Journalists get things wrong. Newspapers and digital news publications and broadcast news outlets make mistakes. Like in all fields and all disciplines, errors are simply bound to occur.

But the fact of the matter is, tens of thousands of journalists across the country spend their each and every day striving to get things right, to tell the truth, and make sure the facts are accurately presented. And while trust in news organizations might be down, journalism is built on the expectation of a diligent attempt to factually report the news and admit when mistakes are made.

According to newly disclosed messages and testimony from a lawsuit filed by the voting machine company Dominion, Fox News intentionally abused this implicit contract and knowingly promoted false statements about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“Fox News stunned the Trump campaign on election night by becoming the first news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president,” the New York Times reported. “Then, as Fox’s ratings fell sharply after the election and the president refused to concede, many of the network’s most popular hosts and shows began promoting outlandish claims of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy involving Dominion machines to deny Mr. Trump a second term.”

It was the beginning of a campaign of disinformation that attempted to discredit the legitimacy of a democratic American election. Two Trump lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, led the charge, and Fox was apparently eager to book them as guests and promote their demented conspiracies — no matter how outlandish they became.

But while Fox and its most prominent stars were giving ample airtime to Guliani and Powell and their ridiculous claims of fraud, the newly disclosed messages appear to show that many at the network — including hosts and network leadership — knew it was all bogus. Not only did they dismiss the authenticity of Trump’s claims out of hand, they also spent plenty of time roundly mocking the former president and his cronies.

In other words, it appears as though Fox’s leadership and its most popular hosts knowingly promoted false statements about a presidential election in order to boost ratings and make money.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Fox host Tucker Carlson wrote to fellow host Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

“Sidney is a complete nut,” Ingraham replied.

“It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” Carlson said.

The inanity didn’t stop there, though. Carlson and Sean Hannity also appear to have vied to get reporter Jacqui Heinrich fired for fact-checking a tweet from Trump about Dominion and noting that no evidence of votes being destroyed could be found. The reason Heinrich’s work was worthy of firing? “It’s measurably hurting the company,” Hannity wrote in a Nov. 12, 2020, text. “The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

As we said, mistakes happen. We are all human. But there is a sharp difference between making a mistake and choosing over and over to lie. It appears as though Fox, at every turn, knew better. Yet the network and its hosts persisted.

This disingenuous behavior would be disgusting even if it hadn’t helped set the stage for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which cost five people their lives and brought our country as close as it’s been in a century to seeing democracy crumble.

Now, despite the damning nature of the allegations against Fox, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has granted Tucker Carlson exclusive access to thousands of hours of security footage from inside the Capitol during that riot. The network has proved it cannot be trusted to prioritize truth over ratings. On top of that, Carlson has been on a mission to baselessly paint the riot as a “false flag” operation carried out by the government.

Again, we all make mistakes. But there is a sharp difference between making a mistake and choosing over and over to put your trust in an organization that sees you only as a ratings point to dupe for its own financial gain.

The problem, of course, is that in this hyperpartisan time, the truth has become politicized. For some, publishing negative news about one’s own political allies has become akin to treason. So, the sad reality is that many of Fox’s more ardent viewers might have no idea the network has been intentionally misleading them, simply because it hasn’t been covered by Fox-friendly outlets. And many others will, after years of conditioning, see it as another attempt by a nefarious government cabal to cancel those brave enough to tell their maimed version of the “truth.”

While the allegations made by Dominion against Fox have been called “incredibly damning” and some have argued that press freedoms don’t protect Fox’s lies, the bar for defamation is extremely high — as it should be. But the facts that have been uncovered in the case prove without a doubt where Fox’s priorities lie: with ratings and profits.

The truth is an afterthought.

This is nothing new.

But that doesn’t mean we have to stand for it.

For years we have seen “alternative facts” and “fake news” help drive a dividing wedge through American culture and politics. Our ability to compromise has floundered, as neither party has been able to agree on the facts of a given issue, let alone what the solutions might be.

To begin the arduous work of bridging our divides, we must find a way to restore the conception of a national reality based on a shared set of facts. This will require all of us — Republican, Democrat and everyone in between and beyond — to put our faith in sources of news that dedicate themselves to the truth.

The legal punishment for Fox News can and should be meted out in the courts. But the court of public opinion has seen more than enough to know that Fox News no longer deserves anyone’s attention.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board