The grandson of the elderly white Kansas City man accused of shooting a Black teenager who accidentally rang the wrong doorbell says his grandfather was "radicalized" in recent years by racial fear-mongering and lies he encountered while immersed in Fox News and other conservative media. Coming on the heels of a defamation suit that exposed Fox's business model of promoting extremism and disinformation for ratings, the grandson's assessment is believable.

Ralph Yarl, 16, was attempting to pick up his siblings on April 13 in Kansas City when he mistakenly rang the doorbell of the wrong house. The resident, Andrew D. Lester, 84, allegedly shot Yarl twice, including once in the head. Yarl survived. Lester faces charges of assault and armed criminal action.

Klint Ludwig, Lester's adult grandson, said in media interviews that he and his grandfather used to be close but grew distant in recent years over what he described as his grandfather's radicalization via conservative media. Ludwig told The Kansas City Star that Lester had "become staunchly right-wing," going "further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and Covid conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN (One America News Network) kind of line." Ludwig suggested that the "24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia" has "radicalized him in a lot of ways."

Ludwig also noted how the National Rifle Association is "pushing the 'stand your ground' stuff and that you have to defend your home" — a message that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is particularly fond of promoting on his show.

"I feel like a lot of people of that generation are caught up in this 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia perpetuated by some other news stations," Ludwig told CNN. His grandfather, he said, "was fully into that," and would "sit and watch Fox News all day, every day, blaring in his living room. And I think that stuff really kind of reinforces this negative view of minority groups."

That's one grandson's opinion, but there is data indicating he's right. An exhaustive analysis by FiveThirtyEight of media coverage of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, for example, found that while most outlets covered not just the marches but the broader civil rights debates around them, Fox focused mostly on the demonstrations themselves, playing up scattered instances of violence and routinely using words like "riot" for what others deemed protests.

Anyone who suggests that that's just Fox's word against its competitors should consider what the newly settled Dominion lawsuit against Fox reveals about its word: Its producers and hosts are perfectly willing to promote misinformation to keep its viewership base angry and watching. As last week's shooting might well demonstrate, such paranoia and lies bouncing around the right-wing media echo chamber — profitable though they may be — have political, societal and human costs.

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