'The ideological fusion between the American right and the media did not start with Trump, but he accelerated it'
It didn't all start with Donald Trump's arrival on the political scene, far from it. The right's conquest of the media can be traced back to radio: In the 1970s and 1980s, the AM band, which was then largely underused and faced few content restrictions, became the preferred platform for American conservatives.
Rush Limbaugh embodied this trend with The Rush Limbaugh Show, which had an impressive run: Launched in 1984, the talk show continued until his death in 2021. Such programs were a success with the public and helped secure the victories of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and later George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. At the same time, there was a boom in televangelists – preachers hosting religious television programs – who came to dominate many local radio and television stations.
It was also during this period that Reagan, in 1985, granted American citizenship to media magnate Rupert Murdoch, originally from Australia – allowing him to enter the US media market with the goal of shifting it to the right. Murdoch replicated in the US the successful strategies he had already employed in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 1996, he launched Fox News, which would revolutionize the American right and its communication methods.
Murdoch was not alone. Other right-wing magnates also set out to conquer the media market: John Dickey bought a small Atlanta radio station and, in 1997, turned it into Cumulus Media – a conglomerate that is now the second-largest owner and operator of AM and FM radio stations in the US (nearly 500). During the Bush era, another competitor, Sinclair Broadcast Group, owned the most television stations in America, and Steve Bannon launched the website Breitbart, which became the spearhead for the nationalist and populist far right.
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