We need this Fox Dominion trial for the sake of democracy Michael Tomasky makes the case: Here’s an instructive and telling little exercise for you, one that I engaged in myself this past Sunday morning. Head over to Google and search for “NBC defamation lawsuits by former employees.” And then, do the same with CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. You’ll find a few interesting incidents. A Native American employee sued NBC over discrimination at the 30 Rock workplace. The CBS affiliate in Dallas settled an age discrimination case brought by an on-air reporter. After you’ve done that, go Google “Fox News defamation lawsuits by former employees”—and watch your computer explode. There’s the record $1 million fine Fox paid in 2021 over various #MeToo allegations from female employees. There’s the staggering $20 million Fox agreed to pay to Gretchen Carlson in 2016. There’s the far bigger $90 million settlement reached the next year concerning allegations of sexual misconduct surrounding Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. There was the $15 million paid to a former female host who alleged pay discrimination. And these are just suits filed by Fox’s own employees; they don’t include other such settlements like the $100 million Fox paid out in the British phone-hacking scandal—the details of which, if one bothers to recall them, add up to an unbelievable breach for a “news organization” to have committed. (The short version goes something like this: News of the World hired “investigators” to hack the phones of celebrities, politicians, families of soldiers killed in war, and the family of a missing 13-year-old girl who was…