My father changed his politics radically when his health declined and he had to stay home watching tv because of mobility issues. Fuck FOX. Assholes. One of the most harmful entities in the USA. I wish every one of them would drop dead.
I listened to Infowars for fun for years. Surely it's possible to listen to something and not start believing it. Maybe you're right in general though.
That really sucks. What's weird with my parents is that they never watch Fox News ever, only NBC, and still they remain conservative AF. They actively reject any negative information about Republicans. Totally don't care whatsoever, anything and everything is justified by "both sides, but abortion!!".
Sinclair is pretty insidious. They're like the old Fox News. Their stories dovetail neatly with unbiased news while being biased. So they can watch NBC national and just get reinforced.
Honestly, keeping the news on all day is just poison anyways. Even a well meaning channel like CNN (although they might be going down the hole) can cause feelings of depression or desperation just because of what we consider to be news worthy. And then people are still stuck looking around for easy answers because CNN was responsible about not biasing the story.
It can happen really fast too though. Anchoring bias is where people tend to believe the first take on an event or news item that sounds reasonable to them.