GEOFF BENNETT: A new court filing shows top executives at FOX News and leading network personalities privately dismissed former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud in the days that followed the 2020 presidential election, even as they pushed those same lies on television.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX News Anchor: Tonight, every American should be angry.

You should be outraged.

You should be worried.

You should be concerned at what has happened in the election.

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX News Anchor: The Dominion software system has been tagged as one allegedly capable of flipping votes.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX News Anchor: How, for example, did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his former boss, rock star crowd surfer for Barack Obama?

GEOFF BENNETT: The court filings reveal that, behind the scenes, many of the network's top stars and executives derided Trump's election lies as -- quote -- "mind-blowingly nuts" and - - quote -- "totally off the rails," even as they criticized colleagues for pointing that out on TV.

The filing is part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit filed against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

Joining us now is David Folkenflik, who covers media for NPR.

David, thanks for joining us.

And, first, explain how we learned about these text messages, how they're part of this nearly $2 billion defamation lawsuit filed against FOX.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, National Public Radio: Right.

It's a blockbuster case that's been filed by Dominion Voting Services -- Systems, an election tech company that is at the core of a lot of these fraudulent claims of fraud that were ventilated on FOX News in the immediate aftermath of the November 2020 elections.

What we have here is this voluminous filing from Dominion that appeared last night.

And what they're doing is making a motion trying to convince the judge that, even before the trial portion of the case, he should just decide the case in their favor.

I don't think there's any real expectation that could happen.

But what they have done is compiled an almost encyclopedic record of what was happening in real time, drawing upon text messages and e-mails and other communications, as well as sworn depositions, in which FOX stars and executives and off-air journalists have been forced to acknowledge what they really thought about things under oath under questioning from Dominions' lawyers.

And it is a brutal, brutal portrait that we have seen about the cynicism, the sense of crisis, the fear and the anger that was generated inside of FOX in reaction to their audiences recoiling from the network's own call all of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, the first of any major network to do so.

GEOFF BENNETT: What becomes clear from reading through this filing is that FOX knowingly peddled election lies for ratings.

There's a text in particular from Tucker Carlson, and he is suggesting here that a FOX News White House correspondent should be fired for fact-checking a Trump claim about the election.

He says: "Please get her fired.

I'm actually shocked.

It needs to be stopped immediately, like tonight.

It's measurably hurting the company.

The stock price is down.

Not a joke."

How concerned was FOX about losing viewers to their right-wing rivals?

DAVID FOLKENFLIK: It was feverishly anxious about this issue.

And it raised fears inside.

It raised vitriol inside, anger inside.

You see that in a private message between Tucker Carlson and I believe Sean Hannity.

You saw the CEO, the chief executive of FOX News, Suzanne Scott, lashing out at Bill Sammon, their Washington managing editor, senior executive over political news for that network.

Why?

Because he took part in FOX News as call of Arizona for Joe Biden, which was exactly what its audiences didn't want to hear.

And people talked internally about this breaking the credibility and trust between FOX News and its audiences, its viewership built up over a generation, over 25 years.

You don't hear them talking about how credibility and trust can be broken by not sharing the truth with your audience, by not sticking to the facts.

And yet FOX News time and again brought on people, including then-President Trump, but also his surrogates and champions, people like Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others, to make claims that they were mocking and assailing, denigrating and trashing behind the air to one another, because they knew it was false.

But they were bringing them on.

Why?

To try to rebuild that trust in a hurry, as millions of viewers fled FOX, often for a much smaller conservative rival called Newsmax.

GEOFF BENNETT: David, you mentioned Sidney Powell, the Trump ally, conspiracy theorist lawyer.

And Sean Hannity, even as he was giving her airtime, he later said in a deposition -- quote - - "The whole narrative that Sidney Powell was pushing, I did not believe it for one second."

How has FOX News responded to all of this?

And what, if anything, does it do to their brand?

DAVID FOLKENFLIK: FOX will say that they are reporting or they were reporting newsworthy allegations from inherently newsworthy people about inherently newsworthy events, that is, the national elections and allegations by a sitting president.

Could there be a more newsworthy person?

They would say that FOX News is standing in for the press, writ large.

There has to be robust room for there to be rhetoric and hyperbole and overstatement and, yes, at times misstatements, when we're talking about important issues of national and political concern, because that's what the First Amendment envisions.

You have to have running room.

Otherwise, there isn't truly free speech.

GEOFF BENNETT: You have covered FOX News for more than 20 years.

What stood out to you the most from this revelation?

DAVID FOLKENFLIK: I think it is the most visceral and tangible proof of one of the strongest criticisms of FOX, that it functions in many ways as a political operation and a business enterprise and wraps itself in the word news, even with a cadre of journalists, some of whom very much believe in reporting things straight.

I think you saw the light being given to that.

And I think that you saw the cynicism and the antagonism to the idea that they be held responsible, that they behave responsibly, and that they had any obligation to the truth and the facts.

That's usually where people find credibility and trust.

In this case, they saw it only in telling people what they wanted to hear.

GEOFF BENNETT: David Folkenflik covers the media for NPR.

David, thanks again for your time.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK: You bet.