How an Australian helped create the Trumpism monster

You can’t help but feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch.

In Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Dr Frankenstein created a monster that took on a life of its own, and which he could no longer control. Murdoch has outdone Frankenstein and created two monsters over which he has now lost control. They have left him floundering and threaten to inflict great damage on US democracy.

Murdoch’s first monster is the Fox News audience, which after long cultivation into the Fox News fantasy land, refuses to believe any news that does not fit its prejudices. Fox, as a result, feels compelled to reinforce its delusions rather than report accurately.

Murdoch’s second monster grew out of the first – a Donald Trump-dominated Republican Party. Murdoch wanted to make Trump a “non-person,” but the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month showed Trump now dominates the party like no one else in living memory.

‘Red meat’ to conservatives

When Fox News began in 1996 the chief executive for its first 20 years, Roger Ailes, said:

But Fox News was never just a mainstream news service with a somewhat more conservative centre of gravity. From the beginning, it was more of a propaganda machine, and this became increasingly pronounced over the years. More and more, its prime-time offerings consisted of commentary rather than news programs, designed to feed “red meat” to the Republican base.

News that didn’t fit increasingly didn’t appear. So, when the Iraq war began, there was noisy flag-waving, but as it became militarily messier, the network gave it much less attention, although there were always efforts to find a positive gloss.

During Barack Obama’s first presidential term, Fox News acted as a recruiting and publicity vehicle for the far-right,