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Before his downfall in 2016, amid sexual-harassment allegations that exposed the toxic work environment at Fox News, Roger Ailes was the most powerful man in the United States.

It is quite possible that Donald Trump would never have become President without the help of Mr. Ailes, Fox News and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. The alternative facts propagated by the network’s opinion-show hosts and its penchant for reporting on deep-state conspiracies provided the oxygen for Mr. Trump’s campaign and helped shape its narrative.

Very little of this is evident in Bombshell, director Jay Roach’s new film on the harassment scandal that brought down Mr. Ailes. It is a serious sin of omission, since the toxic work environment at the network cannot be separated from the toxic political environment it helped create before Mr. Trump’s election, and which it has continued to feed since.

Open this photo in gallery:

Megyn Kelly (played by Charlize Theron, left), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman, centre), and Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) in a scene from Bombshell.Hilary B Gayle/Lionsgate

Plenty of on-air anchors – including Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, whose harassment by Mr. Ailes constitute the main plot line in Bombshell – were complicit in creating the Fox universe. For years, they spewed reactionary tropes about progressives gone wild, helping fuel the rage among white, working-class voters that propelled Mr. Trump to the White House.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, Fox exploited the divisions within American society to undermine Mr. Obama and frustrate his agenda. It partnered with the Tea Party movement to lead the opposition to Mr. Obama’s health-care reforms, which it depicted as a handout to the undeserving, and gave life to conspiracy theories about the first black president’s place of birth. There was no bigger “birther” during the Obama years than Mr. Trump. And you didn’t need to scratch much below the surface to reveal the racial subtext of it all.

Ms. Carlson, meanwhile, was hostile toward advances in gay and transgender rights. Ms. Kelly had a penchant for silly provocation, insisting Santa was white, just like Jesus. She would eventually go too far, leaving NBC News last year after defending blackface as part of Halloween costumes. Had she stayed at Fox, she might have got away with it.

In Bombshell, all of this is swept under the rug. This perhaps allows for a less cluttered and complicated plot line, allowing Ms. Carlson (played by Nicole Kidman) and Ms. Kelly (Charlize Theron) to emerge as sympathetic heroines. While they may have been innocent victims of harassment by Mr. Ailes, however, they were not innocent in making Fox such a toxic place.

Bombshell does nail one aspect of the Fox formula perfectly. In Ms. Kelly’s heyday, the network was infamous for its attractive (and usually blonde) female on-air personalities. The film suggests the women of Fox were not allowed to wear pants on TV, and that glass anchor-desks and wider camera angles were used to showcase their bare legs.

The makeup artists for Bombshell used a prosthetic nose and jaw to turn Ms. Theron into a dead ringer for Ms. Kelly, while enhancing Ms. Kidman’s nose and cheeks and adding a dimple to make her look more similar to the real Ms. Carlson. As with the other female Fox hosts depicted in the film, ample lip gloss, false eyelashes and chiselled eyebrows complete the look.

The sex appeal of Fox News’s female hosts was a key ingredient of its success among an older, white-male demographic. So much so that Quebecor attempted to copy the formula when it launched Sun News in Canada in 2011. For the launch, the network’s highest-profile anchor even posed as a Sunshine Girl in the Sun newspapers, which Quebecor owned at the time.

The Fox News formula never caught on in Canada and Sun News shut down in 2015. South of the border, however, the real Fox News was just getting started. Once Mr. Trump launched his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination that summer, his relationship with Fox News became an integral part of his political persona. The two fed off each other.

Ms. Kelly opened the network’s first GOP primary debate in 2015 by challenging Mr. Trump on his history of misogynistic and sexist comments. Mr. Ailes’s character describes it in Bombshell as “good television.” (Which is not to be confused with good journalism.) Similar to the controversy that emerged the next day when Mr. Trump shot back at Ms. Kelly with, as it’s described in the movie, an accusation of “anger menstruating.”

Bombshell would be reasonably entertaining were it not for what it leaves out. It never even tries to connect the dots between the Fox News that Ms. Carlson and Ms. Kelly long helped shape and the long-overdue takedown of Mr. Ailes. And that’s kind of scandalous.

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