Final month, Fox, a enterprise managed by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, agreed to pay $787.5mn to Dominion Voting Programs to settle the latter’s $1.6bn defamation case in opposition to it. Justin Nelson, Dominion’s lawyer, insisted in response to this settlement that it reveals that “the reality issues” and “lies have penalties”. That is true, however solely to a restricted extent.

The enterprise mannequin revealed in startling element in exchanges amongst Fox executives and stars is determined by giving its viewers the purple meat they need. If that features falsehoods, so be it. Requested whether or not he may have instructed the highest individuals at Fox to cease placing Rudy Giuliani (one of the crucial assiduous promoters of lies concerning the 2020 US election) on air, Rupert Murdoch replied “I may have. However I didn’t.” His inaction revealed all.

Because the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan mentioned: “You’re entitled to your opinion. However you aren’t entitled to your personal info.” Details can generally be debated. However very often, as on this case, falsehood can’t be: these are usually not “various info”, however lies. In Reality and Politics, Hannah Arendt tells a narrative about Georges Clemenceau, chief of France on the finish of the primary world struggle. Requested who was chargeable for the struggle, he replied: “I don’t know. However I do know for sure they won’t say Belgium invaded Germany.” Donald Trump didn’t win the presidential election of 2020. His allegations of fraud are lies.

For sure, totalitarian regimes of each left and proper have promoted falsehood freely. For them, lies have been (and are) an instrument of management. Democracies are imagined to be totally different and, on this case, they have been, in a single necessary respect. The unbiased truth-revealing mechanism of the regulation pressured Fox to show its consciousness that it was spreading outright falsehoods.

Do such lies matter? Very a lot so. Within the absence of settlement on the info, democratic debate can barely begin. However these lies have a very highly effective significance, as a result of they have been (and are) an try and overthrow democracy itself.

Democracy may be outlined as a civilised civil struggle. It recognises the existence of variations of opinion, however resolves these peacefully, via elections, that are the elemental establishment of consultant democracy. Elections decide legitimacy. However to take action they have to be recognised as honest

A lie concerning the final result of an election, then, is not only any lie. It’s not even simply any political lie. It straight threatens democracy. It’s an try and overthrow elections because the arbiter of energy. That’s what Trump tried to do. It’s what all those that supported or enabled him have tried to do. It’s what Fox’s protection of the election, not least the countless promotion of lies concerning the security of the voting, tried to do.

You’re seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. That is almost definitely on account of being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

That isn’t a minor delinquency which the world ought to simply overlook. Democracy is endangered throughout a lot of the world, whereas the US is the world’s most important democracy. Makes an attempt to subvert democracy’s core establishment in its heartland are unpardonable. But they’re, alas, not shocking. Because the British journalist Matthew d’Ancona argues in Prospect, Fox was “just like the scorpion within the well-known fable, stinging the frog of democracy it was being carried on, sinking them each right into a quagmire of dishonesty, disinformation and dysfunction. It was merely being true to its nature. It nonetheless is.”

A defender would possibly argue that none of this was Fox’s fault. It simply did what it needed to do, so as to give its prospects what they needed. This, one would possibly be aware, is what a drug supplier would argue. On this case, furthermore, Fox was not simply satisfying a pre-existing need. It performed a big half in creating the habit to excessive rightwing demagoguery, of which Trump is so good an exponent. As Jim Sleeper has famous within the Columbia Journalism Evaluation: “Fox surrenders, or retargets, journalism not solely to entertain but additionally to stoke and channel rivulets of public anger and concern into torrents of political energy.”

Think about what would occur if a future presidential election have been to be even nearer. Establishments would possibly then be stretched past breaking level. But, perhaps, it’s already too late to do something about it. Given present deep divisions, any try and replace the previous “equity doctrine” (suspended in 1987) to cowl as we speak’s broadcasters can be unacceptable and unworkable. One can argue, too, that it’s not possible to forestall the widespread dissemination of lies, given our social media. All one has is the hope that the citizens and judiciary will stay sturdy in opposition to future efforts at subversion.

You’re seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. That is almost definitely on account of being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

For these international locations that haven’t but fallen into these swamps, nonetheless, it’s important to guard the funding and independence of public service broadcasters, such because the BBC, and to insist that every one broadcasters have an obligation to not inform lies. Ought to they break this obligation, they need to promptly lose their licences, that are a privilege not a proper. They don’t entitle broadcasters to evangelise sedition in opposition to the democratic polity that gave delivery to them.

One has to recollect three large issues concerning the market economic system. The primary and most basic is that one should not do all the pieces that’s worthwhile. Certainly, there needs to be a prolonged listing of actions one is just not entitled to do. The second is that a number of the issues one should not do may be authorized or, if opposite to regulation, exhausting to forestall. The final and most necessary subsequently is that the survival of a civilised society is determined by ethical restraint, notably from its main figures. In 1954, Joseph Nye Welch, chief counsel for the US military, responded to the red-baiting of Senator Joe McCarthy by asking “Have you ever no sense of decency, sir?” Free societies will die if these with affect, wealth and energy lack that advantage.

martin.wolf@ft.com

Comply with Martin Wolf with myFT and on Twitter