Gawker
journalismism
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no rest for the dickish
Roger Ailes to Remain Employed
Fox News mastermind, old Nixon image reformer, and all-around American democracy-damaging propagandist Roger Ailes leaked the news to Drudge that Roger Ailes is getting a contract extension at News Corp. Developing! Ailes, the president of Fox News, has been focused on launching and building the Fox Business Network for the last year, which he failed at, miserably, and meanwhile Fox News itself has begun a long-overdue tailspin into delusional irrelevance, with cranky Brit Hume retiring and Shep Smith the channel's sole voice of reason as Hannity and Greta Van Susteren run wild. So hey, Ailes will remain at the wheel through Obama's first term, probably. Maybe he can right the ship and transform it into a coherent (if still nutso) voice of opposition? Or maybe it will continue to be a madhouse of feverish conspiracy and paranoia. Either way, Roger, like his Fox Business Network, will not sweat the recession. -
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media
Fox News' Obama Power Play
Liberal peacenik Barack Obama's top secret sit-down meeting with Fox News ahead of the election was revealed in Vanity Fair this week by Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch's chosen biographer. So Fox News overlord Roger Ailes decided to go on the record today about all the various machinations at the shadowy back room confab. Did Ailes really have a "cordial" conversation with Obama, as he claims? Or was it actually a "frank discussion," as Obama's people claim? Read the tea leaves before Barack appears on Bill O'Reilly's show tomorrow: More » -
megalomaniacs
Softer Murdoch Eyes Times
It should really come as no surprise that News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch wants to be respected by the limo liberals who (officially) disdain his politics and tactics. That's why he paid so dearly for the Wall Street Journal, and was proud for having done so, right? But no one really thought age and young wife Wendi Deng would gentrify Murdoch's barbarian soul to such an extent that he now spins fantasies about buying the Times from one side of his mouth while betraying his conservative shock troops at Fox News Channel out of the other. Murdoch's brash past is becoming an embarrassment to him as his portfolio becomes more respectable, at least according to Michael Wolff, who excerpted his sanctioned Murdoch biography in the October Vanity Fair. And yet the Aussie can't help but revert to his old ways, like when he told Wolff that Muslims are, as a group, inbred:
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evil corporations in action
Roger Ailes Rewarded For Fox News Bumbling
Right in sync with the meltdown of America's subsidized mortgage giants comes still more evidence the nation's vaunted free market is broken: Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes just took home a $4.5 million performance bonus, bringing his total annual compensation to $20 million. It's true, as Silicon Alley Insider points out, that Fox News retains a wide overall lead over CNN, with 1.5 million viewers per day. But annual bonuses are supposed to reflect performance over the past year, and by that measure this one is a bizarre waste of money. More » -
shouting heads
The Sudden Attack Of Fox's Pet Liberal
Alan Colmes is famous as a nightly sacrifice victim to the Repubican Gods who run Fox News Channel. Al Franken once called him the "zeta male" of the duo Hannity & Colmes and joked that Colmes' duties included making coffee and cleaning Fox honcho Roger Ailes' private bathroom. But something has transformed the little runt. Maybe he's taken heart in the nation's mounting hatred of all things Republican. Or maybe the John Edwards scandal has energized him. Or perhaps he just really, really hates John McCain. Anyway, here's a great clip in which Sean Hannity almost beats him to death. Click the video icon. [YouTube via Wonkette] -
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feuds
Olbermann Smeared By Post, Future "Worst Person In The World"
As you are likely painfully aware, MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann is in a big feud with the entire News Corporation, since he picked a fight with thin-skinned Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. This feud recently grew to include News Corp.'s Post. When Post reporter Paula Froelich researched an item for Page Six on Olbermann supposedly demanding Tim Russert's old job, Olbermann preemptively called the reporter "the worst person in the world" on his show. When the Post did a story on Olbermann supposedly demanding to fly first class, he called Page Six-er Corynne Steindler "the worst person in the world." And now someone else at the Post is about to be called the "worst person in the world," because Page Six just ran some more bullshit gossip, this time about how Olbermann was way too nice in eulogizing former Bush press secretary Tony Snow. Wait, what? More » -
journalismism
Fox News Chief Buys Newspaper
Fox News chairman Roger Ailes bought his very first newspaper! It's a tiny paper, upstate, and was a gift to his his third wife, or at least that's the cover story. The wife, Elizabeth Ailes, is a former NBC News executive and big supporter of George W. Bush who told the Times (the Times? go figure) the "quaint paper" will "probably stay the same." In other words, the staff is already learning how to work Keith Olbermann insults into virtually any story, and reporters for competing community papers should start burning their garbage. [Times] -
feuds
Fox News Finds Julia Allison 'Sad'
Earlier this week, Fox News began sprinkling helpful exclusives on its erstwhile enemies at the Times in an ostensible bid to atone for past smears. But the favors may also be part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to prevent the formation of an anti-Fox "posse," to use columnist David Carr's memorable phrasing. And so, perhaps, it is with Julia Allison, the shamelessly self-advancing internet fameball who so many in the New York media bubble love to hate. Why has Fox stooped — famewise, mind you — to picking a fight with Allison, telling the Daily News today that her comments against the network's vicious flack Irena Briganti are "yet another sad, relentless attempt at relevancy?" Maybe because the "rep" quoted by the News is actually Briganti herself, unable to resist swiping at someone with far less power than the Times. Or maybe the network is deploying its divide-and-conquer strategy to a much larger group of detractors than reporters at one newspaper — people who hate Julia Allison. -
finance
The Jinx Of Roger Ailes
Hold for a second the vitriol that Roger Ailes usually inspires. The Fox News boss is worth watching—not so much for his abuse-inviting impersonation of a corpulent former Nixonite but as a financial indicator of a market top. The cable news network Ailes started for Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch—though a remarkable ratings success—marked the high-water-mark of the Republican ascendancy. A month after the launch of Fox News in October 1996, Bill Clinton came back from the political dead and ascendant Congressional Republicans under Newt Gingrich suffered their first big reverse. So is there an Ailes jinx? Well, take a look at the stock market. Ailes' Fox Business News was supposed to be a news channel with less of the gloom and doom of competitors such as CNBC. Since the start of broadcasting in October last year—right at the peak of the market—the S&P stockmarket index is down more than 15% (click to enlarge graph). If Ailes threatens to launch any new channels, sell!
