Ailes calls CNN "the anti-American channel" and other doosies here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60249-2004Dec12_2.html
The Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.

CBS? "We're not retracting stories. We don't have a former attorney general looking into us to try to determine how we screwed it up," Ailes says, referring to the investigation into CBS's use of apparently bogus National Guard documents.

CNN? Ailes rips the overseas network CNN International, "or, as we call it, the anti-American channel." He likens it to the BBC and al-Jazeera in that "you can't find a whole lot good about America."

ABC? Ailes apparently took offense at a recent Harvard speech in which ABC News President David Westin said Fox News had been "effective" in bringing talk radio and opinion to TV news. "David is in the process of trying to turn himself into Fred Friendly," the late media executive and ethicist, Ailes says. "He's a corporate lawyer who's trying to be a great journalist. But he has got some problems. He's the guy who wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to be a journalist for him." ABC sent the actor to interview President Clinton four years ago for a special on the environment.

Ailes mischaracterized a memo from ABC's political director, Mark Halperin, as arguing that "they didn't have to be fair, they should support Kerry in the debates." Halperin wrote that while President Bush and John Kerry should be called on exaggerations and misstatements, the Bush campaign was engaging in more distortions, and "that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that."

By the way, Ailes, a former Republican operative, tells Lamb that "I quit politics because I hated it . . . I thought it was getting mean-spirited."

fucking douchebag

In time people will figure out what Fox has done to this country and we'll have so many probes up your ass with investigations that you're going to squeal like the pig you are.

Several years back (I think it was in 2000?), in response to CNN losing ratings and Fox gaining ratings, the head of CNN held a meeting with top Republicans in Congress and asked them how to appeal to conservatives after getting ridiculed for years by Rush Limbaugh & the Scaife Boys on talk radio as the "Clinton News Network" for actually daring to attempt to portray things in an even-handed manner.

After this meeting, CNN took a sharp right turn in their news coverage in an attempt to out-Fox Fox. Unfortunately, for CNN, the conservatives still did not trust the Clinton News Network and stuck with Fox, and liberals got turned off by the sharp right turn of the new Conservative News Network and jumped ship for the internet and other news sources.

They had already lost the right wingers to Fox. That ship had sailed.

The intelligent ratings move would have been to take a LEFT turn and appeal to those Fox was alienating. Trying to compete for an already entrenched demographic was the height of stupidity and was born of the belief that the country had swung right. That hadn't actually happened, they misread that fact, and then made on the great marketing blunders of all time.

The entire senior management staff at CNN should have been fired over this.
The Professor

Almost as bad as getting involved in a land war in Asia or going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

What CNN also did was bring in respectable, low key conservatives like Lou Dobbs & Aaron Brown. While they are quality journalists & anchors for Republicans, they are not the fire breathing, Rove-talking-point-spitting hatemongers that Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity & Brit Hume are.

Look what happend to Wallace Shawn in that movie. We sicilians don't like be connected to the mafia, even though the truth is that we're ALL in the mafia. Every single on of us! Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone.

BTW: Aren't we sort of in a land war in Asia RIGHT NOW? I thought so.
The Professor

My grandfather was Sicilian, but he is probably the most honest, hard working, straight & narrow type that I've ever met. He retired at 65 then worked 2 part time jobs until he was 80, then went down to 1 part time job until he was 84 and my grandmother finally convinced him to stop working... he passed away within a year of stopping working.

I think we're involved in 2 land wars in Asia, but we don't hear too much about Afghanistan since Bush declared victory there.

But, since you're in the mafia too, you know what i mean. (Kidding!)

Sorry about your grandpa. That's a bummer.

And, yeah, you're right, 2 land wars. Apparently, Li'l Georgie never saw the Princess Bride.
The Professor

Reich Wing Toadie.

Over here in The Netherlands I don't get to see US national CNN but from what i read about it on DU they are very pro Bush, not asking critical questions etc, basically a RW corporate propaganda machine.
I guess most of you don't see CNN Int, but we do receive it in The Netherlands.
Example: around midnight, The Daily Show Global Edition on Comedy Central - light-hearted but very very anti-Bush. Makes me wonder why they show two different faces to two different parts of the world. Pretty strange if you ask me.

CNN is a gossip-hype-RW propaganda channel.

Not biased enough to compete with FOX???