827 Fox News changed the world
"We live in the world that Roger
Ailes bequeathed us. It is a world of vivid colour and certainty of view, of
endless threat and hyper-vigilance. A world in which good and evil is
delineated by presenters with lustrous hair and brilliant teeth." SMH
How Roger
Ailes and Fox News changed the world
SMH
"Ailes created the political
environment that allowed Donald Trump to become president, a news and political
model that has swept the western world, including Australia.
"Ailes was the creator of Fox News,
the hard right cable news channel that came to dominate American politics and
that made Rupert Murdoch one of the most powerful men on earth.
"Fox News not only backed
Republicans, but traduced their opponents as illegitimate, if not downright
treacherous. Americans who might once have disagreed with one another were
encouraged to mistrust one another.
"The Republican Party learnt to describe
Democrats as "out of touch" and "elite" even as they cut
taxes for the wealthy and support for the poor. Expertise, particularly that
expressed by America's intelligentsia, became a thing to be derided rather than
lauded.
"Fox is now central to the Trump
administration. Political reporters now wake early to watch the morning program
Fox and Friends because this is how Trump starts his day, and it is this
program that often prompts the President's early-morning Twitter storms.
"God help us."