LaHaye called for a conservative counter-media decades before Fox News existed.

Evidence

LaHaye strove to arouse Christians’ sense of embattlement. He warned of the “liberal, humanist” media corrupting the nation, evident in “the pornographic indoctrination now masquerading as TV entertainment”—in “anti-moral” programs like Three’s Company, Dallas, and Saturday Night Live—but also in television and print news. Most pointedly, he blamed American news stations for their biased coverage of the Vietnam War, for constantly “twisting” news reports “to make America appear the aggressor,” causing a generation to become disillusioned with their own country. Time and Newsweek were also not to be trusted; he recommended magazines like Human Events and Conservative Digest as alternatives. But what was really needed was a fourth television news network “committed to rendering a conservative view of the news,” along with a conservative wire service and a chain of newspapers, news sources that would defend “traditional moral values, the church of Jesus Christ, a strong national defense,” and other conservative values. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 215

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the current landscape: Fox News, Newsmax, and the alternative-media ecosystem fulfill exactly what LaHaye proposed in the 1970s. — connects to: Fox News initially disavowed a conservative agenda at launch. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1421
• SEED: Essay angle: the Religious Right invented the ‘own the media’ strategy decades before media polarization; mainstream news distrust is not new but a designed program.
• QUESTION: Is the conservative-media project best read as a response to real liberal bias or as an identity-building embattlement strategy? LaHaye’s phrasing suggests the latter was the motivation.