The evidence is damning. One of the smarter legal analysts in Washington these days is Quinta Jurecic, who writes for the Lawfare website. On a podcast discussing the just-released Fox documents, she said: “It’s confirmation of everything we’ve suspected about Fox.” And that’s certainly true.

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The trouble is, it’s actually much worse. In the released texts, we see that a key motivating factor for Fox was that, when the channel did start reporting the news – telling its audience that Trump lost, and that there had been no fraud – viewers changed the channel.

As revealed in the hearings and motions filed to date, Fox personalities such as Tucker Carlson can be seen fretting about the stock price going down. He and other stars targeted fellow staffers who did present the truth. When a Fox reporter posted a Tweet fact-checking – and dismissing – the claims against Dominion, Carlson texted another Fox host, Sean Hannity, “Please get her fired.” The offending tweet disappeared.

Part of the company’s motivation, in other words, was to present falsehoods for money. It kept casting doubts on the election – and in the process destroyed a company’s reputation – in a pitiful bid to keep viewers engaged.

Enter the whirlwind that Fox reaped. It’s kind of delicious to see Fox confounded, finally, not by decency or ethics – which, under the First Amendment in America, are not required qualities in a news organisation – but rather the mule-headed obstinance of its audience. Fox has been radicalising these folks for decades with lies and racist and hateful conspiracy theories. When the company pulled up short, the audience began leaving. So, Fox turned up the volume to get them back.

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Now, for the record, why Fox told the lies it did isn’t really relevant, legally speaking. (All media organisations are concerned about their audience.) But it does lead us to a final twist of a footnote.

Let’s look at the last time a jury had a chance to take a whack at one of these mouthpieces on the right. Ethical canker sore Alex Jones, the radio host who made millions spewing hate against the families of the children killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre, has already been assessed by appalled juries with almost $1.5 billion in fines, with more to come.

In the Dominion case, it is claimed that Fox sowed much more defamatory material, and at much higher volume – and caused much worse appreciable and probably irreparable financial harm to Dominion in the process. Legal cases are complex and sometimes turn on ancillary issues. Anything can happen. But I have a feeling that, if the case isn’t settled beforehand, a jury isn’t going to forget the image of Fox News hosts keeping an eye on the stock price as they promulgated lies on air.

When the Dominion trial is done and the jury renders a verdict, if it is a finding that Fox is liable in defamation, don’t be surprised if there are a lot of zeros on the end of the damages award.

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