The Maculate Conception of FOXNoise
Posted by Charles II on July 1, 2011
John Cook, Gawker (via Ritholtz):
Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a “fair and balanced” counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the intellectual forerunner for Fox News was a nakedly partisan 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the “prejudices of network news” and deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.
The memo—called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— is included in a 318-page cache of documents detailing Ailes’ work for both the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations that we obtained from the Nixon and Bush presidential libraries.
…
From context provided by other memos, it’s apparent that the plan was hatched during the summer of 1970. And though it’s not clear who wrote it, the copy provided by the Nixon Library literally has Ailes’ handwriting all over it—it appears he was routed the memo by Haldeman and wrote back his enthusiastic endorsement, refinements, and a request to run the project in the margins.
2 Responses to “The Maculate Conception of FOXNoise”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
jo6pac said
Haldemen surely ran it by his boss, nixon reaching out from the grave. Have a safe 4th.
Another Gilmore/Prosser Hothead Update | Renaissance Post said
[...] Now, Gilmore has been arraigned as of yesterday (see the screen shot of his arraignment hearing schedule) and Prosser has been caught tussling over a microphone with — of all people — a reporter for a local FOX affiliate; turns out that Prosser doesn’t think even FOX folks are coddling him enough — and as we all know by now, FOX was created because Nixon crony Roger Ailes wanted a Republican-run, Republican-coddling TV netw…. [...]