{"id":1579,"date":"2010-03-04T11:48:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T19:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1579"},"modified":"2010-03-04T12:26:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T20:26:49","slug":"roger-ailes-seeks-to-improve-on-hitler-and-stalin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1579","title":{"rendered":"Roger Ailes Seeks To Improve On Hitler And Stalin"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

In an interview with his pals<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

“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]<\/em> lined up together were Hitler and Stalin. That did not work out well.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> 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?
\nA:<\/strong> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where to start? First of all, we already know that Fox News deliberately tried to shape politics because Rupert Murdoch admitted it<\/a> 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”<\/em>) 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<\/a> because he hasn’t phoned me to deny it.<\/p>\n

\"FauxAnd 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”<\/em> policy<\/a> after numerous “mistakes”<\/em> were broadcast. And that doesn’t even include the intentional lies that are the keystone of Fox’s anti-journalistic brand.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“To be honest with you, if all the media was tipped to the right, I’d be the biggest liberal in New York.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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”<\/em> when conservative issues were being championed by the international megaliths that own and operate most of the media (as they have for decades)?<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,44,143,30],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-fox-news","tag-glenn-beck","tag-roger-ailes","tag-rupert-murdoch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-pt","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6872,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6872","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":0},"title":"Roger Ailes Talks To Students About News Nazis And The Infallibility Of Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/13\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The first bit of advice that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had for journalism students at the University of North Carolina was \"Change your major.\" It isn't difficult to surmise why Ailes would counsel students planning careers in the press to stop studying journalism. The last thing that Ailes wants\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32090,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=32090","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":1},"title":"YOU’RE FIRED: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes To Be Canned For Alleged Sexual Harassment, Sources Say","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/18\/2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The continuing saga of Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes just took a leap off a cliff. Longtime Ailes watcher and biographer, Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine is reporting that: \"Roger Ailes's tenure as the head of Fox News may be coming to an end. Rupert Murdoch and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Roger Ailes Fox News","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-e1468869697160.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-e1468869697160.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-e1468869697160.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5458,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5458","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":2},"title":"The Sorry Truth About Roger Ailes And Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/29\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago Howard Kurtz of Newsweek published an article profiling Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News. It was revealing of both Kurtz and Ailes. The first sign that Kurtz was either unconscious or delusional was when he offered this description of Ailes' allegedly changing moods: \"[A]s President\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1453,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1453","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":3},"title":"Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Terrifies The Boy Scouts","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/12\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4501,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4501","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":4},"title":"Understatement Of The Year: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/23\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In an article published in New York Magazine, Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News is reported to have told colleagues that he thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot and unhelpful to the conservative movement. Really? Gosh, we never knew. But to be fair, there was a lot more of interest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34485,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=34485","url_meta":{"origin":1579,"position":5},"title":"Former FOX NEWS Anchor Reveals That Roger Ailes Demanded Submission Sexually AND Politically","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/23\/2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The culture of sexual harassment at Fox News has been well documented in the past few months. The most notorious consequences have been the staggering dismissals of Fox's CEO Roger Ailes and its ratings leader Bill O'Reilly. However, the whole story has still not been told. More women are said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Roger Ailes Fox News","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-former.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-former.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/ailes-the-hutt-former.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}