New York Magazine ran a pretty interesting profile on Fox New chief Roger Ailes this week. It’s been getting a lot of attention because of a quote from an unnamed source about how Roger Ailes apparently believes Sarah Palin is an idiot who is dragging down the conservative movement (Fox News of course issued a non-denial denial). Anyway that’s probably one of the few things in the story that makes him look good.
More interesting is the story’s focus on his role as a GOP kingmaker:
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Can you imagine the reaction from the right if, say, the president of CNN or NBC News were discovered to be lobbying some Democrat to run for high office, or if they were encouraging some Democratic governor to increase funding for Planned Parenthood or fight for union bargaining rights. Their fucking heads would explode.
He also apparently drinks his own Kool-Aid:
Anyway the story is pretty long (about 6,000 words), but it’s an interesting read if you’ve got the time and contains some juicy bits of gossip about life inside Fox News, if you’re into that kind of stuff.
It’s not really a surprise, right? Roger Ailes was a media consultant to Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. He’s got a really long tradition of Republican politics. I don’t think he’s ever hidden that.
Who actually has the view that Fox is ‘fair and balanced’? Among those that I know who watch it, they admit that it’s slanted. Their excuse is that every other station is slanted to the left.
Can you imagine the reaction from the right if, say, the president of CNN or NBC News were discovered to be lobbying some Democrat to run for high office, or if they were encouraging some Democratic governor to increase funding for Planned Parenthood or fight for union bargaining rights. QUOTE]
Why would that be any different from what we’ve been complaining about for years? NBC/MSNBC/CBS/ABC continually sing the praises of Obama as being the best thing for this country since sliced bread. Just as one example, remember this little exchange between Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough?
The liberal media does this sort of stuff daily. It would be business as usual, nothing more.
Matthews is a commentator, not a journalist, and he was a former speech writer for Jimmy Carter. He isn’t running MSNBC and setting editorial positions. He does not have a position comparable to Ailes. The “liberal media” is a right wing media myth.
Wow, good one, Clothahump! I mean, the parallel is so exact, so direct…except, of course, that Tweety Bird doesn’t run MSNBC, he’s isn’t in the same position relative that Ailes or Murdoch are to Fox Gnaws. He just works there. But other than the fact that they are nothing alike, the parallel is striking!
Not to mention the pundit that Matthews is talking to was an actual honest-to-God Republican Congressman. So you have two pundits, one an open liberal and one an open (and previously elected) conservative. And that is your example of unfairness?
And yet you, and idiots like yourself, never actually come up with any comparable examples, let alone “daily” ones.
Fox News is a marketing machine targeted at the willfully ignorant – not stupid people, mind you, but people who refuse to use their brains because thinking leads to conclusions that show their deeply-held opinions about the world to be idiotic. It’s an ongoing church sermon for followers the right wing faith.
It speaks volumes that this is the best example of “liberal bias” that Clothahump could come up with.
Fox news is pretty clearly the Republican party network - it is being directed that way from the very top. Other networks have commentators that may give a liberal point of view (in addition to other commentators who do not).
That was a very interesting article - not very surprising, but fascinating to read. I wasn’t aware that all prospective GOP Presidential candidates have to prostrate themselves before Roger Ailes, but it doesn’t shock me.
In a weird way, Glenn Beck comes off as almost likeable in the article just because he doesn’t give a crap about the usual Fox News command protocols, says whatever he wants, and basically was just using Fox as a platform to promote his other stuff. Beck is transparently in it for the money.
I enjoyed some of the gossipy bits - Laura Ingrahm screams at her crew during commercials, O’Reilly can’t stand Hannity (I’ve long suspected that), Ailes thinks Palin is an idiot (he is correct), and her ratings have been disappointing (her 15 minutes are over, whether she know it or not, and even her television career, such as it is, probably has an expiration date).
The most interesting aspect is that Old Man Murdoch is getting older, and that his kids are evidently not right wingers. Murdoch’s wife is an Obama supporter and did a fundraising function for him. That could bode for some big changes down the line at Fox News. I’d like to see Hannity get a new co-host - someone along the lines of Rahm Emmanuel, or maybe Henry Rollins. That would be entertaining.
I’d really like to believe that and more, but regardless of politics, I can’t imagine someone killing the cash cow that Fox is. Stop perpetuating the myth that Fox is the only channel for right-leaning viewers? Their veritable monopoly on the niche audience would fade away to other channels and venues. Way too much money involved to make too many changes.
Yeah, that was probably the most surprising thing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Beck is a massive douche but on a certain level, I respect that he plays by his own rules and isn’t afraid of bucking the company line.
Fox will likely remain right wing (as you said, it’s just too big a cash cow to radically alter its business model), but I have a feeling that the younger Murdochs would reign in some of the network’s crazier impulses and make an honest effort to cut down on the shenanigans (putting a “D” next to the names of Republicans caught up in scandals, deceptive headlines, fallacious editing, etc.).