Fox undermined our democracy by intentionally broadcasting lies

Editor:

Dominion Voting System filed court papers against Fox News Network. In the papers filed, Dominion provided internal memos and communications of Fox employees from the top of management to the producers and hosts of shows demonstrating that they were spreading and endorsing misleading and false statements, i.e., they lied to their audience.

Fox claims that Dominion “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.”

However, Fox has not provided any evidence to back up these claims while Dominion has provided troves of documents supporting their claims. The court papers make it abundantly clear that Fox was deliberately and reckless lying. They knew it and they kept lying.

To be clear, what Fox did (and still does) is not provide a conservative-bias view of events. They reported on events that they knew did not happen; they lied.

Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and others at Fox knew what they were telling their audience was false; that it was propaganda.

They knew and they still reported the lies. When Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a tweet by Mr. Trump, Mr. Carlson told Mr. Hannity to try to get her fired. Lying for profit apparently is Fox’s business model.

Why does Fox lie? The Dominion court filing indicates that Fox lied because they were afraid they were losing viewing market to competitors. Fox lied (and still lies) for profit.

What is the effect of their lies and propaganda? Their lies were designed to undermine faith in our election integrity, in our democratic institutions and in democracy itself. Fundamentally, the effect was to undermine our democracy.

Think about that, Fox is OK with discrediting our democracy. Beyond insulting and disrespecting their viewers, I question the patriotism of Fox. At any rate, what Fox does, is definitely not news. It is conspiracy theories and lies.

William Fine

Brockport