time slot. We also give Fox credit when it earns it, and we have. But none of this is a bias score. We don't run a model; we read headlines against the outlet's own article and against what other newsrooms did with the same facts, and we show our work. IS FOX NEWS RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? For straight facts from its news reporters, often yes. For opinion shows, no, and Fox runs a lot of opinion. The record so far: Dominion (April 2023): the $787.5 million settlement above, after a Delaware judge ruled before trial that the election-fraud claims at issue were false. Smartmatic: a separate defamation case, seeking $2.7 billion over 2020 election coverage, is still pending in New York state court. Fox denies the claims. In May 2026 an appeals court gave Fox some extra discovery tied to federal criminal charges against Smartmatic executives, but refused to pause the case. Summary judgment arguments were heard in December 2025 and, as far as we can find, no ruling and no trial date had been published by mid-October 2026. Dignified transfer footage (March 2026): Fox aired old video of President Trump at an earlier ceremony during coverage of a dignified transfer for troops killed in the Middle East. The network said a staff member pulled the archival footage by mistake, took responsibility, and anchor Griff Jenkins corrected it on air (AP, 8 March 2026). A correction is a point in favour, not against. Ofcom (November 2017): Britain's broadcast regulator found that episodes of "Hannity" and "Tucker Carlson Tonight" broke UK due-impartiality rules. Fox had already stopped broadcasting in the UK that August, citing low viewing figures. In the US, the FCC doesn't regulate what cable channels say, so there is no American regulator's record to point to. Lawsuits have done that job instead. Our rule of thumb: cite a Fox news article for what an official said or what happened. Check the facts elsewhere before you cite an opinion segment, and read the whole article, because the headline is usually where we find the problem. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns Fox News now? Fox Corporation, a public company. Lachlan Murdoch has held sole voting control of the family's Class B stake, about 36% to 39% depending on which filing you read, since the September 2025 trust settlement. The Roku purchase, if it closes in 2027, adds a streaming platform under the same roof and does not change that control. Is Fox News left or right? Right-leaning, in our assessment and by its own opinion lineup. Its news desk is more careful than its primetime shows, but the headlines we track lean the same way. Is Fox News Republican or Democrat? Neither, legally. It is a company, not a party. In practice its opinion hosts argue the Republican side most nights, and our archive above shows the news headlines tend to follow. Is Fox News reliable? Check it the way you'd check any single outlet. The news reporting is often solid. The opinion programming produced the claims behind a $787.5 million settlement. Is Fox News entertainment or news? Both. In the Dominion case, Fox's lawyers argued that some claims made on air were opinion rather than statements of fact. The court still let the case go forward. Is Fox News fair and balanced? It dropped that slogan in 2017. Our archive above is our answer. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 14 October 2026: added the $22 billion Roku deal and the 14 October Class B vote, refreshed ownership from the September 2026 proxy filings, updated ratings to the third quarter of 2026, added the March 2026 on-air correction, and swapped in four new archive examples from late September and October 2026.
In May 2017, Fox News ran a story claiming murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich — not Russian hackers — had leaked the Democratic Party's emails to WikiLeaks. The motive was obvious: it fit neatly into a narrative that Russia hadn't interfered in the 2016 election at all. There was just one problem: it wasn't true. Fox retracted the story within a week, but not before it spread across right-wing media as gospel. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, the FBI, and the U.S. intelligence community all later confirmed it was Russian military intelligence that hacked the DNC. Rich's grieving parents sued Fox for exploiting their son's murder to push a political narrative, and in October 2020 the network quietly settled for a seven-figure sum rather than let the case go to trial.