It’s old news that President Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020, claiming massive voter fraud. It’s also old news that Fox News claimed, particularly in the first few weeks after the election, that Mr. Trump’s claims were valid. They pushed a story that Dominion Voting Systems changed votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, thereby illegally swinging the election to Biden. Dominion provides electronic voting machines to more than 28 states.

Dominion then sued Fox News for $1.6 billion claiming that Fox knew none of the allegations were true but pushed them anyway. Today we found out that Fox News anchors sent emails to each other where they admitted that the allegations weren’t true and Trump operatives (like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell) were unreliable.

All along Fox has claimed that they are protected by New York Times v. Sullivan, a Supreme Court Case from 1964. In that case the court found that New York Times couldn’t be sued for honest reporting mistakes. Freedom of the press protects them unless it can be shown that the news organization either knowingly reported what they knew wasn’t true or they were incredibly reckless. Reckless, in this context, means that the organization went with the story while intentionally not investigating because they knew there was an excellent chance the story was wrong.

Today’s story shows that Fox News new their sources were fabricating their charges and that they went with the story fearing that they would lose viewers and make Donald Trump angry. The Constitution does not protect them.