It wasn’t critics, political enemies or their bosses that united Fox News stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham when they gathered via text message for a grievance session shortly after the 2020 election.

It was the news section of their own network.

They are pathetic, wrote Carlson.

THEY ARE NOT SMART, Ingraham stressed.

What news have they released over the past four years? Hannity asked.

The November 13, 2020 conversation was included in thousands of pages of recently declassified documents related to Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion libel lawsuit against Fox over its post-election coverage. Ultimately, like much of what was discovered, the exchange may have little bearing on whether Fox will be found guilty of libel.

Instead, the material offers insight into how the stars and Fox leadership reacted in a time of great fear and how giving the public what they wanted to hear took precedence over reporting uncomfortable truths.

The revelations have supported critics who say the Fox News Channel should be considered a propaganda network rather than a news outlet.

But while the Fox news side has seen the prominent defections of Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace in recent years, it still employs many respected journalists such as Jennifer Griffin, Greg Palkot, John Roberts, Shannon Bream, Bryan Llenas, Jacqui Heinrich and Chad Pergram.

They wonder if the series of recent stories about Fox from the Dominion documents and from Carlson’s use of Capitol security videos to craft his own story about the January 6, 2021 attack will make their job more difficult. Will fewer people want to work with them because of Fox’s dominance of opinion?

Fox says it has increased its investment in journalism by more than 50% under Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, and usually leads its rivals in ratings during major news coverage.

We are incredibly proud of our team of journalists who continue to bring breaking news from around the world and will continue to fight to preserve the First Amendment, the network said in a statement.

The post-election period in 2020 presented a stern test. The network’s statement on election night that Joe Biden had won in Arizona, ahead of any other news organization, infuriated viewers. Many were sympathetic to former President Trump’s claims of significant voter fraud, even though there is no evidence then, as now, for this.

After covering a press conference with Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani on Nov. 19, Fox reporter Kristin Fisher said her Washington boss, Bryan Boughton, called to say he was unhappy with her report. She said she was told to try harder to respect our audience, according to documents released in the case.

I believed I was respecting our audience by telling them the truth, Fisher, who now works at CNN, tested in a statement on the Dominion case.

She later claimed that she was stripped of airtime in retaliation.

Heinrich angered Fox poll presenters by tweeting a fact-check of some of Trump’s claims. In a text, Carlson rudely told her to be fired; Fox said she was later promoted to White House correspondent.

She has the guts to do this, Fox publicity chief Irena Briganti said in an internal memo released among the court papers, and if this gets picked up, viewers will be even more disgusted. Her job is to report, not taunt the President of the United States.

During a text conversation on Nov. 14, Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp., talked about how a Trump rally should be broadcast on the network.

Newsboys should be careful how they report on this meeting, Murdoch said. So far, some of the caveats have been slightly anti, and they shouldn’t be. The story should be this huge celebration of the president.

In another post, he called Fox correspondent Leland Vittert smug and obnoxious. Vittert now works at NewsNation.

A week after the election, a Fox Corp. senior executive, Raj Shah, said in a memo that bold, clear and decisive action is needed to regain the trust we are losing with our core audience.

Dominion argues, as part of his lawsuit, that nervousness about what his viewers wanted led Fox to make allegations that the voting machine company was complicit in fraud that hurt Trump, even though many people on the network didn’t believe them. In his own statement, Fox founder Rupert Murdoch admitted that the election had been fair and not stolen.

Fox counters that it broadcast newsworthy accusations from the president and his followers.

Concerns about the backlash in Arizona spread to the news department, according to court documents. Fox News anchor Bret Baier said defending the call made him uncomfortable and suggested awarding the state to Trump instead. Roberts also sent a memo saying he got in big heat over the decision.

In 2012, Fox was strongly behind his decision office when network commentator and veteran GOP aide Karl Rove questioned his correct call that Barack Obama had won in Ohio, essentially securing re-election against Republican Mitt Romney.

In a memorable televised moment, Megyn Kelly marched down the hall to hear the decision desk explain why the call had been made.

Eight years later, signs of embarrassment appeared on Fox in the days following his Arizona call. When other news organizations finally declared Biden president-elect on the Saturday morning after the election, Fox waited about 15 minutes.

On November 20, 2020, Rupert Murdoch discussed with Scott in a private memo whether two Washington executives key to the Arizona race call should be fired, saying it would send a big message to Trump’s allies. The executives, Bill Sammon and Chris Stirewalt, lost their jobs two months later.

A Fox spokeswoman characterized the discussions of the call in Arizona as part of a typical post-mortem investigation that takes place after major news events. Despite intense research, Fox stood by his call. Although Sammon and Stirewalt were forced to leave, Fox retained consultant Arnon Mishkin, who ran the decision desk, for the 2024 election.

Scott, who is accountable to corporate bosses, noted in her statement that she considered herself a television producer.

I don’t consider myself a journalist, said the head of Fox News Media. I consider myself a TV executive. I hire journalists. I hire news people.

Longtime Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes was not a journalist, and his background was also in politics. However, for some longtime Fox viewers, Ailes recognized that Fox’s opinion drew strength from a solid news side, and he kept stronger barriers between the two.

Some of the information revealed in recent weeks illustrates how, in many ways, Fox has become less of an agenda-setter than an outlet that follows its audience, said Nicole Hemmer, a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.

To date, no one in Fox management has spoken to its journalists about the Dominion case, leading some to wonder if anyone is standing up for them, said a Fox journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation.

In a brief filing Friday, Fox said many of the exposés Dominion introduced were internal communications, often incendiary and headlines, but irrelevant to every point of contention.

According to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Fox News continues to do good journalism. She mentioned Fox News Sunday’s transition from Wallace to Bream.

However, the fallout from the Dominion case leaves open the question of whether Fox journalists should be allowed to do their jobs without being constrained by other forces, she said.

It would be helpful at this point for Fox News to make a clear statement that the news division has full and total autonomy and that a clear line is drawn between it and the rest of Fox, Jamieson said.

____Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Gary Fields in Washington, Jennifer Peltz in New York, and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.