...In 1996 Murdoch launched Fox News as part of the cable network offerings, operating under the Fox Entertainment Group umbrella name. Murdoch knew that there was a much larger American audience that would buy into everything from the extreme conservative slanted “opinions” packaged as news to outright conspiracy theories.

Apparently, Murdoch was completely correct in his insight, as the so-called “news channel” portended to offer alternative views, spewing that the standard media was biased towards liberal opinions. This was the first of a long list of claims that didn’t stand up to fact checkers or statistics. [snip]

While people of all ideologies enjoy hearing validation of their personal beliefs, conservatives are the least likely to want to hear anything that contradicts them. There is also a kind of brainwashing aspect that occurs in hearing a lie repeated over and over again. I address this topic in my article: Supporting Trump: The Psychology of the Lie [snip]

If you hear a lie often enough, it starts to sound true. According to what’s called the “illusory truth effect,” the more you hear a false statement, the truer it starts to sound. This is even true when you should know better. In a fascinating, if disheartening, 2015 study, researchers showed that if people repeated the phrase ‘The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth’ enough times, the Atlantic Ocean did indeed begin to seem like the largest ocean on Earth.’

‘A constant stream of lies becomes so mentally taxing that your brain gives up. ‘It’s called cognitive load,’ Konnikova writes, meaning that “our limited cognitive resources are overburdened.’ Lie detection is difficult work, and your brain can only handle so much.’”