A "Destructive Force's" Anniversary

Media historians will mark October 7, 1996 as the day the seeds of propaganda-posing-as-journalism were sown on cable TV. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Fux "News" Channel, the perverted product of the corrupt former Nixon operative and sexual predator Roger "Jabba The Nut" Ailes and sinister reactionary media mogul Rupert "Aargh" Murdoch.  Over that 20 year period, wingnuts have flocked to Fux to absorb right-wing fantasy, conspiracy theories, and slanders against perceived enemies of "conservatism."  Once using the slogan "Fair and Balanced" before it got laughed away, Fux succeeded in establishing what we see today as the "alternative reality" bubble of the right / alt right: climate change denial, parroting quack economic theories such as "supply side economics," xenophobia/misogyny/racism barely concealed, and belief that military intervention must be the first reaction to an international crisis. That bubble has left Fux viewers the least informed viewers in America, and the ones likely to have a distorted view of the real world.

Media Matters has compiled a helpful list of Fux's right-wing propagandizing over the years, one that you can see has gotten more and more radical and unhinged, especially during Democratic administrations. It's no wonder that a few years ago, the late Apple founder Steve Jobs told Fux owner Murdoch that "Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society." So true.