Fox News is a heavily biased network that simply exists to advance the cause of the American right. Chief Roger Ailes and his minions are gearing up to do whatever they can to ensure Republican Rick
Perry -- Mitt Romney is far too moderate, of course -- succeeds President Obama on Jan. 20, 2013.
No matter what people think about Fox News, no matter what conspiracy theories they may harbor
about a devious Ailes, let's be decidedly fair and balanced: the network has been an extraordinary success. As it turns 15, Fox News has had an impressive and outsized effect on the news business
and the political landscape.
Just one example: the network is launching a tour to promote its anniversary and taking certain shows on the road. "The O'Reilly Factor," hosted
by the proudly conservative Bill O'Reilly, isn't going to Topeka or Oklahoma City, but the Democratic stronghold of Boston.
He'll host his show there Oct. 11 in venerable
Faneuil Hall, giving him the stage where Samuel Adams argued for independence from Britain and Ted Kennedy entered the 1980 Presidential race.
advertisement
advertisement
O'Reilly the statesman? Not in
Massachusetts. He couldn't draw enough people to fill a bus shelter in the Commonwealth, right.
Well, Fox is making sure to inform people, in Bieber-like fashion, that tickets will go
on sale Monday at 9 a.m., suggesting they'll be gone by 9:15.
Looking over the history of Fox News, two characters stand out in its emergence: Ailes and O'Reilly. Ailes, the former
Republican operative, has done a masterful job implementing Rupert Murdoch's vision of a 24/7 cable news network that would appeal to a would-be under-served conservative audience feeling ignored.
Murdoch may lean right personally, but Media 101 advises find an opening and move aggressively. And yet, even as Rush Limbaugh had done well on radio before, no one would have predicted Fox
News had much of a shot in 1996 when it launched in few homes and paid for carriage.
CNN had established itself as the cable news leader with the first Gulf War and seemed likely to swat
away any challengers. If anything, MSNBC, which launched a few months before Fox, seemed to have a better chance of succeeding with a sort of CNN-for-tech-savvy-young-people approach.
Over
time, Fox surged and routinely topples CNN and MSNBC. Ailes was able to prove that an editorial page could thrive on TV, which MSNBC would follow years later by going left.
Ailes has faced
all sorts of criticism about polluting the political discussion. There are the suggestions he's in cahoots with the GOP.
Maybe he does huddle with Mitch McConnell, but Ailes is a
showman and he knows the more talk, the more interest. He's surely happy to have people spending their time wondering what miasmic strings he's pulling.
Fox News might only draw a
few million people a night - a tiny slice of the electorate - but its right-leaning commentary is absorbed inside the Beltway and then flies out, reaching far more than the initial audience in the
process. A provocative Karl Rove argument might get minimal notice if made just on the network, but by the time it cycles through the media-political ecosystem, it has broader reach.
And
of course, if "liberal" late-night hosts grab clips from Fox, then the legs get longer, especially when the "Today" show plays clips of the comedians making fun of the clips.
O'Reilly's show helps spur the attention. His influence over the past 15 years has been nothing short of remarkable, if only because of how unlikely it seemed. He joined Fox News after
hosting the tabloid show "Inside Edition."
What Ailes saw convincing him O'Reilly might be a dynamic political commentator is unclear. But, O'Reilly has become a beacon
to the right and gets people buzzing.
Which suggests liberals or Democrats who dislike Fox might be better off doing more to ignore it, including the current White House. Their talk is
proving to be expensive in political capital.