Lets add a little outside perspective,
How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory
The one time Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America’s Unfair and Imbalanced Network
By Tim Dickinson - May 25, 2011
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525
… As they gathered around a television mounted high on the wall, an image flashed to life, glowing bright in the darkened tavern: the MSNBC logo.
A chorus of boos erupted among the Fox faithful. The CNN logo followed, and the catcalls multiplied. Then a third slide appeared,
with a telling twist. In place of the logo for Fox News was a beneficent visage: the face of the network’s founder.
The man known to his fiercest loyalists simply as “the Chairman” – Roger Ailes.
“It was as though we were looking at Mao,” recalls Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. The Foxistas went wild.
They let the dogs out. Woof! Woof! Woof! Even those who disliked the way Ailes runs his network joined in the display of fealty,
given the culture of intimidation at Fox News. “It’s like the Soviet Union or China: People are always looking over their shoulders,”
says a former executive with the network’s parent, News Corp. “There are people who turn people in.” …
“… The outsize success of Fox News gives Ailes a free hand to shape the network in his own image.
“Murdoch has almost no involvement with it at all,” says Michael Wolff, who spent nine months embedded at News Corp.
researching a biography of the Australian media giant. “People are afraid of Roger. Murdoch is, himself, afraid of Roger.
He has amassed enormous power within the company – and within the country – from the success of Fox News.”
Fear, in fact, is precisely what Ailes is selling: His network has relentlessly hyped phantom menaces like the planned “terror mosque” near Ground Zero,
inspiring Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch the Koran.
Privately, Murdoch is as impressed by Ailes’ business savvy as he is dismissive of his extremist politics.
“You know Roger is crazy,” Murdoch recently told a colleague, shaking his head in disbelief. “He really believes that stuff.”
To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak,
the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late-October attack ad –
is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. …
Hannity’s rising role in Trump’s world: ‘He basically has a desk in the place’
Robert Costa, Sarah Ellison, Josh Dawsey
The Washington Post, April 18, 2018
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/hannity-rising-role-trump-world-basically-has-desk-the-place/LKefVuvNrpsVnHRkMSpzrO/
The phone calls between President Donald Trump and Sean Hannity come early in the morning or late at night, after the Fox News host goes off the air.
They discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet,
according to people familiar with the conversations. When he’s off the phone, Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers.
The revelation this week that the two men share an attorney is just the latest sign of how Hannity is intertwined with Trump’s world —
an increasingly powerful confidant who offers the media-driven president a sympathetic ear and shared grievances.
The conservative commentator is so close to Trump that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff.
This portrait of the interactions between the president and the talk-show host is based on interviews with more than a dozen friends,
advisers and associates of the two men, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. …”
“The bottom line is, during the heat of the campaign when relationships are forged, he was always there, offering good advice,
in person and on television,” former deputy Trump campaign manager David Bossie said of Hannity.
“The president sees him as incredibly smart and articulate spokesman for the agenda.”
Trump and Hannity usually speak several times a week, according to people familiar with their relationship.
The Fox News host, whose show averages more than 3 million viewers daily, is one of the few people who gets patched immediately to Trump. …
And they get away with it because so few actually give a damned or spend any time actually thinking of the consequences of their actions,
or inactions as the case may be. 
row, row, row your boat ...
