Roger Ailes tells the AP that there was nothing political in his decision to hire Sarah Palin as a Fox News contributor.
“I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he told Frazier Moore, AP’s television writer, in a long and wide-ranging interview.
A television producer at heart, he offers an equally apolitical explanation of why Fox News has so thoroughly dominated its cable news competition for so long.
"The consistency of our product," Ailes sums up matter-of-factly. "I think we do better television than the other guys, and no matter how we do it, they don't seem to catch up. We seem to out-invent them and think ahead of them, and have better story ideas, better graphics, better on-air talent. We just are better television producers."
To prove his point, he holds up the example of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
"Wolf Blitzer is an excellent reporter, but he's not a star," says Ailes. And since the format of the show calls for Blitzer to highlight visuals on the "news wall" behind him, "he spends half of his time with his back to the camera. I like Wolf. I think he's a good journalist. But I get offended that his back is to the camera."
(CNN responded that it "has demonstrated that there is a place in cable news for objective coverage of politics and Washington. No journalist demonstrates this better than Wolf Blitzer.")
Poster Comment:
It's always interesting to have the high standards of Fox News explained to us.
