Chuck Todd has perhaps the premier post in television journalism, as host of Meet the Press. As such, he has been an easy target for those on the left and right to attack the flaws of the mainstream media.
Today, in The Atlantic, he writes a comprehensive explanation and history of how Right Wing media has destroyed or tried to destroy what the press should be in a functioning democracy. He admits his own tendency to fall into "both sides," but notes that this is insufficient to the historical moment.
Most importantly, he notes the premier villain in our descent into Trumpistan: Roger Ailes. There is no greater source of the division, anger and hatred in America today than Ailes. I used to lay it at Newt Gingrich's feet, but I think that overstates the influence of a single politician. What Ailes did was re-shape the media landscape by taking the voices from the fever swamps of AM radio and broadcasting them over cable television. He took John Birch mainstream. Ailes realized how to stoke and feed off anger and hate, and how conducive television was at stoking it.
That loathsome sack of flesh and bile spoke at our school, but that was before Donald Trump exposed just how much Ailes had reshaped American politics. One might even say that Fox News was "an enemy" of democracy.
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