Right-wing talk radio is hardly new. I can still remember hearing Rush Limbaugh for the first time in the late 1980s (I thought he was a comedian), and Alex Jones on the former shortwave radio station WNYW (he was advertising gold back then).
Yesterday I was testing a radio and ended up on a talk radio show. They were discussing the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and of course blaming it on the Democrats. One thing got my attention. They said roughly, “,,,and there is talk of a second of a second shooter. A day or so ago that would have been dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory, but now a couple of US senators are mentioning it.”
The thoughtless listener might be pushed in the direction of believing the conspiracy theory because the idea is trending and becoming more mainstream. But in fact there there are conspiracy theorists in the Senate too. No evidence + no evidence = no evidence.
They later talked about Kamala Harris, saying that “there is no way she can legally use the campaign funds raised by Joe Biden in his campaign.” That’s just wrong. Harris’ name is on the campaign legal documents and the campaign website always had Biden – Harris on it. Even Fox News said:
As for that $96 million, Harris is likely to be able to use all of that, too. An analysis of FEC rules indicates that since Harris was running with Biden, she would have access to those specific funds.1
It appears that much of the misinformation we encounter comes from right-wing talk radio.
One might ask about left-wing talk radio, but I wouldn’t know where to listen to it.