Concentrated effort by Roger Ailes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/business/media/roger-ailes-dead.html
"For loyal viewers, it was the network of choice to hear repeatedly about the moral failings of Bill and Hillary Clinton, questions about Barack Obama's birthplace, doubts about the patriotism of American Muslims, grumblings about the war ostensibly being waged on Christmas, and warnings about "death panels" that would supposedly flourish under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Fox News embraced the American flag as if it were its own, then became an uninhibited booster of the Iraq War and an unabashed critic of those who opposed it.
The network also made itself a haven for Republicans who had fallen from political grace and hoped to restart their careers, among them Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. Mr. Hannity's show was effectively a public-relations vehicle for one presidential candidate who made it to the top: Donald J. Trump.
Even more than he embraced political combat, Mr. Ailes keenly understood television and its reliance on attention-grabbing flourishes. He learned the medium's emotional impact in the 1960s as the young producer of "The Mike Douglas Show," a syndicated daytime variety program. To hold people's interest, "you have to be punchy and graphic in your conversation," he wrote in a 1988 book, "You Are the Message.""
The onetime Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America's Unfair and Imbalanced Network
www.rollingstone.com
Fear, in fact, is precisely what Ailes is selling: His network has relentlessly hyped phantom menaces like the planned "terror mosque" near Ground Zero, inspiring Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch the Koran. Privately, Murdoch is as impressed by Ailes' business savvy as he is dismissive of his extremist politics. "You know Roger is crazy," Murdoch recently told a colleague, shaking his head in disbelief. "He really believes that stuff."
To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that's held to the same standard of evidence as a late-October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. As a political consultant, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan's budding Alzheimer's in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. "He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."
