Today’s long read: Esquire’s portrait of Fox News CEO, Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?
Just one small quote (as I said, it is a long read):
Now, if you talk to some other network people, they’ll tell you that Roger’s not exactly the first person to figure out that people would rather look at pretty girls reading the news than plain ones. “Roger’s just willing to go further than anyone else,” one industry insider says. “He takes the obvious further than anyone else. Everybody else goes halfway, and they wind up looking foolish.” Roger, however, has a different take. He is able to hire authentic talent — that is, talent who have the ability to appear authentic in front of a camera — because he himself is authentic. “I’m not trying to be anyone,” he says. “You know why other executives always hire phonies? Because they’re phonies. They hire phonies because they like phonies. They’re comfortable with them.” It’s the same reason they all hire left-wingers — “because they are left-wingers.
It is a fascinating account of Ailes but to me, as someone interested in how media works, it is also an insight into how he creates figures, how he watches TV (without sound) and how he uses Fox News as a platform that has set the tone of world politics for the past 10+ years.
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