Fox, which just announced that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman, unveiled a few more changes to its board of directors today.
An SEC filing listing the slate up for election at its November annual meeting showed Anne Dias and Jacques Nasser are not running again. They have both served since Fox became a standalone public company in 2019.
Dias’s name popped up in the flood of discovery material that was made public earlier this year, as Fox faced a defamation trial in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.
Among the revelations was that five days after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, Dias advised that “considering how important Fox News has been as a megaphone for Donald Trump, directly or indirectly, I believe the time has come for Fox News or you, Lachlan, to take a stance. It is an existential moment for the nation and for Fox News as a brand.”
Lachlan Murdoch then emailed Rupert, who advised him to tell Dias that they were talking along those lines and that Fox News, “which called the election correctly, is pivoting as fast as possible. We have to lead our viewers which is … not as easy as it might seem.”
Fox settled the case with Dominion for $787.5 million, but it is unclear whether Dias’s concerns would have been part of the trial, anyway. The judge had indicated that he would limit testimony related to January 6, as he was concerned about prejudicing the jury.
Fox is nominating two new directors. One is Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia. He was the PM from 2013-15, leader of the Liberal Party of Australia from 2009 to 2015 and a member of parliament from 1994 to 2019. He’s been an advisor to the UK Board of Trade since 2020 and served on the Board of Trustees of the Global Warming Foundation since 2023.
The other is Margaret “Peggy” L. Johnson, a former Microsoft and Qualcomm executive who has been CEO since 2020 of Magic Leap, an augmented reality company.
From 2014 to 2020, she was EVP of Business Development at Microsoft, responsible for strategic deals and partnership. Previously, she was EVP of Qualcomm Technologies and President of Global Market Development at Qualcomm Incorporated. She sits on the boards of BlackRock and Live Nation.