FOX may be in serious trouble due to the ongoing Dominion lawsuit, which accuses them of defamation by claiming Dominion voting machines flipped votes for Trump to votes for Biden.
As expected, FOX insists that Dominion is suing for speech protected under the First Amendment. But that argument isn’t holding up since the recent release of internal communications at FOX made clear that everybody at the #1 cable news network knew the claims of a stolen election in 2022 were baseless and dangerous.
Besides, isn’t the point of the First Amendment to allow people to express themselves freely? Does anyone believe expressing oneself freely includes spreading manufactured lies under the pretense of personal beliefs?
The First Amendment
While the First Amendment specifies the right to individual and communal religious expression and protects freedom of the press, the fundamental purpose is to allow people to speak the truth without interference from the government. It was never meant to safeguard liars, fraudsters, or conspiracy theorists who twist facts to support beliefs unfounded by evidence.
Like the inane Second Amendment arguments the far-right constantly cites to confuse their uninformed base into thinking the right to a “well-regulated militia” means an antisocial 18-year-old has a right to access an assault weapon, the First Amendment argument FOX is hiding behind as they battle for the right to manipulate and pander to their viewers is ridiculous.
The hosts who spewed The Big Lie (a conspiracy in every sense of the word) knew there was “no there, there,” but they pushed the fake news anyway.
“‘Sidney Powell is lying,’ Tucker Carlson wrote to a producer about the Trump lawyer, who once claimed in a guest spot that voting technology companies ‘flipped’ Trump votes to Biden.’”
Carlson wasn’t the only one at FOX who questioned the validity of the content FOX TV hosts (I refuse to use the word “news” when referring to the network of liars and panderers who have done more to destroy democracy in this country than any other single entity) spread continuously in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“Terrible stuff damaging everybody,” wrote company founder Rupert Murdoch, about wild claims raised by Powell and fellow Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani. The recipient of his note, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, agreed. In another message, Murdoch referred to the claims as “really crazy stuff” and said that it was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere.”
From the hosts to the CEO to the owner of FOX TV, all of them are now on record as admitting the nonsense spewed by Sidney Powell, Rudy Guliani, and the entire Trump team was untrue. It wasn’t their opinion either — it was total B.S.
In a trove of documents and deposition transcripts released to the public last Thursday (2.16.23) and highlighted in a Washington Post article, FOX is finally about to pay the consequences of its actions. It would be one thing to lose $1.6B — the amount Dominion is suing for — but the more significant issue for FOX will be the public admission that nobody at the Murdoch-owned behemoth believed any of the B.S. they were broadcasting for the past two years and probably long before that time frame.
Will this news reach the FOX Republican base?
In web searching this topic, I found nothing showing FOX coverage of the Dominion lawsuit. I am not willing to watch FOX TV to find out if they are covering it there, but I doubt it.
The only way the FOX viewing public will get wind of the fact that they’ve been systematically lied to by the only news network they trust would be if said trusted news network covered the story of how they lied to their viewers—fat chance, at least for now.
But Dominion voting systems are not the only ones who have standing here — the American public has the right to expect news outlets regulated by the FCC to provide news, not lies. So what happened?
Where was the FCC when FOX spread The Big Lie?
The Federal Communications Commission was supposed to protect consumers from deliberately misleading or “distorted” content. But here’s the problem: no one has updated FCC regulations to include anything other than broadcast news.
So, broadcast news stations like ABC, NBC, etc., are covered by regulations protecting consumers, but cable news outlets are not covered. Nor is internet radio or social media.
Here is the text from the FCC website:
The scope of the news distortion policy is limited in several respects. First, the regulation applies only to the broadcast medium, which means that the FCC has no power to enforce it against cable news networks, newspapers or newsletters (whether online or print), social media platforms, online-only streaming outlets or any other non-broadcast news platform.
That’s like saying we’re protected by law from murder, but only if the murderer is using a bow and arrow.
Not only has the FCC failed to protect the public, but there is another even more sinister outcome of the failure to update FCC regulations: Republicans can use this failure as evidence that government regulation does not work and is a waste of taxpayer dollars. This is how Republicans play the game. First, refuse to maintain regulations to keep them relevant and useful, then point to the failure of these same regulations to push the narrative that the government can’t be trusted to protect the people.
Fortunately, Dominion is doing the government’s job for them. By bringing the lawsuit for defamation against FOX and refusing to settle, they may finally force FOX to not only pay a considerable sum (large even by the wealthy Murdoch family’s standards), but with any luck, they will also force FOX to make a public apology.
Here’s hoping the punishment FOX receives from this lawsuit includes forcing them to publicize their mea culpa on their cable channel, where everyone who believed the lies they told will see it.
Perhaps then we can finally begin moving toward truth as a real and valuable commodity once again.