Roger Ailes And Me (Or, Please Don't Feed the Hyenas)

So, Parents TV Council chief/Satan lookalike Brent Bozell thinks the Television Critics Association owes Roger Ailes an apology for supposedly fleeing his session at TCA Press Tour last week en masse.

You would think that if anyone knew when an apology needed to be issued, it would be Bozell, the man who, four years ago this month, had to shell out $3.5 million and issue a public mea culpa to World Wrestling impresario Vince McMahon, of all people, for accusing McMahon of encouraging children to kill.

But it turns out, to no one's surprise reading this, that Bozell and the rest of the blogosphere couldn't have been more wrong about what went down in Pasadena.

First, a word of explanation about my group TCA (on whose board I sit) and what it does. Mainly it exists to help TV critics, especially those who don't work in major markets, to get access to executives, producers and stars of prime-time entertainment programs.  We sit through press conferences, then a subset of those in the room descend on the panelists for follow-up questions or one-on-ones (this part, whose name would be self-explanatory if you saw it, is called the scrum).

You're used to seeing miles of copy, and now zillions of blog pages, coming out of TCA. What you may not notice are the countless quotes that the critics squirrel away until the show premieres. For instance, this story about the SciFi series "Eureka" features quotage from star Debrah Farentino that I acquired at the TCA press tour panel for "Eureka" held six months earlier in January.

The TCA encourages networks to present their executives regularly as well. After all, we're generating miles of copy, much of it favorable, about their new shows; the least they can do is provide us an opportunity to interrogate the people who put them on the air.  Leslie Moonves has risen so high up the CBS organization that most mere mortals can barely spot him way up there.  And yet, he attended both the CBS and CW network parties and held court with any and every reporter wanting to ask him about any and everything.  (I'm not sure my raw tape is that interesting, but here it is, in MP3 format.) 

I was glad, therefore, to see that Fox had flown in Roger Ailes from New York. It's been a long time, and he's added the head of the Fox TV Stations Group and My Network TV to his list of titles since his last visit.  I have no agenda with Ailes; as Fox News people will tell you, I predicted early on that Fox would overtake CNN in the ratings, and deserved to.  I still feel that way.  Fox is exciting, riveting, and knows what it wants to do.  CNN is exciting during breaking news, riveting only when Jon Stewart shows up, and has no idea what it wants to do. That doesn't mean, however, I'll ever give up "NewsHour" for Brit Hume. 

So imagine my surprise when the Miami Herald's Glenn Garvin insinuated that I had an agenda with Ailes. From the transcript:

ME: You came out here ten years ago to introduce us to FOX News.  And I recall that session being notable for how little was sort of communicated to critics about what the FOX News Channel would be.  And I recently looked at some of the tapes of "The O'Reilly Report," as it was called back then, and things that I had stowed away. And it did feel to me like you didn't quite know what to do with the network right way.  Were you just being cagey with us, or were you getting all of your ducks in a row, or did you in fact discover that this -- over time that this attitude was really resonating with viewers?

ROGER AILES:  Probably a little bit of all three, but mostly I was getting my ducks in a row. ...

ME: Okay, understood.  Now, with regard to the local news operations that you've recently taken control of, is this -- I'll give you an opportunity here to say that you're not going -- that you're not in that same mode with them; that is, you start to introduce morning news and revamping the local news that these guys do, that you're not planning to inject it with that same FOX attitude.

ROGER AILES:  What are you worried about?  That we're going to do fair and balanced reporting at the local stations, or what is your exact question?

ME: Well, a lot of FOX stations have focused on local news reporting without -- I mean, something closer maybe to the Sinclair News Channel experiment that --

ROGER AILES:  That -- we have nothing do with that.  I mean, I have no problem with fair and balanced reporting anywhere it's done.

Fair points, and a better answer than my question.  Those of you who know my earlier reporting on Sinclair know why I used its NewsCentral as a reference point.  And why it would be fair to ask if Ailes was interested in Fox News-styled local news.

Anyway, here's how Garvin wrote it up:

When a critic asked him to promise ''that you're not planning to inject it with that same Fox attitude,'' Ailes jeered.

''What are you worried about? That we're going to do fair and balanced reporting at the local stations?'' Ailes retorted, invoking the national Fox News Channel slogan. ``I have no problem with fair and balanced reporting anywhere it's done.''

Well, that's why Garvin is the critic, not the reporter, right? He's entitled to put his spin on it, whether the facts warrant it or not.

(This reminds me of the critic who, a few days earlier, asserted during a session for the CBS drama "Jericho" that it was "bizarre" for Skeet Ulrich's character to drive a car that "only had an AM radio," and furthermore that there was no way you could see a mushroom cloud over Denver from "central Kansas." I'm not telling who that critic was, but it's obvious he'd never been to western Kansas -- Jericho's 347 miles from Kansas City in the pilot -- where the land is flat and the FM radio is scarce.)

So I offer my own case above as an example of why perhaps Garvin should be taken at a little less than face value when he writes:

About two-thirds of the 150 critics left the room before Ailes took the stage, several of them openly voicing their scorn for what they say is Fox News' conservative spin.

This is the line the blogosphere went nuts over.  Except that it didn't happen. A lot of people left the room -- and subsequently ambled back in, as happens during a long day of nonstop press conferences -- but nothing close to 100 critics stayed away from the Fox News session. Sorry, Glenn.

More importantly, as I scanned the room, I saw AP, the LA Times and numerous writers who feed into the McClatchy, Scripps, NY Times and other wire services. The LA Times flew in Matea Gold from New York to cover the various news sessions, including Fox's. It's obvious a lot of organizations paid Ailes the respect he deserved and covered his Q-and-A.

As for our attitude, judge for yourself. Download my raw tape (MP3) of the scrum with Ailes, where you'll hear Gold, Stephen Battaglio of TV Guide, the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal, radio interviewer Ross Crystal, Jill Vejnoska of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, B&C's Ben Grossman, freelancer Paige Albiniak and -- trying his darndest to get his second question asked -- me. The questions are persistent, but hostile? "Scornful"? C'mon.

So, you ask, where's my story about Roger Ailes?  It's coming.  Remember, TCA is not just for of-the-moment stories.  Fox News was there to promote its 10th anniversary.  That's in October, and as it nears I'll write my piece and use quotes from our press session and scrum.

Comments

[Mark Jeffries]

It's no secret that at the least Glenn Garvin leans more to the right than his colleagues. Nothing wrong with that (and like his ideological twin Adam Buckman at the NY Post, he's not a prude who will write columns praising Benny Hinn's show), but before he got the gig at the Herald, he wrote an article for the Miami New Times (the libertarian-leaning alt-weekly chain that recently took over the Village Voice, something that bugged Amy Goodman so much that she devoted an *entire* "Democracy Now!" to it) that basically attacked NPR as being tax-lovers. Amazingly, a lot of alt-weeklies around the country picked up the article, perhaps because some of the more lefty editors could justify it by their beliefs of NPR's alleged "sellout" to the right and corporate underwriters.

Although I still suspect that Garvin's more a libertarian than an outright wingnut, it's still interesting that many of those who line up right-of-center are quick to defend FNC at all times.

[Mark Jeffries dad]

Uh, right. Hey Mark, did you even read Aaron's post?

Garvin was critical of Ailes. Nice comment without any rational thought behind it, though.

[Aaron]

I'm not sure that guy read Garvin's piece.