Love him or hate him there is no doubt Fox News President Roger Ailes is the most powerful political figure in America and many view him as the last American Patriot. It is Fox News and the line up of on air personalities and anchors recruited by Ailes that stands as the last line of defense against the perceived liberal left and advocates of a New World Order.
Throw President Obama into the opposition as his liberal and socialist agenda has already been beaten down over and over again by the political skill and savvy of Ailes, demonstrating Ailes is perhaps the most important behind the scenes news personality in the world of media. His rise to power brought him from local broadcasting when he became Executive Producer of a Philadelphia talk show and made it into a nationally syndicated television series, The Mike Douglas Show, to his recruiting of media powerhouses Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Rielly, Sean Hannity and most recently Glenn Beck.
Roger got into politics handling the Nixon media campaign. People forget that Nixon won by the largest margin in history in 1972 when he swept 49 out of 50 states for president. But Ailes real mark in politics resulted from his return to campaigns in 1984 to coordinate the Ronald Reagan media campaign leading to another avalanche in the election and resulting in Reagan becoming one of the most beloved of all American presidents.
After more than a decade of operating one of the most successful political consulting services in the world Roger turned again to television to introduce Rush Limbaugh, to this day considered the voice of conservative America, to a nationwide TV audience. A brief stint introducing the CNBC Network resulted in Roger joining forces with Robert Murdock, billionaire owner of the powerful News Corp Media and building Fox News into the dominant cable force it is today.
With a program line up of the highest rated anchors on TV, Fox dominates the ratings, often beating the combined rating of all of their competitors. Bill O'Rielly and more recently Glenn Beck have been such a thorn in the side of the Obama Administration that they are singled out time and again by the president and his people as the main obstacles to their liberal agenda and reckless spending. This weekend Obama is appearing on every major TV network and even shows like David Letterman except one, Fox News, in a perfect example of the fear harbored by the left for Ailes and Fox.
The most successful media mogul in television whose ratings continue to skyrocket as all the mainstream media are becoming obsolete, Ailes defies all industry trends with his fair and balanced approach and his line up of the highest rated hosts and highly recognized female reporters and anchors. Fox dominates special interest stories on the most beautiful women in broadcasting.
In a profile that appeared in New York Magazine in 1997, Ailes was described as “a newsman with a pronounced disdain for newsmen, and Fox News is being promoted as an anti-network, a news channel designed to appeal to people–from disaffected Gen-Xers to Limbaugh’s dittoheads–who don’t trust the Big Three news divisions.”
Business Week reported that Roger Ailes earned almost $24 million last year in total compensation. The reason? Fox News’ complete and total dominance in the ratings (a story we’ve covered extensively). But while that’s certainly an impressive figure, it takes focus from the much larger and underreported story:
Just this week Colby Hall, a columnist for Mediaite News Blog said:
"Roger Ailes is the most powerful political figure in America today.
In discussing the power and influence of Ailes, one has to start with the ratings – as we reported this Monday, FNC is consistently beating all other networks combined. Prime time has long been the province of Fox’s dominance, but now that Glenn Beck is getting O’Reilly like numbers at 5pm, it’s safe to say that they are just getting started.
But the power of Fox News goes beyond total eyeballs — their influence is actually shaping policy and taking down federal officials in an unprecedented manner. First, there is the Health Care debate – no outlet has had more influence than Fox, who went so far as to claim that the Obama Administration was attacking FNC.
Then there’s the resignation of Van Jones as “Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality,” almost entirely as a response to the investigations and allegations of Glenn Beck, who also lead the “9/12 Project.” This not only made a lot of news (which lead to a weekend ratings win), but it forced its competitors to cover the event in a way that didn’t also mention Fox News or the event planner Glenn Beck.
Most recently, of course, there is hidden camera video capturing ACORN employees behaving in ways that are not befitting of any organization – particularly one that receives so much federal funding. Nonetheless, the continued (some might say relentless) airing of that video tape effectively convinced the US Senate to vote overwhelmingly to discontinue millions of dollars of funding to ACORN, just within a week based on that hyped-up video.
Perhaps the best example of the influence of Fox News is this: on the day after Obama’s Health Care speech, all other networks and news outlets were talking about Joe Wilson’s outbursts. Fox News, however, was introducing the ACORN video. Which issue is a bigger story today and actually lead to legislation?"
Obama supporters on the far left thought they could deflect any criticism from the conservative side and for a time they did by successfully counter-attacking and attempting to discredit them. Remember Sarah Palin? But the new administration did not have the experience to understand the power of Roger Ailes to mobilize the public and cast a spotlight on the backroom politics involved in selling out America.
America remains a citadel of individual freedom because there are people like Roger Ailes fighting to defend that freedom. One day the liberals will understand the power behind people like Reagan and Ailes, the power of the people. That is what makes a great patriot. Not the person who claims to know what is best for America because he says so. But the person like Roger Ailes whose defense of America is grounded in their ability to rally the people to see the truth.
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