What was not expected, was how many of the Conservative Media personalities were every bit the same fraud that the fake Conservative Congressmen and Senators were. RedStates Erick Erickson, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, Breitbarts Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh? Now, granted by this time many of us had figured out that there were people in the Conservative Media who were there strictly for the money. Ann Coulter, brilliant bomb thrower, but at heart, just a capitalist who figured out how to market to great success to the Conservative market.
Many of us understood that this was the Rupert Murdoch/FoxNews strategy. Sell the Conservative Market a Conservative product until you can grow large enough to be able to discard the Conservative product.
Contrary to what I lot of people think. The Talking heads do not write much of what they read on air. Back in the 80’s when I was a Rock Star, I did a couple of Radio and Television interviews. Back then, they used to receive their “News” copy over a teletype machine. The Radio and TV stations would have rooms dedicated to them, with 10 or 15 machines clattering away all day long.
What they were clattering away at, was whatever the Talking Head was going to say on the air.
When I was in radio it was disdainfully called “rip and read” – That was back in the mid ’70s. A lot of it has to do with copyright law. If you paid for a syndicated feed – Associated Press say – you could broadcast it to your heart’s content. If you broadcast what your local paper said – if you did not have an agreement, you had lawyer trouble.
Often – if the DJ was busy, the engineer on shift (me) would do the ripping. I engineered a few “interesting” news casts. Good times. Especially when the record salesmen visited.