Distort, Attack, Repeat: The Fox Propaganda Machine in Action

In a new Rolling Stone story, Tim Dickinson tells how onetime Nixon henchman Roger Ailes built Fox News into the most profitable propaganda machine in history. A master of dirty tricks, Ailes has amassed enormous power in the Republican Party – and the country – by pioneering a new form of political campaign, one in which Fox functions as a "giant soundstage created to mimic the look of a news operation,” disguising GOP talking points as journalism.

On the day after the president gave his State of the Union address in January, Fox News swung into full campaign mode, hammering Obama with five GOP talking points that have come to define the budget debate. The baldfaced distortions came not just from a parade of Republican politicians – who outnumbered Democrats by 3 to 1 – but from the network's own anchors.

Click through for an hour-by-hour rundown of the day's relentless Obama-bashing.