Ailes Takes Aim at Critics and Competition
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/25/2004 8:00:00 PM
Despite a spate of attacks on his top-rated cable news network, the voluble Fox News Channel Chairman Roger Ailes has personally resisted fighting back. But he took a few moments with B&Cto offer a few choice words about his critics and the competition.
On MoveOn.org and Common Cause's failed charges with the Federal Trade Commission that FNC's "fair and balanced" slogan was false advertising:
I'm happy with MoveOn.org and Common Cause and those other clowns. They drove our ratings up 10%. How do they call it Common Cause? I never got an application. MoveOn.org needs to move on from bitching about us being fair and balanced. They're lying about their marketing. Their assumption is people made us No. 1 because people are stupid.
On Robert Greenwald's hypercritical documentary of FNC, Outfoxed, which liberally used footage from the network without permission:
Any news organization that doesn't support our position on copyright is crazy. Next week, we could take a month's worth of video from CNN International and do a documentary "Why does CNN hate America?" You wouldn't even have to do the hatchet job Outfoxed was. You damn well could run it without editing. CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report—mostly that America is wrong and bad.
Everybody should stand up and say these people don't have the right to take our product anymore. They don't have a right to take a year's worth of Dan Rather or Ted Koppel and edit it any way they want. It puts journalism at risk.
On plans to spin off a business news channel from FNC:
Nothing is imminent. We thought we needed to compete with CNBC, but they're dead. We would launch in a clear climate.
On Dennis Miller's CNBC talk show:
We gave Dennis three minutes a week on Hannity & Colmes, and he was great. But if you're going to give a guy five hours a week and not support him with enough writers and producers, it's not going to work. [NBC Universal TV Group President] Jeff Zucker better get over there and write some jokes for him.
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