this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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The first Obama administration was when Fox News truly went off the rails. They were always conservative and disingenuous, but holy shit did they flip out on Obama. They played the racist rage into higher and higher rating. Really was amazing to see.
FTFY
Credit where it's due! A single television station steamrolled American politics in just a few short years, becoming the most popular news outlet in America. That kind of thing was impossible when I was a kid with 4 station to choose from. Amazing indeed!
Nah, it started well before Faux Nooz existed. I don't remember the details I read somewhere a while back, but basically this started in the early/mid 1970s when some Republican strategist realized they could use abortion as an extremely effective "wedge" issue to attack liberal politicians. Additionally, they learned to use brain-dead, but charismatic figures like Reagan to be the likeable face of the Republican party when they couldn't find a smart one who was popular with a wide audience.
Fox's success was made more possible by increasing knowledge and expertise of effective strategies to manipulate people that newer psychology and data science fields brought to the table. Conservatives have always been quick to jump on new methods of controlling people - ones that liberals by their very nature aren't all that prone to taking advantage of.
Ah yes and then during the first Trump administration, people on the right started calling Fox News commie news. Because they dared not praise like one thing that Trump did or said. In the mid-10s, social media took over what Fox News did in the late 00s and early 10s... And got better at it than Fox itself.