In Defense of Roger Ailes
Who is Roger Ailes? He is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Fox News.
In Christian Science Monitor (June 21, 2005), Susan Estrich explained what she wants to be the token feminist-liberal on Fox News:
I work for Fox News as a commentator. I say whatever I want. I'm the blonde on the left, figuratively and literally - the one who's usually smiling because it's TV, not the Supreme Court or Congress, and I find civility more effective in any event.
Besides, why shouldn't I be smiling? Prior to working for Fox, I worked for ABC and NBC, spent a lot of time at CNN, and almost ended up at CBS. I worked for a bunch of local stations in Los Angeles and had a talk-radio show at KABC for six years. In other words, I'm fortunate enough to have been around, and Fox News is the best place I've ever worked.
I've come to expect the jabs at Fox News - because being a liberal, I get more than most. I work there in part because, six or seven years ago, they offered me a better deal than NBC at the time; and because, as a feminist and a Democrat, I think it's particularly important to have a dialogue with people who aren't already members of the same choir - that's the way we will ultimately have to win elections.
I also work there because of my respect for Roger Ailes, the man who created it, and hired me, and to whom I am extremely loyal for reasons having nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with integrity. The jabs have gotten stronger with success. No surprise there. When you get to No. 1 as fast and as impressively as Fox News has, it's a bull's-eye, and Mr. Ailes would be the last person in the world to expect his competitors to go gently.
Here is what Steve Gilliard had to say:
Let me translate: Roger Ailes owns me. He owns me from roots of my hair to my toe nails. I will do anything he says. It's like prison, you need a daddy to protect you. Without that connection, you would be vunerable to any predator which came along. Let's be honest, without Roger being my daddy, I would be an obscure academic and failed politician. Just another of the hoi polloi. But as the Fox house liberal, I can betray my principles and get paid lots of cash. Why the hell do you think I went to law school? To be poor? Shit.
Look, I work for Roger Ailes. He pays my lavish salary and lets me babble on. Why the fuck would you think I would turn on him as long as my direct deposit is made every payday? Look, politics is about getting paid. If I have to pretend to be a cow, moo, moo, make sure the deposit is made.
And then from DC Media Girl:
How much did Roger Ailes pay for your soul? How much does a conscience go for on the open market these days? I realize that your lifestyle is expensive - those Hollywood plastic surgeons don’t do charity facelifts, after all - but wouldn’t you have been better off calling a madame that specializes in middle-aged call girls (uh, women) and peddling your ass for money? I think that becoming a literal whore would have allowed you to stay truer to your feminist principles than being Fox’s "liberal" Uncle Tom.
Anyway, you get the idea. So why should I be the one to defend Roger Ailes? You see, I once worked for Roger Ailes and I can tell you one or two things about his professional work.
Between the years 1994-1996, Roger Ailes was the president of the American cable television networks CNBC and America's Talking. There are hundreds of cable television channels in the United States, and it is a given that not all of them will be successful (if they all have the same audience levels, they would all be considered failures). Most corporate boards would lose patience after a couple of years, fire the president and hire another savior. When the new boss comes in, it is usually 'regime change.' Anyone associated with the old boss is swept out the door.
When Roger Ailes showed up at CNBC with a mandate to turn the network into a profit center for GE/NBC, he began to build his own staff. He brought in his own research director, who began to look for a new research supplier. Three research companies were brought in to be interviewed by Roger Ailes, his research director and someone without a job title named John Ellis (who is the cousin of President George W. Bush and the person who called Bush the winner on election night in 2000 for Fox News (see AlterNet)).
At the time, I and my colleague had just started a Media & Communications Research Division within a traditionally well-known research company. We were different from the traditional polling companies, because both of us came from television ratings. My colleague took care of the sales, marketing and finance, while I took care of the methodology and operations. At this interview, my colleague did all of the talking. He happens to be very good, and he is currently the research head of the world's largest media research company as well as the chairman of the leading industry group. I should think that we presented a different group that was more dynamic, adaptive and creative than the traditional opinion pollsters.
At the end of that interview, Roger Ailes turned to me and asked, "But you haven't said a thing at all?"
My response: "Everyone can talk, but in the end, somebody has to do the work. I am that person."
He laughed. But I meant what I said.
Of course, my support for Roger Ailes had to be based upon more than one joke. Over the course of the next couple of years, we ran a monthly tracking study for CNBC/America's Talking as well as other custom studies. Roger Ailes had been charged to build up CNBC, which was a very unusual cable television network. Many people don't understand what CNBC stands for. Since it owned by GE/NBC, it is often taken to mean Cable NBC. In truth, CNBC stands for Consumer News and Business Channel, and was the result of a merger with Financial News Network. During weekday daytime, CNBC covers the stock market; during weekday evening, it became a talkshow channel; during weekends, the programming time is sold to infomercials. So this was not the easiest network to brand and build.
Roger Ailes had many ideas, but he needed research to give him rapid feedback. There was no such thing as not liking some numbers because it disproved his working hypotheses. If things were not working, he needed to try something else fast. Previously, Roger Ailes had been the media pollster for the first President George Bush, and must recognize that internal tracking polls must be done right. After all, there is an objective reality and fudging the poll numbers will not change it. This kind of attitude is quite different from some of my other clients, who scream at me for giving them bad numbers. And when Roger Ailes left CNBC for Fox News, his replacement declared that he did not need any research data because he intended to go with his instinct.
Speaking professionally, I have to agree with Susan Estrich that I like Roger Ailes for "reasons having nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with integrity."
DC Media Girl also addressed the ideological dimension of Roger Ailes:
How much did Roger Ailes pay for your soul? How much does a conscience go for on the open market these days? I realize that your lifestyle is expensive - those Hollywood plastic surgeons don’t do charity facelifts, after all - but wouldn’t you have been better off calling a madame that specializes in middle-aged call girls (uh, women) and peddling your ass for money? I think that becoming a literal whore would have allowed you to stay truer to your feminist principles than being Fox’s "liberal" Uncle Tom.
So you’re buddies with Roger Ailes. Excuse me, but isn’t he the same Roger Ailes who played a part in sinking the campaign of your candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, by resorting to crude race-baiting and demagoguery?
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You know, it must have seemed like old times in 2004, watching Ailes and his minions push the Swift Boat Vets for "Truth", a group so sleazy that even Bill O’Reilly - Bill O’Reilly! - was sickened by their tactics. It takes a real man of integrity to instruct his underlings to turn a decorated war hero into a lying, flip-flopping, Frenchified faker who may have received his Purple Heart under false pretenses, all in defense of a chickenhawk who went AWOL for a significant portion of his service (I guess defending Texas from Oklahoma was just too stressful). Yes, I think it’s safe to say many of us will never forget election 2004, and Fox’s role in it. Never.
Now I am even willing to step out of my professional position and defend that. Roger Ailes is the type of person who is focused on "What is the goal?" and then "What does it take to get there?" He has some good guesses as to how to get there, but he needs research feedback to validate or modify his actions. This approach is very much like what Deng Xiaoping said about how to turn China into a well-off society. There does not exist a foolproof roadmap to cross the river. So Deng Xiaoping said that China will do it by looking for the next rock to step on, taking another step and see if it holds. In terms of his actions, Roger Ailes was a pragmatist as well.
And what is the goal? Let us say that it is to win an election. The rest is just tactics. The system contains no inhibitions on tactics. So this is certainly my major criticism of American-style electoral systems. Those elections are won by people who are good at winning elections by whatever means, and these winners are not necessarily the best and brightest in terms of morality, ethics, civics, incorruptibility, courage, integrity, vision, compassion, and so on. DC Media Girl may be disgusted at what happened, but the system rewards those people with those tactics and methods. In an election, the goal is to win; if you are squeamish about certain tactics and methods, then you are a loser.
Roger Ailes and his ilk are the inevitable products of this system, and the winners in the survival of the fittest. If you don't like them, you should change the system. Of course, the winners under the system have all the money and power in the country and will make sure that the system will never be changed.