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Before Glenn Beck started his new show on Fox News in January, he sat down with Roger Ailes, the network's chief executive, to make sure they were on the same page. "I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him, 'You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up,' " said the conservative radio host. But before Beck could say anything, Ailes shared a message of his own: The country faced tough times, he said, and Fox News was one of the only news outlets willing...

Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO. "Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that's what we need now," says one Ailes friend who is encouraging the Fox founder, chairman and CEO to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama. Ailes, 69, has an aggessive, winning personality that made Fox News a huge success — and a huge target for liberal critics. Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, said Ailes could be...

At a time of tension between their organizations, White House senior adviser David Axelrod met with Fox News chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes two weeks ago, sources tell POLITICO. The two met privately in Manhattan during the president’s visit to the United Nations. The two discussed news coverage and the relationship between the organizations. Ailes is the founder of Fox News. A key part of Axelrod’s portfolio is the president’s image and broad message. POLITICO has asked Fox for comment, and will update with reaction. White House officials have expressed pique with what they consider heavy coverage of...

"Video: Some things need to be defended..." Krauthammer: "....I've long thought that the Bush/Cheney administration will be treated by history like the Truman administration. But the one aspect of that I got wrong is the timing; whereas it took 50 years for Truman's work and genius to be acknowledged, we are only 5 months into the new era, and with every day and every action by this administration of adopting the wise policies that Bush/Cheney administration had adopted, even as it denounces them at the same time, the vindication of the last administration is strongly under way, and that in...

Roger Ailes has signed a new deal that keeps him at News Corp. for at least another five years. "I'm pleased to continue to work for News Corporation. It is a strong and extremely well positioned company. I look forward to carrying out Mr. Murdoch's legendary vision in the future," says Ailes in a press release. Ailes, 68, continues oversight of five News Corp. divisions including Fox News, Fox Business, Fox TV Stations, 20th Television and MyNetworkTV.

News Corporation executive Roger Ailes has told Los Angeles Times reporter Matea Gold that he has advised employees of the Fox News Channel that ''all presidents deserve time to get their team on the ground and get organized'' and that ''we have some obligation in a new presidency not to attempt to destabilize it.'' (Snip) Ailes responded to the report in the New York Daily News that he instructed FNC to tone down attacks on President-elect Barack Obama. He denied giving specific orders,

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 2 -- At a secret meeting with Barack Obama three months ago, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes says, he tried to clear the air with the Democratic senator by saying that his organization was determined to be fair but would not be "in the tank" for Obama's campaign. During the sit-down in a Waldorf-Astoria hotel suite in Manhattan that included Rupert Murdoch, the network's owner, Obama expressed concern about the way Fox was covering him. "I just wanted to know if I'm going to get a fair shake from Fox News Channel," Ailes recalled him saying....

P.J. assessed the pastor's public meltdown this way: "I suspect that [Wright] felt that he was walking into the lion's den Monday morning, behaving as if in combat with an aggressive and antagonistic enemy, which perhaps he was. It was obvious that he lacks the PR skills to do that job right, that he can't draw in journalists the way he can a rapt congregation. In short, he was out of his element." Indeed. But Wright's rise to national prominence is not his work alone; he's received plenty of help along the way. Obama's opponents in the media have done...

Roger Ailes and Rudolph W. Giuliani have been pulling for each other for nearly two decades. Mr. Ailes was the media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding and intervened on his behalf when Mr. Ailes’s company, Fox News Channel, was blocked from securing a cable station in the city. This year, they were tablemates at the White House correspondents dinner, which Mr. Giuliani attended as a guest of Fox’s parent company, the News Corporation. Now these allies and friends find themselves on largely uncharted political turf. Mr. Giuliani,...

Don Imus appears to be heading back to the airwaves. Less than six months after his long-running radio program was terminated in an uproar over a racial remark, the sharp-tongued host has come to financial terms with one of the nation's top broadcasting companies. Imus is now assembling his broadcast team, which in light of the controversy is likely to include a black panelist. Longtime sidekick Charles McCord plans to return, and producer Bernard McGuirk -- who often made controversial remarks and was involved in the exchange about the Rutgers team -- would be retained in an off-air role.

In Friday's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz reports that the new John Edwards campaign against any Democrat accepting Rupert Murdoch contributions has a slight flaw: "John Edwards will never ask Rupert Murdoch for money -- he won't accept his money," said a statement e-mailed to supporters. Not so fast, Murdoch's people say. His publishing unit, HarperCollins, paid Edwards a $500,000 advance -- and $300,000 in expenses -- for his 2006 book "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." "We assume the senator is going to give back the money from his advance," News Corp. spokesman Brian Lewis said.

Having failed to thwart a Murdoch purchase of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, the NEW YORK TIMES intensifies battle with the NEWS CORP. empire on Thursday, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. The paper is preparing a provocative examination of Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani's relationship with FOX NEWS chief Roger Ailes. MORE TIMES reporter Russ Buettner has been pestering and pumping Murdoch executives for details on Rudy and Roger, company sources claim. The duo "have been pulling for each other for nearly two decades," reports Buettner. "Ailes served as a consultant to Giuliani's first mayoral campaign. Giuliani officiated at Ailes'...

Long before Fox News Channel boss Roger Ailes became one of the most powerful men in television, he was a Republican media consultant concerned with Richard Nixon's excessive perspiration, five o'clock shadow, upper lip makeup, and habit of not paying attention to wife Pat during public appearances. In a May 1970 memo to Nixon aide Bob Haldeman, Ailes critiqued a series of Nixon TV appearances and detailed his efforts to stage manage the president's on-air look. The Ailes memo, a copy of which you'll find below, was released today by the Nixon presidential library. In one passage, Ailes described how...

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In a statement that likely caused shudders among some Fox News employees, Roger Ailes said Thursday that News Corp Chairman Rupert "Murdoch didn't invest a billion dollars in this company so people can have jobs. ... He did it to WIN. ... He wants to win and so do I." Ailes made the statement in a company State of the Business Address, in which he also remarked, "We cannot rest on our accomplishments, and I will continue to make changes." Separately Ailes told the Associated Press on Thursday that he intends to be "dogmatic" in pursuing rate increases from cable...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) (NWS.A) said Tuesday that its fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose 19% on increased revenue at its film studios and television networks. New York-based News Corp. said said net income in the latest three months rose to $852 million, or 27 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $717 million, or 22 cents a share. Earnings in the latest quarter included a gain of $134 million, or 4 cents a share, on its sale of Sky Radio Limited. Revenue rose to $6.78 billion from $6.11 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call...

Following is a transcript of an appearance by FOX News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes before the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif., on July 24, 2006:

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Firing poison darts at his cable-news competitors and taunting his critics in the media, Fox News Channel boss Roger Ailes celebrated the 10th birthday of his network but instead of cake, served notice that his conquest of other television empires already is under way. Ailes announced he will syndicate a morning news show throughout the broadcast television world starting in January, said plans for a new business-news cable channel are heating up and even spoke longingly of launching an evening newscast on Fox broadcast stations to compete with NBC, ABC and CBS -- though he admitted the odds are against...

PASADENA Fox News Channel chairman and CEO Roger Ailes responded to Keith Olbermann's latest critical volley against Bill O'Reilly on Monday, saying the MSNBC host's behavior "is over the line." Ailes, appearing Monday at the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association, said Olbermann takes shots at Fox's O'Reilly because it boosts his ratings. "Clearly he has no viewers except those he gets when he attacks Fox News, and particularly has made himself committed to continuing to attack Bill," Ailes said. Olbermann opened his Saturday session at the critics' meeting by whipping out a mask of O'Reilly and giving a...