Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) defended his decision to give conservative TV host Tucker Carlson access to roughly 40,000 hours of security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, telling reporters that the footage will soon be released broadly and that his office is taking measures to address concerns about security risks, the Washington Post reports.

Said McCarthy: “It almost seems like the press is jealous. And that’s interesting because every person in the press works off exclusives on certain things.”

New York Times: “Ever since Donald J. Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News Channel have struggled with how to handle the man and the movement they helped create.”

“For the most part, Mr. Murdoch has been wildly successful at striking the balance. Fox converted Mr. Trump’s mass following into loyal viewers who deliver Mr. Murdoch and his shareholders huge profits.”

“But the emails among the Murdochs and the senior leadership of their companies, along with depositions of both men as part of the case, revealed just how Fox and its leaders strained to push back against Mr. Trump when he began spreading unfounded claims about widespread election fraud.”

Amanda Carpenter: “Dominion must meet a high standard to win its $1.6 billion case. But the filings are already proving something significant, beyond the shadow of a doubt: that Fox casually and knowingly feeds its viewers lies.”

“Dominion has documented how their leading voices don’t believe what they say on the air. How they are afraid to tell you what they really think. Therein lies the peril of Fox’s pander-for-profit model.”

Donald Trump is furious with his former ally Rupert Murdoch after the media mogul made admissions that some of his Fox News hosts “endorsed” lies that the 2020 election had been “stolen,” the Daily Beast reports.

Said Trump: “Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves—they already are.”

Earlier for members: Rupert Murdoch Spills the Secret

Rupert Murdoch and one of his top executives privately disparaged Rudy Giuliani as he pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Insider reports.

Said Col Allan, a former editor in chief of the New York Post: “He’s unhinged. Has been for a while. I think booze has got him.”

“Murdoch and Allan appeared to be discussing a bizarre press conference Giuliani held on November 7, 2020, at the Four Seasons garden center outside Philadelphia, which had apparently been mistakenly booked in a mixup with the Four Seasons hotel in the city.”

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in a deposition that he had told Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch’s son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, that “Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories,” the New York Times reports.

Said Ryan: “Fox was trying to navigate this dynamic between a core group of Trump loyalists who were ignoring the truth.”

Jonathan Capehart quit the Washington Post editorial board after a dispute over an editorial about 2024 politics, leaving the paper with an all-white editorial board, Axios reports.

“Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from former President Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.

Said Murdoch: “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight.”

David French: “Fox isn’t just the news hub of right-wing America, it’s a cultural cornerstone, and its business model is so successful that it’s more accurate to think of the rest of the right-wing media universe not as a collection of competitors to Fox, but rather as imitators.”

“From television channels to news sites, right-wing personalities aren’t so much competing with Fox as auditioning for it.”

A group of media organizations is demanding access to a tranche of surveillance and police videos from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, CBS News reports.

The letter was sent on behalf of CBS News, CNN, Politico, ProPublica ABC, Axios, Advance, Scripps, the Los Angeles Times, and Gannett.

“The disclosure of emails and texts in which Fox News executives and personalities disparaged the same election conspiracies being floated on their shows has greatly increased the chances that a defamation case against the network will succeed,” the Washington Post reports.

“Dominion Voting Systems included dozens of messages sent internally by Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch and on-air stars such as Tucker Carlson in a brief made public last week in support of the voting technology company’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network. Dominion claims it was damaged in the months after the 2020 election after Fox repeatedly aired false statements that it was part of a conspiracy to fraudulently elect Joe Biden.”

“Dominion said the emails and texts show that Fox’s hosts and executives knew the claims being peddled by then-president Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell weren’t true — some employees privately described them as ‘ludicrous’ and ‘mind blowingly nuts’— but Fox kept airing them to keep its audience from changing channels.”

“Carlos Watson, the founder of the troubled digital start-up Ozy Media, was arrested and charged with fraud by federal investigators,” the New York Times reports.

“Prosecutors said in a court document dated Wednesday that Mr. Watson had ‘engaged in a scheme to defraud Ozy’s potential investors, potential acquirers, lenders and potential lenders’ by misrepresenting the company’s audience numbers and financial results. The court filing about Mr. Watson’s arrest was dated Thursday.”

Furious female staffers at CNN have threatened to quit if Don Lemon stays on-air following his sexist comments last week that Nikki Haley and women in their 40s are “past their prime,” the Daily Mail reports.

But the New York Times says Lemon will return to the network on Wednesday after he agreed “to participate in formal training.”