roger ailes

"Fair and balanced" sure has an interesting meaning when it comes to Fox News. We're all used to their highly partisan reporting, but this story takes the political involvement of the network to a whole new level.

Roger Ailes, the longtime Republican media guru, founder of Fox News and its current chairman, had some advice last year for then-Gen. David H. Petraeus.

So in spring 2011, Ailes asked a Fox News analyst headed to Afghanistan to pass on his thoughts to Petraeus, who was then the commander of U.S. and coalition forces there. Petraeus, Ailes advised, should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested.

The Fox News chairman’s message was delivered to Petraeus by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former national security and Pentagon aide in three Republican administrations. She did so at the end of a 90-minute, unfiltered conversation with Petraeus that touched on the general’s future, his relationship with the media and his political aspirations — or lack thereof. The Washington Post has obtained a digital recording from the meeting, which took place in Petraeus’s office in Kabul.

So Ailes was trying to get the General to run for President. But even more interesting is this part:

It's looking like Fox could be involved in some phone hacking also:

According to former Fox News executive Dan Cooper, whose gripes with his former employer run quite deep after being fired in 1996, Fox News chief Roger Ailes allegedly had him design the so-called "Brain Room" to facilitate counter-intelligence efforts and other "black ops."

In a lengthy 2008 diatribe said to have doubled as a book pitch, Cooper claimed his own phone records had been hacked by Fox News employees, who he says used them to pinpoint him as a source used by David Brock, who founded liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

"Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview," he wrote. "Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie."

Given what's happening in London, this report must be taken very seriously. It's time for congressional hearing and a full blown investigation by the Justice Department. If News Corp is found to have engaged in this highly illegal activity, Ruppert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and anyone else involved must be prosecuted to the fullest extent and News Corp must be taken over by the government and broken up. If that doesn't happen then why even say we are nation of justice?

Yeah I am sure the wingnuts will try to lecture me on first amendment rights and all, but that is how Brian Kilmead on Fox news thinks we should treat Code Pink:

A Fox News morning host has a novel idea to handle those pesky Code Pink protesters who disrupt political events and Congressional hearings: 50,000 volts of electricity.

Brian Kilmead shared his ever-so-evolved views on crowd control Monday morning in a Fox & Friends discussion of a Code Pink-disrupted Hillary Clinton speech. His answer to annoying anti-war types? Tasers or Billy clubs.

“They should Tase this guy,” Kilmead says. “At one point with security so high and tensions on edge, don’t you think they’re going to get at the very least Tased or beaten to a pulp by somebody? These people look threatening.”

So my thinking is that Code Pink just disrupts political events, FOX news disrupts our entire democracy. Maybe Kilmead needs tazed or Billy clubbed.

Should someone on a national television channel be allowed to say this? I wonder how FOX would react if Keith Olbermann said we should start tazzing Bill O'Reilly? You can bet there would be legal proceedings on it. I guess this is the fascist agenda Roger Ailes is trying to promote through his channel. Maybe he also needs tazzed!

Mediabistro has the official statement from FOX on the Nevada debate:

'News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party. In the past, Moveon.org has said they ‘own’ the Democratic party — while most Democrats don’t agree with that, it’s clearly the case in Nevada' -- David Rhodes, VP

David Rhodes, in a single paragraph, has shown the exact reason why Democrats don't want to associate with FOX news. He is taking the same path as Roger Ailes, who continued his attack on Barack Obama last night by calling him a "terrorist".

At the same speech last night, Roger Ailes also showed how delusional he truly is:

This pressure must be resisted as it has been in the past. Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists. And any candidate of either party who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters.

When FOX continually does partisan attacks against Democrats then why should Democrats even credit FOX as being a "news organization"? Sure Olbermann has become a spokesperson for the left, but MSNBC also has on numerous conservative shows. Now that is "fair and balanced".