Does a news broadcasting organization have the responsibility to report the truth as it seems to them?  We usually assume that news  commentators take a sincere stand, and they want us to consider it thoughtfully.  They have to comment forcefully or they would not have an audience, but they should comment on the truth, not what they know to be a lie.

During a period when Trump lawyer Sidney Powell was coming on Fox with the allegations of election fraud, including the allegations against Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing the network, the news hosts held her in contempt, yet softened their skepticism when they were on the air

Said privately on Nov. 22, 2020

Shah to Pfeiffer

so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it.

Pfeiffer to Shah

She is a [expletive] nutcase.

Carlson to Ingraham

[Powell is] a nut, as you said at the outset. It totally wrecked my weekend. Wow… I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before

Ingraham to Carlson

No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.

Carlson to Ingraham

But they said nothing in public. Pretty disgusting.

The next day, Mr. Carlson appeared to soften his public stance, suggesting that some of the criticisms about voting machines had merit and concluding, “This is a real issue no matter who raises it.”

The text messages in the background posed the question of whether news commentators like Carlson and Ingraham had the responsibility to clarify what they saw as a questionable story. Fox News is arguing that they do not:

Fox News has argued in court that the First Amendment protects its right to broadcast false claims if they are inherently newsworthy — and in this case that there was nothing more newsworthy at the time than a sitting president’s allegations of widespread voter fraud.

This may come as a shock to some of the faithful watchers of Carlson and Ingraham, who may quote them as authorities to argue a political position.  But not only do they sometimes say things they don’t believe, they think they have a Constitutional right to do so. The free press demands that lies be covered as much as truth and without necessarily distinguishing one from the other, they say.  A fascinating defense, one which could damage the credibility of news commentators, whose followers hold them in highest esteem.

Why would the Fox News commentators lie? Because they knew their viewers wanted to hear conspiracy theories around voting. The competition, NewsMax, for example, was drawing their viewers away by letting conspiracy theories run rampant on their news programs.  In other words, Fox News was willing to give Sidney Powell free rein to spout her lies if it would mean keeping their viewers turned to Fox.

Sidney Powell is also being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for proclaiming ” her unfounded beliefs that Dominion was linked to communist Venezuela and Georgia officials were in on election fraud.”  Her extravagant conspiracy theories concluded that voting machines converted Trump votes into Biden votes.

This claim was so bizarre that Powell’s defense team claimed in court, that reasonable people wouldn’t have believed as fact her assertions of fraud after the 2020 presidential election.

Indeed, Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as ‘wild accusations’ and ‘outlandish claims.’ They are repeatedly labelled ‘inherently improbable’ and even ‘impossible.’ Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/22/politics/sidney-powell-dominion-lawsuit-election-fraud/index.html

By inference, should we then assume that the viewers of Fox News do not take the wild allegations that Powell made on their news shows as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims”?  You rarely hear people argue their positions by prefacing them, “If you were to believe Fox News . . .” because they do believe them and do not dismiss outlandish conspiracy theories.

So the revelation that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham doubt the truth of their guests’ claims may be news to their viewers. Viewers do not consider those shows “entertainment,” as some Fox lawyers argue, but as reliable news. That’s the rub, and that is the pretext on which Fox attracts it major share of the news media market.

If nothing else, the Dominion Voting Systems law suit has pulled back the curtain on Fox News and left exposed their sellout to the market share rather than the truth. They are just a step behind the desperate retreat from the facts that Sidney Powell is making. Her legal position is barely distinguished from what Fox would adopt as an ethics statement about their news content, that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts.

Time to switch channels.