The lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News began jury selection Thursday in anticipation of what may be a landmark defamation case. Dominion’s case revolves around what may be the biggest lie in America’s electoral history. It is easy to take a gratuitous shot at Fox News by labeling it as Fake News, but in this case, it is not only warranted but well earned. So many lies were propagated by Fox, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and a host of ne’er do-well mouthpieces that it seems a waste to recap. Everything from interference from a dead dictator to a ghost witness and a call to find 11,800 phantom voters were submitted. Fox News over the years has proven to be no better than the rags we would read in the grocery store line waiting to buy Twinkies and chocolate milk; Maybe that would be kale and almond milk in today’s parlance.
The trial venue will be in Delaware, where cameras are prohibited in the courtroom. I expected a flurry of filings invoking the Delaware Freedom of Information Act for such a critical trial, but it seems the major networks have imposed judicial silence. So we will get the adult version of the cartoon network each evening, with artist renderings of Tucker Carlson’s blank stare and glassy-eyed Jeanine Pirro, hiccups omitted. I understand why the news media has taken this posture, self-preservation. Even in the face of journalistic malpractice, the media is loathed to let the public peek behind the curtain.
In the Dominion v. Fox Case, it would be like allowing the neighbors to witness one beating one’s out-of-control child. They may deserve the business end of the rod, but it does not bode well for one’s parenting skills. The problem with that thinking is that the media in the wrong hands has destructive power. Ironically, the only force capable of exposing the misuse of the media’s strength is the media. I have heard friends and family—on either side of the ideological plane regurgitate a lie with their only proof being, ‘I heard it on tv.’ Thousands of red-hat-wearing Trump supporters stormed the citadel of the American government on January 6. Why? They heard a lie in their media silo.
Fox News has filled the airwaves with lies for so long that nothing would be more cathartic than publicly debunking their lies. Six years past his presidency, countless right-wingers still believe that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. because they heard it on Fox. The adage, Sunlight is the best disinfectant, popularized by Justice Louis Brandeis in 1913, could not be truer for Fox News. Fox has long stood by the motto, “We report, you decide.” When in truth, the slogan should have been, We report and decide for you. Interest—in how the straight media covers the Dominion defamation suit—should be paid. Will the media profess allegiance to the freedom they believe even Fox should enjoy, or will they cross the thin blue byline?
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