While it is well known that Fox News is a propaganda machine for right-wing causes, it is not so well known that it got that way through the (evil-?) genius of Roger Ailes, the late CEO. Fox’s owner is media tycoon Rupert Murdoch; however, Roger Ailes created Fox News and ran it for 20 years, until he was ousted over allegations of sexual harassment of several women newspersons at the network.
Attention is rightfully focused on Donald Trump’s unbelievable and disgusting behavior; however, we should remember that this was facilitated by Fox news. Roger Ailes created Fox News as a political campaign that would run against the American media, which would convince millions of Americans not to trust the so-called mainstream media. That would present Fox as the only truthful voice on television.
Ailes polished his political skills as a media consultant for Ronald Reagan’s campaign and later with the notorious Lee Atwater on the GeorgeH. W. Bush campaign in 1987 and 1988. He came up with the “Orchestra Pit Theory” regarding political coverage in the media. He famously said if one candidate says he has a solution to the middle east problem and the other candidate falls into the orchestra pit, the media will tend to cover falling into the orchestra pit. In other words, sensationalism works.
As Gabriel Sherman, the author of Roger Ailes’s biography noted that Donald Trump became the Republican nominee as a reality star because Ailes injected right-wing populism through his television programming. Ailes, the former Republican strategist, micromanaged the network’s daily narratives and pushed the conservative dialogue’s broader themes. “Trumpism” is a creation of the modern conservative movement, which used coded appeals to racial prejudice for political purposes. This movement found itself unable to rein in a candidate who skipped the racial coding and went straight to unvarnished racial appeals.
Sherman informs us that the influence of Ailes in the political venture of Donald Trump was direct as well as indirect. Sherman reports that having known Trump a long time, Ailes 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,” that enabled Trump to transform himself from a TV star to a politician. Also, Ailes advised Trump behind the scenes, providing talking points and suggesting ways for Trump to present himself as a politician.
As we are in the process of turning back Donald Trump—this threat to 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 that adheres to the coded racial messages.
