Must-Read: Bruce Bartlett: How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics

May 11, 2015

Must-Read: The thing that I think Bruce Bartlett misses is that Rupert Murdoch in company primarily regard FOXNews as a moneymaking opportunity rather then as policy or political intervention. The idea is to terrify your viewers, thus keep their eyeballs glued to the screen, and then sell those eyeballs to advertisers. The United States seems to me to be the only major country in the north Atlantic core politics has been moving left since 1996–and some of that, I think, is due to the effect of FOXNews on the political ecology.

Bruce Bartlett: How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics: “The creation of Fox News in 1996 was an event of deep, yet unappreciated, political and historical importance…

…For the first time, there was a news source available virtually everywhere in the United States, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a conservative tilt. Finally, conservatives did not have to seek out bits of news favorable to their point of view in liberal publications or in small magazines and newsletters. Like someone dying of thirst in the desert, conservatives drank heavily from the Fox waters. Soon, it became the dominant – and in many cases, virtually the only – major news source for millions of Americans. This has had profound political implications that are only starting to be appreciated. Indeed, it can almost be called self-brainwashing – many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth.

May 11, 2015

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