The more honest of us try to correct for our prejudices, and we expect people whose job it is to communicate information that we call “news” to do their best to give it to us straight, even if their version of straight is a bit crooked due to conscious and unconscious bias. That’s why I tend to trust independent journalists whose politics I disagree with, but whose integrity I trust. Even if my conclusions differ from theirs, I don’t doubt their integrity.

It’s particularly disappointing when you find that people you should trust turn out to be lying to you, and even worse when they are doing it for their own benefit. And in this case, the perpetrator is an organization that conservatives tend to trust more than the MSM: Fox News.

I should say that I am not a Fox News viewer. All modern news channels rely on hype, speculation, “Alerts,” “Breaking News,” and all the other tricks needed to keep you glued to their channel. Fox pioneered the strategy, and everybody now does it because it works.

It’s the same strategy that casinos use to keep people glued to slot machines, where people mindlessly pour money into machines to get the beeps, boops, and occasionally shiny coins spewing out at you. It drives me nuts, but I get intellectually why it works to maintain attention.

But generally, I have found that the “news” side of Fox isn’t bad at all. For all its conservative reputation–well earned in its nighttime lineup–I found that it did a decent job of getting more perspectives into its news coverage than average. You actually do hear from liberals as well as conservatives, which is rare on other channels. The coverage definitely focuses on issues conservatives care about much more than other channels, but frankly, that is more the other channels’ fault for ignoring some issues.

Its nighttime lineup, though, is occasionally interesting from the clips I have seen, but definitely propaganda. I try to catch snippets without wasting time glued to the set.

It is the propaganda side of things about which I want to talk right now.

Fox is getting sued by Dominion Voting Systems for libel, and I have no opinion about the specific case. It’s pretty hard to meet the high standard of proving actual malice against a public figure, and Dominion definitely counts in that regard. I am not a fan of that standard, although I do agree that a standard higher than for private individuals should apply. Something like reckless disregard for the truth.

Dominion’s case has some merit, but I am unconvinced that even by the reckless disregard standard that they should prevail.

The case itself may not succeed, but the discovery has revealed some ugly truths about the internal workings of the network. Truths that should shake your faith in the organization as much as your faith in The Washington Post or the New York Times.

Whether Fox celebrities lied specifically about Dominion or not, the discovery shows that they did say things on air that they simply did not believe, and more often amplified narratives they believed to be false.

They didn’t do this for ideological reasons, but for even worse ones: they were playing to their audience in just the way that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann do. They worried that their ratings suffered every time they told the truth as they saw it, so they decided not to tell the truth.

A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.

Whether their judgment on the matter of fraud was correct or not really isn’t the issue; what is at issue for me is their willingness to say things on air that they believed to be false and give continual, generally uncritical coverage of claims they believed were baseless.

That is a betrayal, and exactly what I despise in politicians and news organizations. And it is much worse when the latter do it because we all assume that politicians are at least spinning things.

“The texts and emails support [Dominion’s] claim that Fox was more concerned about its audience and market share than the truth concerning the 2020 presidential election,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William & Mary Law School who specializes in the First Amendment and called the breadth of the internal communications “extraordinary.”

In a statement, a Fox spokesperson said: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”

I am unconvinced that some of Dominion’s arguments have any merit: they argue that Fox News should not have aired the president’s representatives when they said things the hosts thought were false. By merely platforming people saying false things the news channel is actually doing its job; Adam Schiff, who is a congenital liar, gets plenty of airtime.

 Whether somebody is wrong or not isn’t a reason to fail to report what they say. If that were true no politician would get much airtime. Giving airtime to arguments that the hosts disagree with is something they should do more of, not less.

But the hosts themselves mouthing words they believe are false or choosing to cover false claims because they audience wants to hear them? That is unforgivable.

Some exchanges showed Fox executives raising an alarm when journalists attempted to counter false claims from the Trump team.

On a Nov. 9 broadcast, news anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a live briefing by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, warning viewers that she was making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said on air. “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show this.”

Executives took notice: Cavuto’s actions were communicated to senior leadership at parent company Fox Corp. as a “Brand Threat.”

Meanwhile, they kept a close eye on ratings.

“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” one message from Fox News President Jay Wallace to his CEO read.“Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on war footing.”

Later that month, Fox broadcast the entirety of a news conference featuring Powell and fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani outlining their unsubstantiated case for election fraud — a performance that Murdoch dubbed “really crazy stuff,” in an email, “and damaging.”

But when Fox host Dana Perino speculated that such claims could draw a lawsuit from Dominion, Scott expressed concern in an email, saying on-air personalities couldn’t afford to “give the crazies an inch right now … they are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience.”

In another message, Scott noted, “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us … We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”

I am not naïve enough to believe that hosts should share every thought and judgment on the air, and shout “liar” when they believe somebody is saying something wrong. That would be stupid and actually wouldn’t serve viewers either.

But I do expect people to, when speaking their own words, say what they really believe, be it right or wrong. Anything else is a betrayal. And when they have a guest on who is saying something they believe to be false to challenge them to provide evidence.

Here are some clips from the very long filing Dominion gave to the court, and they have provided some quotes from texts, emails, and depositions that put Fox in a very bad light.

For me, the most disturbing revelation has to do with the mixing of financial motives and what got broadcast. This is exactly the sort of thing we all suspect, but to have it all out there in black and white and openly discussed is jawdropping.

Of even the best news sources I expect some curating–picking and choosing what they cover–and for that curation to not be free of self-interest. That is one of many reasons to get information from a wide range of sources, and why we expect authors of scientific papers to reveal conflicts of interest. Even the most honest people have limits beyond which they cannot hurt themselves in order to accomplish a goal.

That’s why we call people who go above and beyond heroes–they sacrifice more than we would expect for the public good–and we shouldn’t expect celebrities or anybody else to be heroes, but rather to have feet of clay.

But it is not heroic to refuse to spread lies, even if there is some cost. It is what we should expect of news reporters.

Fox News fell down here. They knew that spreading lies would help the ratings, so they did. They saw the ratings spike when they gave people a story they believed to be false, but the audience wanted to hear. That is incompatible with being a news provider.

Does this make Fox worse than the other news sources? Not at all. It makes them exactly like the other news networks, just with a different audience.

All this information comes from a lawsuit, and Dominion’s lawyers put it together to represent Fox in the worst possible light. This, too, is spin, and there is much more to the story. But the quotes from the horse’s mouth are pretty damning, if not enough to prove that Fox defamed Dominion.

Do I, myself, believe that there was election fraud? Probably not by Dominion itself, but certainly in the election as a whole. There always is fraud, because so much is at stake in each election. Trillions of dollars, and all the power in the world. People have killed for much less, and vote fraud is not killing.

So yes, it would be insane to think there was no fraud. Was there enough to alter the outcome of this election? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, the overall vote totals are close to real and Trump lost the popular vote, but the electoral college tallies were determined by a relatively small number of votes, so it is conceivable that fraud swung the electoral count. It is conceivable enough to make people legitimately question the security of the election and the fairness of the process.

Without absolute proof, though, the election must stand. The bar is high because the stakes are high. For damn sure the Republicans need much better lawyers to argue their cases when they have them. That is part of the process, and Republicans suck at it.

Accusations without evidence are simply partisan-tinged speculation. Fox was right to give some airtime to the accusations of powerful and influential people, but buttressing them without believing that the evidence is there is a step too far. Just as I thought the constant repetition of Adam Schiff’s baseless claims was irresponsible–the Left knew that he was lying–giving constant coverage to claims that the network knew or believed were false was wrong.

If we are going to hold the Left to reasonable standards, we should hold ourselves to them as well, even when it hurts. Allowing Guiliani to make his case once, twice, or a few times is journalism; allowing those claims to be repeated endlessly without additional evidence is not. It is playing to the audience’s prejudices and giving people a distorted view of the truth.

We should expect better.

Update (Ed): Fox News sent us this statement:

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan. Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”