"The respective weight of Fox’s ideological and commercial motives remains a topic for debate. Manufactured indignation (the 'War on Christmas,' 'Obama’s Czars,' 'the Ground Zero Mosque') drives viewership, especially when performed for a mostly male audience by leggy blond anchors. At one level, Fox’s victimhood pose is obviously disingenuous; Murdoch has always played the outrage game to drive circulation and ratings. His most valuable player, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely seething with resentment, often at his friends as much as his enemies. Another pattern of his is to build up Frankenstein monsters, like Beck, Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, and then decry their ingratitude. Fox’s populism is so clearly an expression of his authentic feelings that it’s hard to see it as purely cynical."
Jacob Weisberg in The New York Times reviews Gabriel Sherman's The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country.
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