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Media

ABC Panelists Criticize Ailes’ Evasion Of Why Fox News Cut Away From Obama-House GOP Conversation

As ThinkProgress reported last week, Fox News was the only major cable news network to not show the entirety of President Obama’s conversation with House Republicans at their annual retreat. Fox cut away from the event 20 minutes early and instead began attacking the President for “lecturing” to the lawmakers.

Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, Arianna Huffington challenged Fox News President Roger Ailes about this decision:

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why FOX went away from the meeting the president was having in — why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we’re the most trusted name in news.

Guest host Barbara Walters cut off the conversation though, since the show was over. However, discussion on the topic then continued in the green room, even though Ailes wasn’t present. Both Huffington and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman criticized the network for its hypocrisy:

HUFFINGTON: Their framing of the President is that he’s radical, that he’s taking us down a dark, fascist or Bolshevik future — depending on the day. And there he was, rational, charming, and in full command of his facts. So the narrative fell apart and so the cameras stopped showing what was happening.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, I mean it’s — I thought it was actually quite funny except it has real consequences. There you have Roger Ailes, with this powerful, popular news network, whining about how the media are unfair to Republicans. I mean, he is a powerful person in the media — and of course, you know, “Fair and Balanced” is truly Orwellian and we know that. So it’s clear that Fox — I felt like yelling to him, “you can’t handle the truth,” because that was what was actually happening on the Fox coverage.

Watch it:

Transcript: Read more

Media

Ailes Defends Beck’s Incendiary Rhetoric: ‘He’s Talking About Hitler And Stalin’ Killing People, So It’s ‘Accurate’

Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, Fox News anchors and media personalities began attacking his administration and its policies. The White House fired back, calling Fox the “communications arm of the Republican Party.” Today on ABC’s This Week, host Barbera Walters asked Fox News CEO Roger Ailes if the White House and his network have “kissed and made up.” “We’re fine,” he said but added one caveat. “Well I’ll pick a fight if you want. I’d be happy to get into one.”

Arianna Huffington then called out Ailes, particularly because of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s radical rhetoric, talking about people “being slaughtered.” But Ailes dismissed the criticism, saying Beck was “probably accurate”:

HUFFINGTON: But Roger it’s not a question of picking a fight and aren’t you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using which is after all, inciting the American people. Three’s a lot of suffering out there as you know and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be on the next killing spree.

AILES: He’s talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people so I think he was probably accurate.

HUFFINGTON: No he was talking about this administration.

Watch it:

For months, Beck has been linking progressivism to both communism and fascism. But more than just highlighting the atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin, Beck has directly linked them to the progressive movement. “Progressives want you dead,” Beck said just this month. Beck once said that progressive “vampires” have the “taste of blood” and are going to “start getting more and more violent.”

Beck also recently aired a “documentary” on “the atrocities of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara — ‘the true unseen history of Marxism, progressivism and communism’ as Beck described it.” It turns out the film wasn’t all that “accurate,” as Ailes claimed. History professors called it a “complete lie” and that Beck “lives in a complete alternative universe.”

Indeed, Beck also once likened himself to “Israeli Nazi hunters,” saying that “to the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter.”

Media

Fox News Regular Bo Dietl: ‘Ten Years Ago, [Katie Couric] Looked American. Today, She Looks Oriental’

On Monday during an appearance on Don Imus’ radio show, which is simulcast on the Fox Business Network, former George H.W. Bush appointee and Fox News regular Bo Dietl used sexist and racist language to attack CBS News anchor Katie Couric. “Katie Couric, the cougar,” said Dietl. “If she gets her eyes done anymore, she’s going to look like a split face.” As Imus meekly attempted to defend Couric, saying “she’s fine,” Dietl unleashed a derogatory rant about Couric:

DIETL: She looks like a Halloween cartoon. She’s got her eyes pulled so far, she’s starting to look Chinese herself. Enough with these face lifts, alright Kate. And enough with the young guys Katie. You’re over the top baby. You’re over fifty. Start going out with guys your own age. This cougar stuff don’t work.

After some cross talk, Imus tried to get Dietl to “leave Katie Couric alone.” But as Dietl approached the end of his rant, Imus offhandedly called Couric “a rodent” as he tried to end the conversation:

IMUS: I’m just saying that if she wants — leave Katie Couric alone. She’s fine.

DIETL: Oh no no no. You like her eyes the way they look?

IMUS: She looks fine to me.

DIETL: They’re getting smaller and smaller.

IMUS: She looks fine.

DIETL: Ten years ago, she looked American. Today she is an oriental.

IMUS: She is a rodent. Leave her alone.

DIETL: She doesn’t like you either pal. She never stuck up for you.

Watch it:

This isn’t the first time that Dietl and Imus have had a racially-charged discussion live on the air. In May 2008, after Dietl said that then-President Bush should fly to Saudi Arabia to talk to “those little hamel humpers over there,” Imus replied, “It’s, uh, ‘camel humpers.’” An advocate of having law enforcement “go out to the Muslim communities,” Dietl, who is a birther, has referred to Muslims as “Aba Dabba Doos.”

Dietl has appeared on Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto’s Fox News shows and is someone for whom Fox News CEO Roger Ailes personally vouches. “I have known Bo Dietl both personally and professionally for many years,” says Ailes in an endorsement letter posted on Dietl’s website. “He does excellent work and personally is a man I trust.”

Politics

Roger Ailes for president in 2012?

Roger Ailes In Playbook today, Mike Allen reports that “friends and associates” are encouraging Fox News CEO Roger Ailes to run for president in 2012:

“Ailes knows how to frame an issue better anybody and that’s what we need now,” says one Ailes friend who is encouraging him to run. Frank Luntz, for one, tells Playbook that Ailes could be a force if does it. “I have known Roger Ailes for 29 years,” says Luntz. “No one knows how to win better than Roger.”

Perhaps Ailes thinks that since he runs Fox, he’s prepared to face al Qaeda.

Update

Ailes has turned down a presidential run: “This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I’m going to decline a run for the presidency. Besides, I can’t take the pay cut.”

Politics

Krauthammer: Fox News has ‘created an alternate reality’ for its viewers.

Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer accepted the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, an annual award given by News Corporation. In his acceptance speech, Krauthammer lauded Fox News channel, which he said has “done a great service to the American polity” and for “single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.” But his praise took a strange turn when he extolled the “genius” of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes for creating an “alternate reality” for its viewers:

KRAUTHAMMER: What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.

Elsewhere in his speech, Krauthammer tried to explain why his award was more valuable to him than the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize is “awarded to those, from Yasir Arafat to Jimmy Carter, who give the most succor to the forces of terror and tyranny,” Krauthammer said. (HT: TPM)

Politics

Fox News’ Ailes: ‘I defend the United States, Israel and the Constitution.’

ailes-2.jpgFox News chairman Roger Ailes describes his mission in life:

“I stand up for what I believe. I don’t back off. I’ve been that way for 40 years. That’s the secret to my success. I have thick skin. I don’t care what people say about me,” he said.

I defend the United States, Israel and the Constitution.”

No word on whether Ailes listed those in order of priority.

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