Monday, May 18, 2015

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.

More from SSRN, via Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall describes writer Bruce Bartlett as "a conservative economist and policy hand (very much out of the supply-side and monetarist movement) who I think still considers himself and by rights is a conservative but at this point in his life is very much a dissident and critic of American conservatism."

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