This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

If reports that Fox News chief Roger Ailes is about to be removed from his post in the midst of an expanding sexual-harassment scandal are true, it will be an ignominious end to a man who stands as one of the giants of television news over the past two decades.

It's a huge fall from power for Ailes, who — according to reports first published in New York magazine — will be ousted by News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan and James.

Ailes is a genius. He built Fox News out of nothing. He made it hugely profitable.

But he's an evil genius. He has done major damage not just to TV journalism — to all journalism — but to America.

We're a more cynical nation than we were before FNC launched. A more divided nation. And a less informed nation.

The Fox News Channel was built on an enormous lie — that it, and it alone, practices unbiased journalism. "Fair and balanced"? It is neither.

It's not even accurate, as study after study has demonstrated.

We could fill an entire edition of this newspaper — we could almost fill the internet — with examples of Fox News' right-wing bias; of its distortions; of its outright lies.

That's not conjecture. It's not opinion. It's there in the memos sent by FNC executives to their staffers. It's there in statements from some of those staffers.

If Ailes had billed Fox News as "the conservative alternative," that would have been fine, at least from a marketing standpoint.

(No, this is not a defense of left-leaning MSNBC. But MSNBC's chief isn't embroiled in a sexual-harassment scandal right now.)

Ailes proved an axiom — if you say something often enough, people will believe it. Even if it's patently, absurdly untrue.

He is a marketing genius.

There are a lot of Americans who actually believe that Fox News is fair and balanced. That it reports and viewers decide.

They also believe that other news outlets — outlets that are demonstrably less biased and more accurate — are liars. That other outlets are not just left-wing, but anti-American.

Worse yet, Fox News has helped foster the belief that those who oppose a right-wing agenda are anti-American. It has helped create a political climate in which Congress can barely function because compromise is vilified.

FNC has helped create a climate in which the reality-TV personality who was just nominated by the GOP for president doesn't just oppose the policies of the incumbent, but suggests that the current president is working to aid terrorists.

There's no such thing as a completely unbiased journalist. We all come to stories with the weight of our life experience. But that the most biased TV news outlet in the country could convince millions of Americans that it and its competitors are things they are not is P.T. Barnumesque.

Ailes' legacy will be hucksterism, not journalism.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.