Beck seemed to many to be Fox News’s id made visible, saying things—Obama is a racist, Nazi tactics are progressive tactics—dredged from the right-wing subconscious. These were things that weren’t supposed to be said, even at Fox, and they were consuming the brand.
.. A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race.
.. All the 2012 candidates know that Ailes is a crucial constituency. “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger,” one GOPer told me. “Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.” But he hasn’t found any of them, including the adults in the room—Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney—compelling.
.. And last month, Ailes encouraged Bill O’Reilly.. to shoot down the “birther” conspiracy and other assorted right-wing myths that have dogged Obama since his election.
.. Even Rupert Murdoch, sensing the shifting tectonic plates, contemplated a move to the middle. In the summer of 2008, Ailes confronted Murdoch after he learned Murdoch was thinking of endorsing Obama in the New York Post; Ailes threatened to quit.
.. “And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it … It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like, ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’
.. Shushannah Walshe, a young Fox producer who was covering Palin’s campaign for the network, had gone on-air and criticized McCain’s staff, who had prevented reporters from asking Palin questions during her U.N. visit.
.. Beck had been hired to solve a problem that had vexed Ailes for years: The five-o’clock hour continually failed to attract an audience, which delivered a weak lead-in to the shows that followed.
.. In the bitter primary fight for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton’s advisers, led by Howard Wolfson, courted Fox and fed them negative research about Obama and John Edwards.
.. Going back to the 2008 campaign, Axelrod had maintained an off-the-record dialogue with Ailes. .. Later, Axelrod related in a conversation that the exchange was the moment he realized Ailes truly believed what he was broadcasting.
.. Beck’s media company, Mercury Radio Arts, had broken the mold at Fox. He earned more than 90 percent of his reported $40 million income from non-Fox activities, including comedy tours, best-selling books, a magazine, and a subscription website. Ailes was peeved.
.. And it didn’t help matters that O’Reilly, who had become friends with Beck and can’t stand Hannity, scheduled Beck as a regular guest, a move that only annoyed Hannity further.
Fox News Becomes the Unwilling Star of a French TV Satire
On the day the Charlie Hebdo attackers were killed, Nolan Peterson, who on his website describes himself as a freelance writer and a combat veteran, went on Fox News on and identified what he called 741 Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” around France and said the areas reminded him of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq.Even the British prime minister, David Cameron, reacted to the Birmingham claim, saying, “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge.” He called Mr. Emerson “an idiot.”
Muslim leaders say that Muslims are often the victims of attacks, especially since the Paris killings, which were carried out by Islamic militants. The head of a French organization known as the National Observatory Against Islamophobia called for protection by the state, saying there had been “116 anti-Muslim acts, including 28 incidents at mosques and 88 threats,” in the two days after the Jan. 7 shooting.
.. “It’s important for the French audience to know about this. They don’t really know Fox News, and they think it’s an enormous channel, very American, with announcers with big voices and blonde women who look like Barbies.”
Fox News Host: ‘America Is Awesome,’ So Let’s Stop Talking About Torture
“The Bush administration did what the American public wanted, and that was do whatever it takes to keep us safe,” declared the particularly incensed Andrea Tantaros. “The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome,” she continued. “We’ve closed the book on [torture], and we’ve stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome” — mainly because they “don’t like this country” and “want us to look bad.”