Video- Krugman confronts Ailes with Fox News' "deliberate misinformation" on health care

Damn ABC, they refuse to offer embeddable video, so we have to get it piecemeal. This is one of the better moments in a very contentious segment. Via Media Matters who also has more.

Video- Ailes defends Beck: "He's talking about Hitler and Stalin" killing people so it's "accurate"

What a slug.

Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law attacks Fox's Roger Ailes

By GottaLaff

Maybe Sarah Palin will have something to say about this during one of her brand spankin' new spots on ClusterFox.

From the Department of Families Eating Their Own:

Matthew Freud, who is married to Elisabeth, Mr Murdoch’s second daughter, told the New York Times he was “ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to”.

For once, a member of the Murdoch family speaks the truth. "Freud" yet. I'd love him to put Ailes on the couch, record it, and share.

Mr Freud, a public relations executive whose London parties attract politicians from Tony Blair to David Cameron, prefaced his comment by saying he was “by no means alone within the family or the company” in his views.

I can safely say he has plenty of company on TPC.

ClusterFox Family Values are alive and ill.

H/t: Me old chum Edward

Roger Ailes worries about terrorist attacks on Fox

By GottaLaff

The New York Times took a look-see at ClusterFox's Roger Ailes and found all kinds of treasures.

Apparently, Roger Ailes was not happy that Rupert "Aaarh!" Murdoch was thinking about a New York Post endorsement of Obama during the 2008 election, so he threatened to quit. Know what that got him? $23,000,000.

The Post endorsed McCain/Palin.

Remind me to hold his wallet.

Mr. Ailes, the son of a foreman at the Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio, described his upbringing with three words: “God, country, family” and said that credo was responsible for the success of Fox News.

He forgot "fear".

[T]he 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.

Roger is a vewwwy vewwwy fwightened wabbit. He surrounds himself with corporate-provided security. Would Faux provide any other kind?

He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the blinds drawn. [...]

A sign outside his house shows an illustration of a gun and advises visitors that it is under video surveillance.

So this is where Blackwater employees wind up once they're done killing Iraqis.

Captionary: Rachel Maddow meets Roger Ailes

By GottaLaff

What I'd have given to be at this little do:

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Fox News chairman Roger Ailes were among the guests at last night's holiday party for tvnewsers at the White House.

Check this out:

Greta Van Susteren blogs about meeting Maddow for the first time and about who else was there:

Jake Tapper of ABC and his wife were there (my money is on Jake for getting the job as anchoring This Week on ABC now that George has gone to GMA and Jake would be great at it)

No. Nononono. Can we get one new liberal replacement host out of ABC? Just one? Just this once? Pretty please with ratings on top?

Sorry. Back to reality. I'd drifted there for a minute.

Video- Fox President Roger Ailes' History Of Race-Baiting

Roger Ailes won't run in 2012, he "can't take the pay cut"

By GottaLaff

(I believe we had a request for this image)

Earlier, Paddy posted about the 5-minute push for Roger Ailes to run for president in 2012. Absurd notions like that barely register with me, but I guess that germ of a seed of an inkling of an idea made the rounds, and was even taken somewhat seriously. Seriously enough for this, anyway:

It was fun while the speculation lasted. According to Politico, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes "is laughing off the entreaties of some friends and associates and will not run for president in 2012."

Said Ailes: "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."

::smacks forehead:: Silly me, for a fleeting moment, I thought he was going to say, "This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I'm going to start demanding actual news coverage and honest reporting from Fox."

And to think I wasn't even drinking.

Roger Ailes for President?

Oh my lord, it couldn't get any better. It'd be like Jabba the Hutt vs Luke Skywalker. Plus, if Frank Luntz is behind it, you know you have a winner.

"Friends and associates are encouraging Roger Ailes -- Fox News founder, chairman and CEO -- to jump into the political arena for real by running for President in 2012," Mike Allen reports.

Said GOP strategist Frank Luntz: "I have known Roger Ailes for 29 years. No one knows how to win better than Roger."

David Axelrod's Coffee Tawk With Fox's Roger Ailes

By GottaLaff

We do get to know that they had coffee. We don't get to know what they discussed:

On a recent visit to New York, White House adviser David Axelrod met over coffee with Roger Ailes, the president of the Fox News Network, which President Obama has described as a "television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration."

According to accounts from both the White House and Fox News, the meeting was cordial. "I've known Roger for a long time," Axelrod told TIME in an email on Monday. "We chatted from time to time during the campaign. I was going to be in NY, so we got together for a cup of coffee."

That little tete-a-tete must have smoothed things over though, right?

Suffice it to say, the meeting did not cool tensions between the Obama camp and Fox, which has been enjoying a large increase in ratings this year as it has positioned itself as a major source of criticism of Obama and his policies.

OkaynevermindIwaswrong.

[A]ttitude towards Fox at the White House has been souring for months. On a recent Sunday, President Obama pointedly declined to appear on Fox News Sunday, prompting host Chris Wallace to call Obama aides, "the biggest bunch of cry babies."

Though White House aides are hesitant to criticize the network on the record, their disdain for the programming--including Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck--is clearly evident. "They are the paid political programming for a party, and occasionally a couple of news stories break out in the midst of 23 hours and 45 minutes of political rantings and opinion," said one senior administration official. "Everything about it is one-sided political opinion directed at a base. Period."

Ahh, that's better. For a split second there, I was worried. But only for a split second.

By the way, that last paragraph was more accurate than anything that ClusterFox has ever presented as "fair and balanced".

Olbermann: Send Me Everything You Can Find About Glenn Beck

By GottaLaff

Keith is asking for our assistance:

I don't know why I've got this phrasing in my head, but: Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes.

No, even now, I refuse to go all caps.

No, sending me links to the last two Countdowns [...] doesn't count. Nor does sending me links to specious inappropriate point-underscoring prove-you're-innocent made-up rumors.

Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enablers, Ailes (even though Ailes' power was desperately undercut when he failed to pull off his phony "truce" push).

This becomes necessary after this [...]

Please follow the "this" link just above. That should fire you up.

Despite the worn-out snark above, I am in earnest here.

I skipped some of his snark so you would go here to read it.

It's nice to have an outlet via Keith to retaliate, isn't it?

FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman Fired For "Promoting" Piracy

By GottaLaff

Here you go, have a big heaping spoonful of stupid:

DeadlineHollywoodDaily's Nikki Finke reports FOX has fired FoxNews.com entertainment writer, Roger Friedman.

A column by Friedman, which has since been removed, seemed to endorse watching pirated DVDs in the wake of the "Wolverine" leak this week.

According to Finke, Friedman wrote he had watched the upcoming movie by downloading it illegally [...]

Wow, he got fired for pirating, and extra crispy idiocy! Good move, there, R Fried, putting it all right out there in print, strutting your illegal stuff in order to earn a few "looka me, I'm sodamncool" points:

“I did find the whole top 10 [movies in theaters], plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room? Later tonight I may finally catch up with Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man. It’s so much easier than going out in the rain!”

Finke (who needs to use spell check more often):

I'm told that Fox News' actions were swift and severe. First, Roger Ailes, who overseas Fox News, deleted the offending post after he was contacted by 20th Century Fox about it. And then Ailes fired Friedman as a freelance Fox News entertainment writer. I hear the move was done with the full support of News Corp. "He promoted piracy. He basically suggested that viewing a stolen film is OK, which is absolutely intolerable. So we fired him," a source told me Saturday. "Fox News acted promptly on all fronts."

(h/t Johnny Dollar)

So Top Guy in Charge Ailes was the one who jumped all over this. I bet that's the fastest he's moved in decades. ::grunt::

UPDATE from my pal Mark Karlin at BuzzFlash, via e-mail:

FOX is very concerned about digital copyrights. they have YouTube yank anything from Fox. You can't get fired for promoting the assassination of the president, but if you promote a practice that could cut into FOX royalties, watch out.

Typically hypocritical, typically wrong, typically self-serving.

VIDEO: Murdoch set up Obama to confront Ailes on Fox coverage

By GottaLaff

Via Think Progress:


Of course, Howie Kurtz was skeptical. Michael Wolff, author a recent Murdoch biography — “The Man Who Owns The News”, stuck to his story.

Sometime last summer, Barack Obama reportedly met secretly with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and the network’s owner Rupert Murdoch in an attempt for both parties to “clear the air,” after Obama had received some unfavorable coverage from the network.

Wolff, who claims that Murdoch brought in Obama to criticize Ailes for Fox’s unfair coverage of Obama, also said that Murdoch is “scared of" Ailes... so much so that, apparently, he had to hide behind big, strong Barack Obama and let him do his dirty work for him.

I feel a Worst Person of the World coming on.

Author: Murdoch 'absolutely despises' the 'bullying' Bill O'Reilly

By GottaLaff

Thanksgiving is over, and yet... there are so many dee-lish-ous tidbits to chew on:

A new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, is to be released next week. Its most sensational revelations involve what the author describes as Murdoch's loathing for leading Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly.

The book? Michael Wolff's The Man Who Owns the News. The revelations?

Murdoch is not only embarrassed at times by his ownership of Fox News, but that he "absolutely despises" O'Reilly...

Awww, poor Bill-o. Okay, hands: How many think Keith Olbermann will report on this in his Monday show?

Wolff adds that Fox CEO Roger Ailes shares Murdoch's opinion. "It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator, but Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other."

And guess who wants to improve his image? Hint: It's not Bill-o.

According to Wolff, Murdoch's desire not to be defined solely by his ownership of Fox underlay his purchase last year of the Wall Street Journal, which "was in no small way about wanting to trade the illiberal -- the belligerent, the vulgar, the loud, the menacing the unsubtle -- for the better-heeled, the more magnanimous, the further nuanced."

Not workin', Rupert. Arrrh!

Quote Of The Day

Another one who knows where the butter is on the bread.

Roger Ailes responded to the report in the New York Daily News that he instructed FNC to tone down attacks on President-elect Barack Obama. He denied giving specific orders, but said he told staffers "all presidents deserve time to get their team on the ground and get organized."

"We have some obligation in a new presidency not to attempt to destabilize it," he said.

As for whether the big stars will heed the advice, he tells Gold: "Who knows? Most of them do whatever the hell they want."

E.D. "Terrorist Fist Jab" Hill To Leave Fixed Noise

Seems she was sent to Fox Siberia (afternoon shifts) after the "Fist Jab Fiasco", but seriously, who thinks she came up with it on her own? Easier to blame it on the talent than the infrastructure I guess.

Exclusive: TVNewser has learned veteran Fox News Channel anchor E.D. Hill will not be renewed when her current contract expires. Hill, who has been with Fox News for more than 10 years, will continue with the network for the next few months until her current deal expires.

From the Dep't. of Rubbing Chins in Thought: Fox News letting up on Obama?

By GottaLaff

On second thought, from the Department of I'll Believe It When I See It:

The New York Daily News says so:

Fox News boss Roger Ailes doesn't want to spoil Barack Obama's political honeymoon, we hear. A source says Ailes has told prime-time hosts Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren to lay off the President-elect - at least for a while. "We're not going to have any personal attacks on Obama," a network insider says. "The public has spoken - we must treat him with respect."

> Update: In an entry titled "This is a Big Fat Lie," Van Susteren writes on GretaWire, "No one has ever told me to do or not do something at Fox...as an aside, I have not seen or spoken to Roger in 6 months!"

On third thought, let me revise the title once more: From the Department of B.S.

They even lie to each other. No wonder they're losing their audience.

LOL Right Wing Media

Via Oliver.