The evidence in a recent 159-page filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuit against Fox News for its role in 2020 election disinformation is so voluminous and blatant that Fox will have a tough time defending itself from a judgment, where Dominion is seeking a payment of $1.6 billion. Yet whether or not it loses this case is beyond the point.
Even if Fox had not defamed anyone who could turn around and sue, and it had simply engaged in First Amendment-protected speech repeating more broad stolen election falsities, it must be held accountable for the damage it caused in undermining a free and fair national vote and stoking an insurrection that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s not about having a conservative or liberal bent, but subverting democracy itself.
Messages, internal conversations and depositions obtained from Fox in discovery make clear that executives and high-profile hosts were fully aware that people like crackpot Trump attorney Sidney Powell were fabulists engaged in a dangerous effort to sow distrust in and overturn the 2020 election — an effort whose success would literally mean the death of American democracy — and chose to give them megaphones and stop their own reporters from fact-checking them.
