When BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, Fox News pundits rushed to the corporation's defense with excuses ranging from pitiful to conspiratorial. But now the ruling is out, exposing the falsities of Fox's defense: BP was to blame for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Fox News pundits pulled out all the stops to deflect blame from BP when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in 2010, killing 11 workers and causing devastating environmental impacts. They accused environmentalists and the government for "forcing" the company to drill further from shore and touted conspiracy theories. The network berated the Obama administration for "villainiz[ing]" and "demonizing" the corporation and compared Congressional hearings on the disaster to "Soviet-style" trials and "Inca ritual slaughter":

A federal court, however, ruled on September 4 that BP was largely responsible for the disaster -- not the scapegoats that Fox News tried to pin the blame on.

Watch the difference between Fox News' spurious defense and the facts:

A federal judge assigned 67 percent of the blame to BP, concluding that the corporation acted in “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct.” The Wall Street Journal reported on several instances where the court found that BP forewent safety measures in the name of profit: 

Struggling with a dangerously unstable oil well in April 2010, BP chose to drill an additional 100 feet into a fragile rock formation thousands of feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

That decision set in motion a series of failures that led to the deadly Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

“BP's decision to drill the final 100 feet was the initial link in a chain that concluded with the blowout, explosion and oil spill,” Judge Carl Barbier wrote. The decision “was dangerous,” he added, and “motivated by profit.”

Fox News has a history of aggrandizing corporations, often Big Oil, and often at the expense of people. Will the network continue to baselessly defend BP and other bad-acting corporations?

Video created by Coleman Lowndes.