Most Chinese people probably think that the United States is New York and California, and the American television news media is probably CNN. If the knowledge structure stays at this level, it is impossible to understand Trump's rise to power and his administration over the years.
Take, for example, the most politically and socially influential broadcast television media in the United States, there are actually five major networks: MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox News. Among them, the station was established the latest, but its influence is often ranked first. It is Fox News.
Fox News, a subsidiary of Murdoch, was only founded in 1996, and it was a sudden emergence in the already solidified news television network market at that time. In less than ten years, Fox News’s ratings have grown by leaps and bounds, directly reaching the top two and three positions, and it is still a viewing dominance that cannot be underestimated.
The most important thing is not ratings. Fox is the most conservative and right-wing television news media in the United States. It has a clear political stance. It is a staunch supporter of the Republican Party, Bush Jr., Trump and other presidents, and it is a stage where Bannon and others often show up. Earlier this year, Fox News staged the so-called controversy between host Tracy and Liu Xin, which attracted the attention of Chinese people and aroused a lot of anger, but it was actually just a mild expression of Fox's political stance.
How did Fox's media influence and political influence come from? What kind of political and social tendencies does its discourse power reflect Americans? What impact will it bring to the future of Sino-US competition and confrontation? These are questions that are not easy for the Chinese to understand.
But fortunately, the United States recently launched a short TV series that will help Chinese audiences uncover the secrets of Fox News.
This play is "The Loudest Voice" :
This is a biographical series that shows the world this person: the controversial and ugly founder and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes.
In front of him he raised a high building on the ground
In 1995, the old TV media NBC was acquired by the emerging IT giant Microsoft and renamed MSNBC. This also directly led to the expulsion of the former NBC CEO Roger Ayres.
55-year-old Ayres was a fat man who looked weak, but he was actually one of the absolute elites in American television at the time. NBC's ratings can be said to be made by him. However, his strong and domineering style and right-wing stance were obviously inconsistent with the culture of the new owner, so he could only be swept out.
Full of anger, Els personally approached Microsoft's co-founder Paul Ellen, and obtained MSNBC's compromise on the issue of competitive exclusivity. Turning around, he found the media giant Murdoch and took on the important task of creating a new news television network. This was the preparation of Fox News in 1995.
At this time, Ayres was actually a vengeful fighter. The goal of his revenge is not only to fire his NBC, but also the mainstream television industry in the United States where liberalism is on the rise.
In a preparatory meeting of Fox News, the management team discussed the target audience of the new station and believed that the audience should be covered as widely as possible. At this time, Ayers, who was silent for a long time, broke out. He said: There are hundreds of millions of ordinary workers and farmers living in the vast Midwest of the United States. They are the mainstay of American values and the cornerstone of American conservatism. But today when the Democratic Party is in power, these ordinary Americans have been completely ignored by the liberal elite and mainstream media. Fox News is to become their news channel, not only to bring them the news they want to see, but also to become a voice for them!
Regarding the audience, his insight is:
They do not want to be informed. They want to feel they are informed.
This is the basic positioning of Fox News---conservative political stance, the audience base in the vast Midwestern region of the United States.
This also tells the essence of news in Ayres' eyes --- all the so-called fair, balanced, and empirical news (the term is called Checked and Balanced) is actually fudge, the audience only wants to hear what they want to hear; or As long as they cater to their values and feed them what they want, they will definitely have ratings.
Ayres is advancing such radical conservative political positions and opportunistic news positions with an iron fist. Fox News started broadcasting in 1996. He specializes in looking for media professionals with vulgar language and extreme views to serve as commentators. He constantly provokes negative emotions in a series of news commentary programs. At the same time, his criteria for choosing female anchors are also very simple: have a face and have a body. Just look good and sexy.
Therefore, Fox News anchors always have blonde and blue-eyed beauties, including several Miss America or state beauty pageants. This tradition seems to have been retained. The anchor Trish Regan, who recently had an appointment with Liu Xin, was Miss New Hampshire before joining the industry and participated in the 1994 Miss America pageant.
Fighting American values, selling anxiety and anger, coupled with beautiful and sexy female anchors and full-mouthed commentators, Fox News quickly won the popularity of a large number of civilian audiences, and the ratings are also catching up with CNN. According to Ayres, Fox News owns nearly half of the American population.
But without politics, the media can't play. After Bush Jr. came to power, Ayres quickly turned to the Conservative Party and almost became Bush's endorsement tool. The September 11 incident in 2001 stimulated nationalist sentiments and gave Bush and Fox News a rare counterattack opportunity. Fox has also become a propaganda position advocating the US invasion of Iraq.
"The Loudest Voice" here describes the dark picture of the media and political collusion: After the outbreak of 9/11, Ayres, who is well versed in American politics, called Bush's special assistant and said to him a word: "Iraq" . Although we don’t know whether this is a literary creation, and the Bush administration’s decision to send troops to Iraq is unlikely to be made after heeding the advice of a TV boss, it should be clear that Fox and the Bush administration’s political stance is tacitly understood. If it is revealed.
Fox News further expanded in this way, and Ayers also created huge profits for the boss. In "The Loudest Voice", we see that Ayres is a fighter with extremely extreme political stance, while Murdoch is an authentic businessman. Although Fox has received unanimous criticism from the American elite, as long as there is money to be made, Murdoch will actually not abandon his political stance and defend any news norms.
In the age of Ayres, Fox News has even become an important force in American politics and has a huge impact on the presidential election. As soon as Trump participated in the primaries in 2015, Ayres keenly discovered his potential, and contrary to everyone's judgment, he believed that Trump might become the president of the United States. He then called Trump, presumably saying, "I see you have a play, but you must get the support of Fox News to become the president of the United States."
The two hit it off, Fox News became the media that raised the flag for Trump's campaign and the only TV media that Trump did not regard as "Fake News."
Ayres never concealed his radical and aggressive political stance, and so did his wife (the editor of his beauties in his early years). They bought the newspaper in the small town and transformed it into a right-wing media defending "American values and lifestyles." They returned to Ayers’ hometown, a declining town in the Rust State, and published a report to a group of unemployed workers at home. A highly inflammatory political speech. It was in this speech that he said this sentence: Make American Great Again.
His speech was earlier than Trump's use of Make America Great Again as his campaign slogan. We also don’t know if this is the author’s fabricated play, but the scene of Ayers’ speech will tell you clearly: Why Trump became the President of the United States.
Seeing him collapse in a blink of an eye
The basic values of Ayers and Fox News are conservative and undoubtedly populist.
Regarding political leaders with populist characteristics, the book "The Mental State of Our Time" has this comment:
Leaders who come to power in the neo-populist movement usually have a ruling style of xenophobia, patriarchy, and autocracy. Their followers may have similar tendencies, but they may also feel fear, anger, and resentment for what society does towards them.
This is also true for Ayers. This iron-fisted media hero actually has a distinct autocratic, xenophobic, and patriarchal color, and has a distinct tendency to racial discrimination and surname discrimination. In Ayres' eyes, a woman is just a body that attracts attention on the screen, and a plaything for him to express his sexual desires in the office.
Ayres is a person with very bad personal morals. He is not overbearing, arrogant, or unreasonable. He has harassed the female subordinates around him for a long time, aiming for no distinction between beauty and ugliness, and he has raised many of them as mistresses. His personality and power have caused great pressure on these victims. Many people dare not speak, and even allow their lives and inner world to be destroyed by this disgusting fat man.
Finally someone stood up and resisted. The popular anchor Gelichen played by Naomi Watts finally couldn't tolerate Ayres' years of touching his face, grasping buttocks and verbal molesting. She recorded the evidence with the iPhone in her hand and started the lawsuit against Ayres.
No one believes that a weak female anchor can oust a powerful figure like Ayres, but things are really happening. Grichen's team of lawyers used real-hammer recordings and more and more victims' testimonies to attack Ayers, and soon the overbearing president fell into a scandal crisis.
But the real blow came from his master Murdoch. At this time, Murdoch’s sons were already full-fledged. These wolfish and wealthy second-generation generations had resented Ayres' tyranny in their early years, and now they even use the scandal to attack Ayres. In 2016, Ayers was forced to resign due to internal and external pressure.
A struggling personality like Ayres will undoubtedly be sentenced to death once he goes home and loses the battlefield of struggle. A year later, he fell into the bathroom and was killed when he was ill. He was 77 years old.
This brings us back to the first act of the opening chapter of "The Loudest Voice": Ayers, who is dying, lies on the ground, and his inner monologue resounds in the picture:
"I can guess how people would describe me: right-winger, paranoid, fat..."
This person doesn't care about the infamy behind him.
After "Chernobyl", "The Loudest Voice" is another politically conscious mini American drama this year. Although the creator’s liberal stance and critical attitude towards Ayres and right-wing politics are obvious, the details of characterization may be artistically exaggerated, but the big event line is loyal to the truth, and the series has considerable thickness and thickness. Credibility.
As a mini-series with excellent screenwriters and directors, "The Loudest Voice" has practical significance on the political and social level. This film not only refers to the ups and downs of a media tycoon, nor does it just explain the ins and outs of a right-wing media. It also warns of the rise of populist conservatism, and also exposes the mask of collusion between the media and politics.
What is commendable is the performance of Russell Crowe , the actor who transformed himself into a fat man, his eyes are still piercing, and there is no longer the perseverance and heroic spirit of the past, but more paranoia, anger and gloom. Since the role of Javert in "Les Miserables", Russell Crowe no longer plays the hero, but here is Roger Ayres, he has completed a butterfly-like acting career.
Through his hierarchical performance, we can see the inner world of Roger Ayres and get a glimpse of the true face of right-wing and conservative America from here.
This America is the America that claims to be "strong again".
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