Fox Outraces The Old Dogs (Why FNC Is Beating The Competition)

Insight On The News ^ | October 14, 2002 | J. Michael Waller

[PJ-Comix]

They wear American-flag pins on their lapels. They call terrorists "terrorists." They say their news reporting is "fair and balanced." They offer a bigger variety of viewpoints than any other TV-news organization. And a lot of journalists hate them.

They're the reporters, editors and commentators at the Fox News Channel, and they're on a roll. The upstart cable news network just celebrated its sixth birthday, smashing even the most optimistic projections and grabbing more and more of the market. The American people are voting with their remote controls and tuning in to Fox, while CNN and MSNBC nosedive month after consecutive month in the vital ratings race.

Liberal Washington Post media critic Tom Shales dismisses Fox News as a "propaganda mill," but the public thinks otherwise. The latest Nielsen ratings show the edgy, tell-it-like-it-is channel to be the most-watched cable news network of 2002, and the only one to increase its viewership during the year. Flagship anchorman Brit Hume hosts the only cable news program with ratings among entertainment giants ESPN, TBS Superstation, HBO and TNT. His nightly Special Report show has more than double the viewers of CNN in his time slot, with a coveted 25- to 54-year-old viewer demographic exceeding the numbers of CNN and MSNBC combined. Hume's household ratings for the first eight months of 2002 rank Fox News in cable-TV's top eight, while CNN and MSNBC wound up below the Food Channel and Home & Garden TV.

That's pretty sad for the CNN/AOL Time Warner megamedia monster, which had revolutionized the TV-news industry two decades ago. MSNBC, a spiffy and appealing amalgam of Microsoft and GE's subsidiary NBC network that couldn't quite deliver on its promise to meld cable TV with the Internet, puts up a good fight, but it looks like its golden days are gone.

Much of the credit for Fox's come-from-behind success, media observers say, goes to 62-year-old Roger Ailes, who built the Fox News Channel from scratch as a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. A spokesman for Ailes, a veteran public-relations man long active in Republican politics who has produced TV shows and plays ranging from off-Broadway to Shakespeare, says he does not give interviews. But Bill Shine, network executive producer in New York, spoke with Insight in Ailes' place.

"There have been a lot of reasons for our success, but Roger's decision to remain fair and balanced is the main reason we're here. No other network was like that," Shine says, noting an orthodoxy of worldview among TV news in which nonliberals — the majority of the American public — routinely get the short shrift. "We did this whole change to get both sides to make it fair, to make it balanced. Little by little the American people saw it, liked it, stuck to it and told their friends, and exponentially it grew."

It certainly did. But for the risk-taking Murdoch, Fox News was "a huge gamble," the Columbia Journalism Review commented in 1998 when the channel had been on the air just 17 months. The well-established CNN, the journal said,  "is a pillar on the international news scene and a cash cow for its owner, Time Warner, the world's biggest media conglomerate. MSNBC is the privileged offspring of behemoth parents, GE and Microsoft." How could Murdoch expect to compete? "The answer emerged from Murdoch's conviction that most TV journalists are far more liberal than the population as a whole." The market, then, was those fed up with liberal TV news.

Ailes hired Brit Hume from ABC, plucked Neil Cavuto from CNBC and recruited Tony Snow, Fred Barnes, Judith Regan, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, and superstar Bill O'Reilly, whose edgy blockbuster show The O'Reilly Factor is a huge moneymaker. More recently — and to the horror of many conservative fans who feared a sellout — Ailes plucked Clinton defenders Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren from CNN.

Behind the scenes and in public, while the bureaucratized CNN suffers morale problems and MSNBC just can't seem to regain its niche, Fox News is having a blast. "I enjoy working for such a visionary company," Ailes said two years ago when signing a contract to run the news organization until 2004. "It's fun," Fox News Washington bureau chief Kim Hume — spouse of managing editor Brit — tells Insight. "It's lots more fun than the dreary CNN," says Van Susteren, adding: "There's much more spirit here, more energy."

What makes Fox so much fun? "The management makes a huge difference," Van Susteren says, having jumped to Fox earlier this year. When Ted Turner, the brilliant but quirky founder of CNN, ran the network, CNN felt alive. Now, Van Susteren says, it's too corporate. "It's hard to do your job well with a big elephant stepping on your chest."

Everyone credits Ailes. At the Washington bureau in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, however, hats also go off to experienced and savvy Brit Hume. "We have a leader here who's a managing editor, a journalist," says Van Susteren. "We didn't have that at CNN, which was run by committee." Even though she and Hume come from different ends of the political spectrum, they work as a team. "At CNN, I left a lot of good colleagues, but there would be a group discussion for every decision. You need a strong leader with experience and respect, and you have great morale." She likens Ailes in a positive way to Turner in the early days of CNN.

Brit Hume credits his team and the news that's out there for the taking. "We've had enormous good fortune in the stories brought to us," he says. "The David Boniors [D-Mich.] and Jim McDermotts [D-Wash.] are wonderful stuff. Claiming they'd gone over [to Iraq] to warn Saddam," when actually they stood in Baghdad to denounce their own president as a liar! Hume rattles off more examples with a half-smile, musing, "An abundance of riches."

One of Hume's favorite subjects is the slow self-destruction of the New York Times, for decades the newspaper of record but now the subject of ridicule and even derision for recent reporting that not only is sloppy but, some complain, fabricated. One of the Times' more recent offenses was the phony front-page report that former secretary of state Henry Kissinger opposed President George W. Bush's plan to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "For us this is like picking up money off the street," says Hume. "The decline of the New York Times is a legitimate story. Nobody else is going to work that story. Nobody else would notice." Nobody else, because of the liberal groupthink at the other networks? "We cover legitimate stories that others won't do because they're biased."

Another demonstrably false Times story, run Feb. 19, said the Pentagon had created a special office to plant disinformation in the press. In reality, as Insight has reported and a Pentagon general-counsel investigation later proved, the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence had no disinformation plan and indeed never considered the possibility. "It's a good example of when they're stretching the point," says Hume. "If you stop to think, the coverage given by the most influential paper in the world is itself a story."

Hume spent 23 years at ABC News. He liked it there and says he "didn't have much trouble in my own work" despite his conservative worldview that has evolved considerably since his days as a young researcher for muckraking Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson.

It was the near-uniform liberal bias of network news and the stagnant thinking of the Walt Disney Co., the parent of ABC, that helped drive Hume — ABC's star White House correspondent — to the new and unproven Fox News Channel. "He left because Disney decided not to do a 24-hour news channel," says Kim Hume. "He saw the country turning away from network news. He wanted to go with those who saw into the future. You run out of room at ABC — only 22 minutes of news every night and everybody competing" for the time.

"The bias we're talking about is pervasive," Brit Hume recalls about his years at ABC, where he and Kim first met. "There's no intellectual underpinning; when they're called on it they can't address it well. They weren't trying to be biased. I was able to report as I wanted to, but there wasn't any doubt of what the instinct was. It's not a conspiracy but a universally shared set of views that, when taken together, create a mind-set."

That liberalism, which created a sense of unfairness among the established TV-news organizations, is what led Fox CEO Ailes to adopt the channel's "Fair and Balanced" slogan. Kim Hume compares Ailes to President George W. Bush: "He says what he means and means what he says. Roger wants fair and balanced news on the air. The audience doesn't want to be talked down to and have its point of view assumed."

The slogan, which Ailes considers a statement of purpose, is repeated constantly on the network alongside another slogan, "We Report; You Decide." It drives countless other journalists up the wall. "They hate the slogan because they think in groupthink," says Kim Hume. Washington Post media critic Shales, a liberal who claims alternately that he never votes but that he did vote for Hubert Humphrey and Bill Clinton, blubbers at "fair and balanced" and seems to hate the entire Fox enterprise. Even conservative Fox fans often have trouble keeping a straight face at the "Fair and Balanced" idea. But the Fox News crew, from left to right, insists the slogan is their credo.

"'Fair and Balanced' is a philosophy," says Kim Hume. "We work it at all levels: assignment level, script level, every level."

Van Susteren asks, "How do you measure 'Fair and Balanced'? Minute by minute? Hour to hour? We try to look at both sides of every debate. That's fair and balanced." The razor-sharp law reporter and commentator recalls trying to line up a Democratic senator to appear alongside a Republican colleague on her nightly show. None accepted her invitation, each claiming that 10 p.m. was too late. "I called [Senate Majority Leader Tom] Daschle's office and said, 'I don't want to hear any complaints about fair and balanced."

According to Kim Hume, "In our newsroom I see much more back and forth than I ever did at ABC. It was my impression that everybody at ABC thought Ronald Reagan was a dope. There was an ABC producer who said that whenever she had the chance she used an ugly picture of Reagan because she hated him so much."

The Columbia Journalism Review noted four years ago, "The questions persist: Can a news network with executives and on-screen talent so conspicuously and so heavily right of center fulfill a promise of delivering 'fair and balanced' news, information and opinion? Does the oft-repeated slogan 'We Report; You Decide' accurately describe how the network delivers news?" It answered: "A close monitoring of the channel over several weeks indicates that the news segments tend to be straightforward, with little hint of political subtext except for stories the news editors feel the 'mainstream' press has either downplayed or ignored." Taken with the commentary and talk programs, though, the review said the answer would be "a qualified no."

Fox nonetheless has fought hard to live up to its slogans. Marty Ryan, executive producer for political coverage and of Fox News Sunday, built his newsmaker program to go head-to-head in an extremely competitive environment against the established Face the Nation and Meet the Press. "It was hard to get the guests for the first three or four years," he says. "Now it's one of the most-quoted shows in the Monday papers."

And today, with Rivera, Van Susteren and others having joined Fox, the "qualified no" of 1998 would have to be at least a qualified yes among fair critics. When Fox picked up the pro-Clinton stars from CNN, at least some conservative Fox fans were disgusted. Van Susteren laughs that she wasn't popular on her arrival last January. "When I first got here I got a lot of hate e-mail. People hated me at first because they hated CNN. Now I get e-mails — I just got one from a woman today — who said they used to hate me but that now they're glad I'm here." Van Susteren's ratings — her show has buried CNN's Aaron Brown every month except one when she started at Fox — prove her point.

What about Rivera, the überdefender of Bill Clinton during the obstruction-of-justice scandal whom Fox picked up as its war correspondent in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in November 2001? Rivera made a fool of himself and the network, critics complained, by reporting he was at the site of a friendly-fire accident when he really was hundreds of miles away. "He made a mistake," Hume concedes, while defending him. "Geraldo's always controversial and flamboyant. He's fearless."  Indeed, Rivera's born-again patriotism on the ground in Afghanistan — patriotism being a staple at Fox, in comparison with CNN which forbids its on-camera people to wear American flags on their lapels and tries to shun the word "terrorist" when referring to terrorists — has won converts. "People have responded to him very well," says Hume.

Maybe it's Fox's snazzier graphics and more informal style that attracts the viewers. "Others are changing their graphics and changing their marketing and changing their talent," says Shine. "You're hearing more of the 'we're fair and we're balanced,' and that's more of a compliment as well."

With the defection of Rivera and Van Susteren, CNN management suddenly discovered hard-core conservative politicians, think-tanks and Washington policy shops that it virtually had ignored. Network executives fêted conservative leaders on Capitol Hill, polling Republican politicians to try to find what they wanted and how they might fit into Ted Turner's old network.

Walter Isaacson, the chief executive officer at CNN, even did the unthinkable, calling conservative policy groups and eagerly taking calls from Reaganite leaders whom the network elites had shunned. "Being fair and balanced is a lot more than hiring a token conservative," says Shine from New York headquarters.

"CNN's Crossfire is a wonderful illustration of the problem," adds Hume. "Two conservative journalists versus two political operatives. It's not a fair fight. [Robert] Novak and Tucker [Carlson] are confined to facts. Those other two dillies on the show [James Carville and Paul Begala] can do and say what they want. That asymmetry seems lost on CNN management."

When Fox News started running a ticker-like crawler of moving headlines across the bottom of the TV screen, CNN pounced on the idea and had its own ticker up and running within 20 minutes, Fox and CNN insiders say. The reworked graphics of both CNN and MSNBC bear an uncanny resemblance to Fox. In April, MSNBC repackaged itself, proclaiming it was now "America's News Channel," changing its multicolored peacock logo to a patriotic red, white and blue and touting itself as "fiercely independent." The problem, say critics on the right, is that MSNBC seems to view "fiercely independent" as a synonym for militantly liberal. A network fact sheet touting the newly undead Phil Donahue show calls the ultraliberal talkmeister "fiercely independent," too.

What does CNN have against being fair and balanced? "Our colleagues don't believe it," Brit Hume responds. "They don't get it. We don't want them to get it. They share similar frames of reference and points of view because they're not cognizant of their bias." Kim Hume agrees, "They're imitating what they think we're doing. They're taking our graphics; changing their pace and style; being more casual. But that's not it. They don't get it. They don't understand what we're doing. And we're happy about it."

Van Susteren laughs, "Viewers are smart. They've got that remote control in their hands. They'll give you the hook pretty damn fast."

J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight.
email the author

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Brit Hume: The Man in Charge of Washington News for Fox

From his small, book-filled office overlooking the U.S. Capitol, Managing Editor Brit Hume commands the content of Fox's Washington-bureau news operation. Dressed comfortably in a full suit and tie behind an annoyingly tidy desk, he scavenges the Internet for interesting leads and story ideas, zapping e-mails and hyperlinks to colleagues while keeping an eye on a wall of nine TV monitors, each tuned to a different news channel and to live Fox feeds from cameramen around Washington and the world.

He keeps breaking eye contact with his Insight guest to scan the monitors. CNN and MSNBC are carrying live footage of Secretary of State Colin Powell flanked by several senators announcing progress on a resolution supporting President George W. Bush on Iraq. A breaking story. Hume stops in midsentence and mumbles, "That shouldn't be." On the Fox News Channel monitor, he has seen Susan Sarandon yakking about "Moon River."

Swiveling around in his chair, the managing editor mutters a colorful burst of annoyance and barks into the phone. In seconds, Sarandon is off the air. Powell is on. That problem out of the way, Hume resumes his discussion with Insight.

CNN veterans claim some of the AOL Time Warner stars have trouble doing live television without reading a TelePrompTer, but Hume has no patience for journalists who can't hold their own. Some commentary shows are free-for-alls, with guests or talking heads winging it on the issues. Not on Hume's show. At the end of his news program, he hosts a discussion with Fred Barnes of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, Morton Kondracke of Roll Call and Mara Liasson of National Public Radio. The group prepares for the show all day by e-mail and phone, batting around ideas, exchanging e-mails and reading up on the issue to be discussed.

Nobody would dream of going on unprepared. Hume deadpans, "You don't want to submit yourself to the tender mercies of Barnes or Mara" without knowing what you are talking about. —JMW

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Covering the Same News Differently

"Most journalists believe you can make the world a better place. The very idea that you can change things through actions is essentially a liberal point of view," says Kim Hume, Washington bureau chief for Fox News. "Journalists love big-government programs, so they take the perspective from big government," says Hume. "The news out there didn't see the world in accordance with the viewers' own experience. On education, viewers have no idea how federal dollars affect their schools. In their experience, education matters on the local level. Other news reports on the federal-dollar angle. But the viewers are experiencing their world in a different way. They see the news and think, 'What, am I crazy?'"

So CNN and the others don't connect with their viewers, while Fox, according to Hume, "looks at education news from a different point of view. People see things on Fox News that goes more or less with their own experiences."

[PJ-Comix]

CNN veterans claim some of the AOL Time Warner stars have trouble doing live television without reading a TelePrompTer...

Ditto for ABC News, especially that airhead, Peter Jennings.

[Trust but Verify]

CNN and MSNBC wound up below the Food Channel and Home & Garden TV.

I beleive this. Those other two channels, along with TLC (who can miss Trading Spaces"?) get more airtime in our house than ANY cable station, including FNC! And that's across all demographics!

[Angelus Errare]

Excellent read! Thanks for posting.

[BADROTOFINGER]

"CNN's Crossfire is a wonderful illustration of the problem," adds Hume. "Two conservative journalists versus two political operatives. It's not a fair fight. [Robert] Novak and Tucker [Carlson] are confined to facts. Those other two dillies on the show [James Carville and Paul Begala] can do and say what they want. That asymmetry seems lost on CNN management."

Among many other things...JFK

[anniegetyourgun]

A long read, but well worth it. I've a tremendous appreciation for Brit. E-mailed him once to tell him so and he responded - in grateful humility.

[Cicero]

Nice article.

It's true, I think, that Fox news is fair and balanced. It's only conservative in contrast with the ultra-liberalism of all the other TV outlets.

It's not just the liberal slant on the news that most people object to. It's the spinning and suppression of the news itself. Roger Ailes is kind enough to say that the liberals don't know what they are doing. And to a degree it's true. But they lie deliberately all the time. Liberals just don't think there's anything wrong with lying, as long as it's in a good cause. After all, all their friends do it.

[JRandomFreeper]

Van Susteren laughs, "Viewers are smart. They've got that remote control in their hands. They'll give you the hook pretty damn fast."

Every time she pops up on the screen. Every time.

/john

[perfect stranger]

I'm digging all the spin-offs from "Junkyard Wars".

The name escapes me but they do stuff like modify a Porche to collect golf balls, or turn a new Mustang into a really fast lawnmower.

[Lx]

Tom Shales? Did anyone see him on O'reilly last week? What a pompous, disheveled, liberal blowhard. When O'reilly tried to nail his ideology, he dodged and weaved and said he wasn't a leftist because he didn't like Clinton.

What Roger Ebert does for film he does for the media.

Long live FOX I need it every night!

[BfloGuy]

Hume's household ratings for the first eight months of 2002 rank Fox News in cable-TV's top eight, while CNN and MSNBC wound up below the Food Channel and Home & Garden TV.

I'm very happy to read this. We always hear about O'Reilly's ratings or Hannity's ratings; but never about Brit's.

The best news hour on TV. Way to go, Brit.

[Huck]

I LOVE the Brit Hume Special Report. Can you imagine a news broadcast that you can say that about??? It was a long dark night before Brit and Fox teamed up.

[EllaMinnow]

Terrific find, PJ!

[Capt_Hank]

I guess my many emails to FNC about "Geraldo The Fake", didn't sway the vote. Sorry, him and Greta "Clutch Cargo" are not viewed on my tv's.

[Monty22]

What is it with her mouth anyway?

[Johnny Shear]

Every time she pops up on the screen. Every time.

Not according to her ratings.

[keyesguy]

I love Brit, he has a dry wit that occasionally makes me laugh out loud.

[GOPJ]

Brit Hume is sooooooo right: CNN and CNBC don't get it.

The problem, say critics on the right, is that MSNBC seems to view "fiercely independent" as a synonym for militantly liberal. A network fact sheet touting the newly undead Phil Donahue show calls the ultraliberal talkmeister "fiercely independent," too.

What does CNN have against being fair and balanced? "Our colleagues don't believe it," Brit Hume responds. "They don't get it.

[GOPJ]

Brit Hume is sooooooo right: CNN and CNBC don't get it.

The problem, say critics on the right, is that MSNBC seems to view "fiercely independent" as a synonym for militantly liberal. A network fact sheet touting the newly undead Phil Donahue show calls the ultraliberal talkmeister "fiercely independent," too.

What does CNN have against being fair and balanced? "Our colleagues don't believe it," Brit Hume responds. "They don't get it.

[blam]

Good article, thanks.

Insight Magazine is also and excellent read.(I cancelled Time, Newsweek And USNWR)

This afternoon, while viewing Fox News, I saw an MSNBC commercial for the Chris Matthews show. (It's been so long since I watched Chris that I forgot what his show is named, lol)

[MinuteGal]

This "inside the media" article was darn interesting reading. You get an "A" for posting it, PJ!

Leni