General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: About Fox brainwashing millions and hate Radio dominating rural areas. [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)prejudices and fears played back to them, but reinforced, augmented, and spun to serve the interests of their manipulators.
RW media moved their listeners to the far/radical right through those wide-open doors to gut-level acceptance and immediate EMOTIONAL REACTION to input, mostly bypassing or minimizing the intellectual processing functions of the brain. New deceits were delivered on the backs of "information" viewers already believed to be true.
Note that Fox's initial, enormously successful, business model was to provide conservative "news" to conservative viewers. Roger Ailes identified a whole, large market of potential viewers who were repelled and offended by ideologically neutral information they didn't want to believe, which contradicted how they were taught to think while being raised and which their own conservative natures didn't allow them to feel could be right. Just imagine how welcome and refreshing finally being able to tune in to real "truth" would have felt. In any case, from then until now, Fox figures out what its viewers want to hear and feeds its versions back to them.
This has been going on so long that whole populations have been moved to the far right and beyond; but much of what today's RW radicals/extremists wanted was searched out and found by them at even more extreme sources than Fox.