How the 'Gipper' Dismantled Media Safeguards and Planted the Seeds of Trumpism
Reagan's deregulation and repeal of the Fairness Doctrine cleared the path for Murdoch’s empire and the propaganda machine that gave rise to Donald Trump's politics.
Ronald Reagan, the affable Gipper, is a myth. The reality is far darker: he was a destructive force whose policies, deceptions, and transgressions fertilized the soil from which Trumpism would eventually sprout. His systematic attacks on public education and his deregulation of the media helped produce a generation of Americans so poorly versed in democratic principles that our current political crisis feels less like an accident than an inevitability.
Before examining the specific policy changes that allow his legacy to haunt American media to this day, it’s worth settling the historical record on facts that remain surprisingly obscure - obscured, in no small part, by the very communications apparatus he helped construct and the free press he destroyed.
He lied to Congress about Iran-Contra, authorizing the secret sale of weapons to a hostile nation to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. He plunged the country into unprecedented peacetime debt, tripling the national deficit while preach…
