DrudgeReportArchives.com
Today's DrudgeReport.com
Drudge's Special Reports


Recent Headlines
Popular Headlines
Time Line





DRUDGE REPORT 2003®

Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers







XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN MAY 18, 2003 10:04:59 ET XXXXX

FOX NEWS AILES GETS AULETTA-TREATMENT; NET MADE '$70 MILLION IN PROFIT'

NEW YORKER's Ken Auletta debuts his essay on FOXNEWS chairman and C.E.O. Roger Ailes Monday in May 26 editions, hitting newsstands Monday.

Details: "Cable is an edge business," Ailes explains. NBC's "Brian Williams has no edge, so he sits there and mumbles in his nice shirts and can't get through."

MORE

Of NBC's Chris Matthews, "If Chris Matthews worked for me, he'd be doing better....I wouldn't let him answer everybody's question for them. He asks the question. Then he answers it. Then he asks you what you think of his answer. Then he goes on to another question. At some point, he's got to let the guest answer. I'd say, 'Chris, if you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to fireyou!'"

Ailes also tells Auletta how things would be different now for his former client Richard Nixon, for whom Ailes was the chief television adviser during the 1968 election. "I felt sort of sorry for him. He was socially uncomfortable. In today's climate, he would be allowed to go on OPRAH and plead that he was an abused child. And the liberals would have to love him!"

Ailes says that he expects journalists to be "watchdogs, not attack dogs" and that his network is a necessary corrective to the pieties of other networks. "I think the mainstream media thinks liberalism is the center of the road. I really think that they don't understand that there are serious people in America who don't necessarily agree with everything they hear on the Upper East Side of Manhattan."

Ailes says he doesn't like "�lite" journalists with "a pick up their ass" who treat journalism as "a from-the-Mount profession."

After immersing himself in FOXNEWS for four months, Auletta claims numerous instances of anchors and correspondents tipping to the right.

"FOX NEWS," he writes, "became a magnet for conservatives much as Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite station, did for its more than thirty million Arab viewers."

MORE

Dan Rather, of CBS, tells Auletta that he thinks FOXNEWS is a direct reflection of owner Rupert Murdoch's political views. "Mr. Murdoch has a business, a huge worldwide conglomeratebusiness," Rather says. "He finds it to his benefit to have media outlets, press outlets, that serve his business interests. There's nothing wrong with this. It's a free country. It's not an indictable offense. But by any clear analysis the bias is towards his own personal, political, partisan agenda...primarily because it fits his commercial interests."

Last year, Auletta reports, FOXNEWS made seventy million dollars of profits on three hundred and twenty-five million dollars in revenue, according to a senior FOX executive. Profits are expected to double this year.

Bill O'Reilly, whose nightly broadcast is the most popular show on any cable news network, credits Ailes with leading the way: "Roger Ailes is the general, and the general sets the tone of the army. Our army is very George Pattonesque. We charge. We roll."

Impacting....

-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereportArchives.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2003
Not for reproduction without permission of the author



The Drudge Report does not own, operate or maintain DrudgeReportArchives.com and is not responsible for it in any way.

Drudge Report : E-mail: drudge@drudgereport.com
Matt Drudge's Book: Drudge Manifisto
Matt Drudge on social media: Twitter (occasionally)
Matt Drudge music: Playlist



Home | DMCA | Link Decay

General Support:

Copyright © 2024 DrudgeReportArchives.com. All Rights Reserved.