Thriving on conspiracy“I WANT to elect the next president,” Roger Ailes once told staffers at Fox News. It was no idle ambition. Mr Ailes, the pre-eminent master of the dark arts of politics and television in America, had been helping Republicans get elected president since Richard Nixon. This week, with the Republican Party nominating another candidate he helped to create, the kingmaker himself is being dethroned. Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James, who control 21st Century Fox, appear ready to oust the 76-year-old chief of Fox News after a career spanning more than 50 years.
It is a sudden and ignominious downfall, the sort Mr Ailes would have put on the air nonstop if the subject had been one of his enemies. His network’s motto was, and is, “fair and balanced”, a shot at the perceived liberal bias of his competitors. Mr Ailes’s brand of angry, conspiracy-driven political news and opinion set Fox News apart, from the coverage of real scandals, including the impeachment of Bill Clinton, to imagined or overcooked ones, like Hillary Clinton’s failings over Benghazi.
Viewers ate it up. Mr...Continue reading
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