Roger Ailes

Howard Kurtz Stumbles Into The Obvious On Glenn Beck

Posted by on March 15, 2010 at 1:17 pm. 3 Comments :

Nobody is going to mistake Howard Kurtz (CNN/Washington Post) for an insightful media analyst. His sycophantic and highly conflicted reporting barely qualifies as news on most days. And his latest column for the Post is no exception. However, it does hit on a couple of obvious truths that only Kurtz can think of as revelations:

Howard Kurtz: Beck has become a constant topic of conversation among Fox journalists, some of whom say they believe he uses distorted or inflammatory rhetoric that undermines their credibility.

Ya think?

HK: [Fox News VP Bill] Shine says that last fall a vice president was assigned “to help keep an eye on that program” and review its content in advance — a full-time job.

A full-time VP to keep an eye on Beck? I sure hope that guy had mental health insurance. Also, he didn’t do a very good job, judging by what made it to the air.

HK: Television analyst Andrew Tyndall calls Beck an “activist” and “comedian” whose incendiary style has created “a real crossroads for Fox News. […] They’re right on the cusp of losing their image as a news organization,” he declares.

What on earth would it take for Tyndall to regard them as over the cusp?

HK: When Fox covers breaking news during Beck’s hour, some journalists say, they are flooded with angry e-mail from viewers about the preemption.

And who could blame them? Beck’s viewers don’t want to be bothered with “news.” Even the sort that Fox pretends to deliver.

HK: Some staffers say they have watched rehearsals, on internal monitors, in which Beck has teared up or paused at the same moments as he later did during the show.

Because the secret of good comedy/propaganda is timing.

HK: Beck has caused such anguish at Fox that some of its journalists celebrated the failure of last week’s interview with embattled ex-congressman Eric Massa, which Beck pronounced a waste of time.

If those “journalists” want to celebrate whenever Beck’s program is a waste of time, they could celebrate every day.

Thanks Howie, for your always keen and penetrating outlook.

[Update: 3/17/10]: It appears Fox News CEO Roger Ailes was disturbed by Kurtz’ article. He hustled down to DC to dress down his staff for talking about “The Family.” In short he ordered them to shut up, fall in line, obey, or leave. And what ever they do, do not have an independent thought. That’s what the talking points are for.

Roger Ailes channels Michael Corleone:

Roger Ailes Seeks To Improve On Hitler And Stalin

Posted by on March 4, 2010 at 11:48 am. 4 Comments :

In an interview with his pals at the National Review, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes made clear that he won’t be satisfied with the slipshod propaganda techniques pioneered by the Nazis 75 years ago. Responding to a question about whether Fox News was inappropriately engaging in persistent attacks on the President, Ailes attempted to redirect the charge of bias back to the media at large:

“This little cable channel called Fox is somehow ruining your life. Keep in mind, the last two guys to get all of them [the media] lined up together were Hitler and Stalin. That did not work out well.”

So Ailes regards Hitler’s efforts to dominate the press as insufficient. Should we, therefore, assume that he aspires to do a better job of it? He’s off to a pretty good start. His network has already homogenized its coverage to fall in lock-step with a conservative agenda and is expertly regurgitating rightist rhetoric from a well-disciplined army of anchors and guests. But even that’s not enough. He also finds it necessary to lie about his record of blatant bias and disregard for facts:

Q: You have the President of the United States and others, including the extremely intelligent James Carville, saying Fox News shapes the nation’s politics. Are you pleased? Are you appalled?
A: No. That’s their fault. What we do is we go on the air every day with two points of view in the news. Glenn Beck has a phone on his set that says if I make any factual errors please call me so I can correct them immediately and apologize. And the phone never rings. Because what he’s saying is apparently true. We have been thirteen years on the air – in our fourteenth year – and we’ve never taken a story down because of factual problems.

Where to start? First of all, we already know that Fox News deliberately tried to shape politics because Rupert Murdoch admitted it in public. Secondly, the two points of view Fox presents are from the Republican Party and the Tea Party. Third, Ailes’ reference to Glenn Beck (whom he said is “actually not a conservative”) beautifully depicts his absence of reason. If Ailes concludes that Glenn Beck’s acute paranoia represents the truth because the White House hasn’t dialed up his prop phone, then it must also be true that Beck worships Hitler because he hasn’t phoned me to deny it.

Faux PasAnd finally, Ailes must not be watching his own network if he thinks that there haven’t been any retractions or corrections. In fact, they are so sloppy with facts that executives had to issue a memo declaring a “zero tolerance” policy after numerous “mistakes” were broadcast. And that doesn’t even include the intentional lies that are the keystone of Fox’s anti-journalistic brand.

Perhaps the funniest quote from the interview is when Ailes pretended to merely be a contrarian whose only interest was to balance whatever the predominant themes were in the press:

“To be honest with you, if all the media was tipped to the right, I’d be the biggest liberal in New York.”

Not exactly. He’d still be the biggest liar. To which side does he think the media was tipped after 9/11, when an idiot president whose legitimacy was still in doubt, was elevated to hero status and given a free pass to legislate away decades of civil liberties? To which side does he think the media was tipped in 2003 when every prominent network, newspaper, and reporter were uncritically supporting the Bush administration’s march into an unjustified and illegal war with Iraq? Why wasn’t Ailes directing his staff to take a contrary position then? Where was the “biggest liberal in New York” when conservative issues were being championed by the international megaliths that own and operate most of the media (as they have for decades)?

Ailes was just where he’s always been – staked out on the far right, disseminating disinformation in pursuit of his arch-conservative mission. He is marshaling his troops and enforcing strict discipline to insure their adherence to the official doctrine. And now he has even insinuated that his competition are aligned with the principles of Hitler and Stalin. So I hope people will stop complaining when I post this:

Malice In Wonderland: Fox News Through The Looking Glass

Posted by on March 2, 2010 at 2:26 pm. 8 Comments :

Tea CrusadesOver the past year the Tea Party phenomenon has attracted a lot of attention from the rightist media. From the beginning Fox News took the lead sponsoring and promoting Tea Party events, dispatching their anchors to literally host Tea Party rallies, and donating hundreds of hours of airtime to Tea Party spokespeople and supporters. Fox News is the de facto Tea Party Channel.

Despite that massive PR push, the Tea Party remains quagmired as a niche clan of exclusionary cultists and corporate dupes. But that hasn’t deterred Fox News from their campaign to Tea Bag America. This morning Fox Nation declared that Tea Parties are going on high alert, and posted recruiting calls for Joe the Plumber’s Tea Party Tax Revolt.

All of this got me to wondering where it will all end. With a major so-called “news” network advocating on behalf of the delusional flank of the conservative crusade, it seems to me that the right stumbled into an abyss and has consumed some mighty potent mushrooms. So, with apologies to Tim Burton, I present…

Malice In Wonderland, Fox News Through the Looking Glass:

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Later this month a new Tea Crusade will commence in the form of another AstroTurf sponsored bus tour. The thrid Tea Bagger Express will conclude in Washington on April 15. On August 28, Glenn Beck will headline his “Restoring Honor” affair at the Lincoln Memorial. That’s an ironic event considering the obvious lack of honor of the host. He just starting claiming that it’s a fundraiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, but he originally promoted it as the launch date for his next book “The Plan.” Also, the date is the anniversary of Martin Luther’s King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the same location. A couple of days ago, Beck called King a “radical socialist” and questioned whether we should be celebrating a holiday in his name. Now Beck seeks to muddy King’s memory by usurping this historic anniversary to hawk his book. In September Beck’s second annual 9/12 rally will take place on 9/11. This gives Beck another opportunity to tarnish a sensitive anniversary.

Expect all of these events to be aggressively promoted on the Tea Party Channel (i.e. Fox News). And expect there to be more coverage of, and interviews with, Tea Baggers and there proxies in Congress. And above all, expect more confusion, mischief, and deceit on the part of Fox and the right-wing politico-media complex.

I must say that I have to agree with Alice when she said:

“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

What Is Roger Ailes Doing On ABC’s This Week?

Posted by on January 31, 2010 at 12:34 pm. 12 Comments :

For some reason ABC News saw fit to invite Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, onto ABC’s This Week to participate in the panel discussion. I wonder what Barbara Walters and the show’s producers thought Ailes would contribute. I wonder if they knew, when they sent the invitation, that Ailes would spend most of his time lying. I wonder if they ever gave consideration to inviting Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann. And I wonder if, in retrospect, they think the segment contributed to honest discourse and served to inform their viewers.

It may be unprecedented to have a CEO of a news network appearing on air as an advocate for the Republican Party. Just imagine the outrage that would ensue if the NBC or CBS chief took to the airwaves espousing Democratic politics. Ailes must have studied hard for his appearance because it shows in the quantity of grade A lies he produced (Media Matters has video). For instance:

Ailes said that the White House tried to ban Fox News from the media pool. That never happened. Fox failed to submit a request in time, so they were left off a list. As soon as they notified the White House, they were put back on by communications director Anita Dunn.

Ailes endorsed Glenn Beck’s accuracy but for “one unfortunate thing which he apologized for.” That was presumably in reference to Beck calling the president a racist who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Beck has never apologized for that. In fact he affirmed it on his radio show the following day. He has subsequently lost more than 80 advertisers.

Ailes reviewed the State of the Union speech as “pretty good” except that the President “did some dumb things like take on the Supreme Court. But the media saved him by blaming it all on Alito.” Maybe, if by media he means Fox News. It was his own network that repeatedly replayed Alito calling the the President a liar (ala Joe Wilson). And they weren’t doing it to blame Alito for anything, but to agree with him and to attack the President. Furthermore, it wasn’t dumb to criticize the Court for a disastrous ruling that gives corporations even more power to influence elections.

This appearance on ABC may reveal why Ailes is so rarely seen on TV. He is neither compelling nor persuasive. Even worse, he is laughably illogical. In one segment he said about Obama…

“He is enormously likable and I think despite what everybody says, people would like him to succeed. But he came in with a belief that the radical change he wanted, or what some people say is the radical change he wanted, would be widely accepted.”

First of all, to preface his remarks by saying “despite what everybody says…” Ailes is asserting that everybody is saying that they don’t want the President to succeed. That may be true for him and for “everybody” on his network, but not for the rest of the nation. The way Ailes puts it, people want Obama to succeed despite saying that they don’t. Secondly, Ailes is promulgating the falsehood that Obama has a “radical” agenda. That’s right out of Beck’s playbook. And finally, if Obama does advocate radical change, and people find him likable and want him to succeed, then isn’t that a mandate for radical change? Ailes’ logic is working against his argument.

There were a couple of enjoyable exchanges. In one, Paul Krugman flustered Ailes with a classic example of Fox News’ “deliberate disinformation.” During the campaign Obama addressed a question about health care by prefacing it with his own question, “Why don’t we have a European style health care system?” Then Obama explained why we do not, and should not, and went on to describe his own plan. But Fox News just played the truncated clip implying that Obama favored the European system. Ailes’ response to that was to change the subject.

In another segment, Walters brought up the newest Fox News contributor, Sarah Palin:

Walters: Do you think she has the qualifications to be president?
Ailes: Fox News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for ten years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans ever nominated. I’m not in politics. I’m in ratings. We’re winning.

Hmmm. What’s missing from that answer? Oh yeah. Whether or not Palin has the qualifications to be president. I suspect he dodged this one because he must remain fair and balanced toward the four potential Republican presidential candidates who are on his payroll: Palin, Huckabee, Santorum, and Gingrich.

As much as I would like to castigate ABC for giving Ailes a platform on their political panel, I can’t help thinking that it might actually serve the country better to have him on TV even more. There aren’t too many less appealing spokespeople for conservative hogwash than Ailes. However, if they are going to host him and his kind, they need to do a lot better job of balancing his propaganda and self-congratulatory bluster with serious liberals who can disinfect the studio with some truth.

Fox News Poll: Obama Beats All Republicans In 2012

Posted by on January 22, 2010 at 10:54 am. 6 Comments :

All it takes is a fluke victory in Massachusetts for Fox News pundits predict the demise of the Democratic Party. In the days since Scott Brown won the special election for the Senate the conservative press has been unreservedly giddy. They have proclaimed the end of everything from health care to the Obama presidency. The only problem is that nobody told the voters.

A poll from that bastion of socialist twaddle, Fox News, shows that Barack Obama is preferred over every Republican they surveyed against him.

By 47 percent to 35 percent Obama bests former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The president has an even wider edge over former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (55 percent to 31 percent), and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (53 percent to 29 percent).

On top of that, the Tea Bagger phenomenon is turning out to be the biggest bubble since the tulip mania. As I wrote in The Tea Party Delusion, the popularity of the movement is largely a mirage created by the media (i.e. Fox News). Almost half the country doesn’t even know they exist. In this new poll from Fox, they match Obama against a generic candidate from the Tea Party and Obama wins by more than two to one (48% to 23%). Even amongst Republicans a majority (54%) reject the Baggers.

Perhaps the rumors of the President’s demise are highly exaggerated. The significance of these results in a poll from an overtly hostile source cannot be understated. By the same token, the lesson of the Massachusetts race is that overconfidence is a dangerous extravagance.

The 2012 election is still 34 months away and the stable of potential opponents have a not-so-secret weapon: Fox News. Yes, the network that commissioned this poll actually employs four prospective GOP candidates. In addition to the two surveyed here, Palin and Gingrich, they also have Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum on the payroll. It is unprecedented that a so-called news enterprise would actually employ so many electoral adversaries from the same party, or for that matter, any party. You have to wonder if Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Bobby Jindal feel left out.

The association with Fox could prove valuable over the next two and a half years. The Fox Farm Team will have an opportunity to rack up a lot of free practice time on the air. That exposure, along with the rest of Fox’s advocacy for the rightist agenda, is an expensive asset that will only be afforded to members of the team.

Fox Nation HitlerAnd the coaching staff at Fox is already preparing the field. Fox Nation took the occasion of Brown’s victory to promote a video that portrays Democrats as despondent Nazis being berated by their leader, Adolf Hitler.

In the run up to the 2008 election, and in the year that followed, there were many complaints about the right-wing’s hyperbolic attempts to associate the President with Hitler, Stalin, or Marx, and despite the documented evidence of it, Fox always tried to dismiss it as overzealous opponents. But this video is unambiguously making the Nazi correlation and it is prominently featured on the Fox Nation web site. And it’s not the first time:

Fox Nation Hitler

The campaign for 2012 is clearly in progress and Fox is implementing their most aggressive and dirtiest game plan. But according to their own poll it isn’t yet having much of an effect. The operative word there is “yet.” If there is one thing that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, et al have in abundance it is patience. This is just the bottom of the second inning and they have plenty of pine tar left to apply extra spin to the ball.

Ashamed And Sickened By Roger Ailes

Posted by on January 10, 2010 at 9:16 am. 3 Comments :

Roger Ailes

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has become a bit of a crimp in the Murdoch family’s harmony. The New York Times is reporting that Matthew Freud, the husband of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, is not particularly fond of his in-laws.

Freud: I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.

Uh oh. That’s gotta make for some awkward holiday gatherings. Freud’s complaint isn’t a trivial personal incompatibility. He is aiming straight at the heart of a news enterprise’s most cherished asset: its journalistic standards. The charge of “horrendous and sustained disregard” is hardly an incidental difference of opinion. And the fact that there are others who share his shame doesn’t smooth things out for Ailes.

Freud is married to Elisabeth Murdoch, who left the family business to run her own UK-based enterprise, Shine Limited. Shine also has interests in the U.S., including Reveille, the company that produces “The Office” and “Ugly Betty.” Elisabeth was an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama and held a fundraiser for him in London. That contrasts significantly with the views of Ailes, whom the Times says threatened to quit if Murdoch permitted his New York Post to endorse Obama for president.

The Times notes that Ailes also played a part in Lachlan Murdoch’s decision to leave his father’s company in 2004 and return to Australia. Up until then Lachlan was considered Rupert’s heir apparent. The article goes on to hype Ailes’ mythic reputation as a political strategist and media guru. But what it doesn’t say is that while being successful at lining the pockets of the principles, Fox News was also killing the Republican Party.

It’s good to know that there are some reasonable members of the Murdoch clan who aren’t afraid to voice their opinions. It makes for some interesting speculation about the future of News Corp. when the Murdoch progeny assume control. While son James is still a high-ranking executive running Papa’s European satellite operations, siblings Elisabeth and Lachlan will inherit equal voting shares from their father’s estate.

Should any of this make Ailes nervous? Well, would you want to keep a division head that made you “ashamed and sickened” if you inherited a multinational media empire? Would you allow your news network to continue to have a “horrendous and sustained disregard” for journalistic standards? Would Ailes even want to remain at Fox with Obama supporters as his new bosses? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

[Update] News Corp responds: “Matthew Freud’s opinions are his own and in no way reflect the views of Rupert Murdoch, who is proud of Roger Ailes and Fox News.”

Rupert Murdoch’s pride in Ailes irrevocably ties him to the insults, lies, and journalistic disrepute that is the hallmark of Ailes and his stars like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. Murdoch again chooses to align himself with the dregs of the television idiocracy. That will be his legacy.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Terrifies The Boy Scouts

Posted by on November 12, 2009 at 3:48 pm. 6 Comments :

Last night Fox News CEO Roger Ailes was honored by the Boy Scouts of America with the 2009 Good Scout Award. If his corpulent visage wasn’t enough to frighten the children, his acceptance speech surely turned the trick. Here is an excerpt that was broadcast by the boot-licking toadies of Fox & Friends:

So Ailes is “heartened to know that what the enemies of America don’t know is that someday they will meet the courage, resilience, dedication of these young Americans.” If you were a ten year old Scout in the audience, would you be heartened to know that powerful adults like Roger Ailes are already conscripting you into armies to face future enemies? And isn’t this the same sort of government indoctrination of innocent children by Ailes, for which his network has so furiously condemned President Obama?

Ailes was introduced by his good friend Rush Limbaugh. In the introduction, Limbaugh candidly revealed something that most observers already know about Fox News, but which Ailes himself has decried in the past as a great danger:

Limbaugh: Roger’s never been on camera. Roger is not actively in the director’s chair every day for all these shows and yet he’s created this culture where everybody there is on the same page and proud, and they’re winning.

Ailes: The greatest danger to journalism is a newsroom or a profession where everyone thinks alike. Because then one wrong turn can cause an entire news division to implode. We must respect and encourage diversity of thought and speech in the newsroom.

I think we can comprise and agree that Fox is both a myopic purveyor of lock-step biases AND a great danger.

Rupert Murdoch: We Did Not Start This Abuse

Posted by on November 5, 2009 at 8:52 am. 7 Comments :

When News Corp released their quarterly earnings yesterday, analysts took the opportunity to address some issues that have plagued the company’s cable news division, Fox News. News Corp Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, was characteristically combative – and dishonest.

The key question was from Brian Stelter of the New York Times:

“There was much talk in the past three months about an agreement between News Corporation and General Electric to limit the attacks between Fox and MSNBC. Is News Corporation continuing to seek to limit those attacks?”

Let’s just ignore the prejudicial framing of the question that implies that Fox has already been seeking to limit attacks. There has been absolutely no evidence of that, so it makes no sense to ask if it will continue. Murdoch, however, wasn’t going to complain about a such a propitiously delivered inquiry. He responded by whining that “they started it.”

“We did not start this abuse, which we thought went way beyond – it was personal and went way beyond – not on me, but on others, and it was finally we had to allow people to retaliate. And the moment they stop, we’ll stop.”

The truth, however, is a quite different from Murdoch’s representation. The hostility between Fox and it’s cable news colleagues was initiated by Fox from the day they launched in 1996. The utterly cynical “fair and balanced” slogan was an intentional slap at the other networks, whom they were accusing of bias. The meaning of the slogan was not that Fox would present the news with fairness or balance, but that they would serve to counter what they delusionally viewed as the imbalance of the rest of the media.

Since the ideological battle between the networks began on the day Fox debuted, Murdoch can hardly accuse the other networks of starting the abuse. But it didn’t stop there. In January of 2007, Fox ran an on-air promo that said they were “The only cable news channel that does not bring you the usual left wing bias.”

And that wasn’t all. They subsequently ran ads that accused CNN of being partisan and the Fox Nation promos declared that it was “time to say no to biased media.” More recently, they falsely claimed in a trade ad that CNN had failed to cover the Tea Bagger events that Fox itself was sponsoring. So much for fairness and balance. Murdoch himself admitted that his network’s slogan was a fraud in April of 2008 when he said…

“It’s very hard to be neutral. People laugh at us because we call ourselves ‘Fair and Balanced.’ Fact is, CNN, who’s always been extremely liberal, never had a Republican or conservative voice on it.”

People are laughing at you because you make such hysterically inane remarks like that one. Just a reminder – CNN’s lineup of conservatives: Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, Mary Matalin, Tucker Carlson, Lynne Cheney, Lou Dobbs, etc. Fox’s lineup of liberals: Alan Colmes.

Not only was Murdoch wrong about who started this war, he also improperly asserted that it was made personal by his rivals. That doesn’t really square with the facts. How would he characterize this comment from Bill O’Reilly:

“[T]here is a huge problem in this country and I’m going to attack that problem. I’m going to attack it. These people aren’t getting away with this. I’m going to go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice, right now. I’m coming after you…I’m going to hunt you down […] if I could strangle these people and not go to hell and get executed…I would.”

Nah, that aint personal. And then there was the time that Roger Ailes threatened that he would “unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.” That was just after O’Reilly called GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt “a despicable human being” who was responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. And Ailes kept his promise about unleashing the New York Post who published hit pieces on Keith Olbermann that included his home address. No, not personal at all.

Now Murdoch is misrepresenting the entire affair. It is demonstrably evident that Fox started the name-calling and bullying long before this current imbroglio began. And it was Fox who escalated it to bitter and personal insults. Now Murdoch says that “the moment they stop, we’ll stop.” That is almost exactly what Fox said in May of last year. But since then, Fox has only become more adversarial, showing no interest in anything but conflict and confrontation.

So contrary to Murdoch’s assertion, Fox not only started the abuse, they raised it to unprecedented levels. Now Murdoch complains that he doesn’t like it. Well, he’s saddled with it now. He invented it and promoted it. It is his legacy. Along with giving the world nutcases like Glenn Beck. That is how we remember Rupert Murdoch.

Roger Ailes For President?

Posted by on October 23, 2009 at 12:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Mike Allen at Politico is reporting that:

“Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012”

I am at a near loss for words. The only thing I can think of to say (when I stop laughing) is, “How can I help?”

The prospect of an Ailes candidacy would be a dream come true. Just imagining that corpulent hulk on the campaign trail sends shivers of joy through me. This is the man who gave us Richard Nixon. This is the man who produced the Rush Limbaugh show that failed miserably in TV syndication. Ailes is a creature of the media. His entire professional life has been dedicated to propaganda. He may be able to hammer together an effective media campaign from time to time, but he has never had much of a public presence and his appeal on that basis is on a par with Dick Cheney.

The ramifications of Candidate Ailes are numerous and exhilarating. Who would he choose for a running mate? Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann? Glenn Beck? And what would his cabinet look like? A bunch of aging white men surrounded by anchor babes in short skirts? As Secretary of State, Bill O’Reilly could shout down world leaders and issue directives detailing which foreign diplomats were pinheads. Press Secretary Hannity would make certain that nothing but the right lies and innuendo emanate from the White House.

It’s interesting that this ludicrous notion is being floated just as the press is wallowing in a fabricated war between the White House and Fox News. It seems to me that having the head of Fox drafted as an opponent to the President seals the case that Fox itself is an opponent of the President and, therefore, not a credible news enterprise.

The article in Politico asserts that Ailes “has an aggessive [sic], winning personality….” That appears to be the opinion of the article’s author, Mike Allen, who cites Ailes pal Frank Luntz for confirmation. Allen also says that the talk about Ailes running is “based on more than mere speculation.” However, there is nothing but speculation in the column. There is no quote from Ailes, or anyone close to him, that affirmatively addresses the question of his running or even thinking about it.

This idea is so patently absurd that you have to wonder who’s behind it. What motives would the rest of the “friends and associates” Allen references have? And why would they want to remain anonymous? It’s not as if this is an insult to Ailes. Allen doesn’t bother to reveal his sources, but I have it on good authority that Allen was seen having lunch with Richard Heene, of Balloon Boy fame.

Is Ailes running for president? Is Politico being punked? Is that a balloon over the White House with an old fat guy hanging out of it? I think Glenn Beck is hard at work connecting dots that prove that Obama and ACORN are behind an effort to sink Ailes’ campaign before it has even begun. And the madness goes on…..

[Update] Allen is now reporting that Ailes laughed off the entreaties that he run for president.

“Ailes replied when asked about the possibility, according to the aide: ‘This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I’m going to decline a run for the presidency.'”

If Ailes believes that the country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, does that mean he’s going to shut down Fox News?

GE And News Corp: The Saga Continues

Posted by on August 8, 2009 at 2:19 pm. 5 Comments :

As previously reported, executives at GE and News Corp have been attempting to broker a deal that would end the bickering between the networks and, mostly, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. I continue to maintain that it would be a violation of journalistic ethics for the execs to interfere with the judgment of their commentators. But the brass at GE and News Corp don’t seem to agree with me.

The first attempt at a truce was broken within 48 hours by Olbermann who, on returning from vacation, skewered O’Reilly royally, just like the good old days. O’Reilly took up the gauntlet and, as per his routine, ignored Olbermann and went straight after his boss at GE, Jeffrey Immelt. The tactic of bypassing Olbermann and aiming at Immelt is said to have been personally suggested by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. With the war on again, the combatants began to reveal some of their innermost thoughts – particularly Ailes who, according to the Washington Post, summarized the situation thusly:

Ailes offered a blunt, if slightly jocular, diagnosis of the problem. He could control his nutcases, Ailes said, but Immelt couldn’t control his.

That says so much. First, Ailes is acknowledging that his people are nutcases (as if we didn’t already know). And second, Ailes is admitting that he has the power to manipulate the content and views of the nutcases who host Fox programs.

GE has issued a statement saying that they haven’t “told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news.” But the New York Times claims to have sources who said that, not only was there a deal that covered Olbermann and O’Reilly, but also…

“Employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures.”

What I want to know is, how can you produce a segment critical of conservative media figures without mentioning Fox hosts?

Olbermann (and anyone in his position) deserves respect for standing up to interference from the suits in the suites. It is the ethical thing to do in the news business. You simply do not let them intrude on your news judgment, especially if your job is to provide analysis and opinion. Unless, of course, you’re Bill O’Reilly, who is a coward, and a puppet for Ailes, who has previously admitted that he has the ability to direct what is said by Murdoch-owned pundits on TV and in print (over which he has no executive authority):

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

This was basically extortion on the part of Ailes who literally served notice on GE saying that, “If you stop, we’ll stop.” The objective by both the GE and News Corp executives has nothing to do with the pursuit of news. Rather, it is a self-serving plot to tamp down any criticism of the parent companies. They are looking after their corporate interest, not the public interest.

This whole affair is a near perfect illustration of why monolithic corporations, with vested interests in far flung business and government affairs, should not be permitted to own news enterprises.