The network said that “Fair and Balanced” was shelved as a marketing tool after Mr. Ailes’s departure. In its place is a new motto:
“Most Watched, Most Trusted.”
Jared Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe
Shep Smith slams Spicer for ducking questions about Kushner’s Russia call
Shep Smith blistered white House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Tuesday afternoon for refusing to put Kushner contacts with the Russia story to rest.
Speaking with Politico report Josh Gerstein, Smith pointed out the obvious: that Spicer still hasn’t denied reports that Kushner held inappropriate meetings with Russians.
“Remember how they found out about it in the first place,” Smith asked. “Yeah a leak, But how? Here’s how they found out — they were monitoring the Russians. While they are monitoring the Russians, as the story goes, all of a sudden there’s Jared Kushner. There they are discussing a backchannel that doesn’t involve the United States equipment but Russian equipment.”
“If that didn’t happen, if Jared Kushner wasn’t trying to hide things from the United States, then why would he do that?” he continued. “If he didn’t do that, please deny it so we can move on. That opportunity was given today in the White House press briefing.”
What Roger Ailes Figured Out
Roger Ailes launched Fox News with a simple but effective premise: most news outlets were liberal, and most Americans were not.
.. He was known for ruthlessness
.. Sean Hannity, whose show airs at 10 p.m., has propagated wild theories about the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer; on Tuesday night, after an outcry (and an embarrassing foxnews.com retraction), Hannity said he would desist.
.. Part of the genius of the network was that its existence, and its unabashed pugnacity, reliably incited outrage from other, avowedly nonpartisan media outlets, thereby reinforcing the network’s own message. By criticizing the “liberal” media, Fox News set the bait; any outlet that tried to rebut this criticism was, in a twisted way, corroborating it.
.. It is true that there were plenty of good reasons to ridicule and excoriate Fox News. But, even so, these responses only widened the partisan divide that made Fox News so successful.
.. Ailes’s strategy might have inspired his competitors to copy him.
.. But in the end, of course, MSNBC responded to Fox News by becoming a decidedly liberal news network instead, using the form that Ailes pioneered
.. This may require a more aggressive approach: a more intense focus on the leakers in the Administration, for instance, coupled with a claim that the various investigations into Trump constitute a perversion of democracy.
.. But it’s clear that the underfed audience that Ailes identified is as hungry as ever. It’s not hard to imagine that Fox News will find a way to keep feeding it.