While it is well-known that Fox News is a propaganda machine for right-wing causes, it is not so widely understood that it got that way through the evil genius of Roger Ailes, the recently ousted CEO. Fox’s owner is media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch; however, Fox News was created by Roger Ailes, who ran it for 20 years, until he was recently ousted over allegations of his sexual harassment of several women newsperson at the network.
Attention is rightfully focused on Donald Trump’s unbelievable and disgusting behavior; however, we should remember that Fox News facilitated Trump’s presidential candidacy. Roger Ailes created Fox News as a political campaign that would run against the American media, that would convince millions of Americans not to trust the so-called mainstream media, and that would present Fox as the only truthful voice on television. As Gabriel Sherman, the author of a biography of Roger Ailes, argues, Donald Trump became the Republican nominee as a reality star because Ailes had injected right-wing populism into the national dialogue through his slanted television programming. For example, media watchdog groups, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and Media Matters for America, argue that Fox News reporting contains conservative editorializing within news stories.
Ailes, the former Republican strategist, micromanaged the network’s daily narratives and pushed the broader themes of the conservative dialogue. “Trumpism” is basically a creation of the modern conservative movement, which used coded appeals to racial prejudice for political purposes. Presently, this movement has found itself unable to rein in a candidate (Trump) who skipped the racial coding and went straight to unvarnished racial appeals.
Sherman informs us that Ailes influenced the political venture of Donald Trump directly as well as indirectly. Sherman reports that Ailes had known Trump a long time and was instrumental in building Trump’s platform as a politician. He provided Trump with a weekly call-in slot on the morning show, “Fox & Friends.” This enabled Trump to transform himself from a TV star to a politician. In addition, Ailes advised Trump behind the scenes, providing talking points, and suggesting ways for Trump to present himself as a politician.
So as we turn back Donald Trump–as we must, for the sake of the world–we should not lose sight of how Fox News has conditioned the country. On the one hand, large parts of the country have been conditioned by Fox News (and others) to follow the Pied Piper and vote against their own best interests. On the other hand, the Fox News political machine might keep rolling and turn out politicians with the same message but an improved language, one adhering to the coded racial messages.