How Rupert Murdoch helped create a monster – the era of Trumpism – and then lost control of it

Mary Altaffer/AP by Rodney Tiffen, University of Sydney You can’t help but feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch. In Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Dr Frankenstein created a monster that took on a life of its own, and which he could no longer control. Murdoch has outdone Frankenstein and created two monsters over which he has now lost control. They have left him floundering and threaten to inflict great damage on US democracy. Murdoch’s first monster is the Fox News audience, which after long cultivation into the Fox News fantasy land, refuses to believe any news that does not fit its prejudices. Fox, as a result, feels compelled to reinforce its delusions rather than report accurately. Murdoch’s second monster grew out of the first – a Donald Trump-dominated Republican Party. Murdoch wanted to make Trump a “non-person”, but the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month showed Trump now dominates the party like no one else in living memory. ‘Red meat’ to conservatives When Fox News began in 1996, the chief executive for its first 20 years, Roger Ailes, said: Rupert Murdoch and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people believe that most of the news tilts...