Ailes Takes Credit for Media 'Correcting Its Bias'

By: Greg Mitchell In an article in this week's Broadcasting & Cable magazine, Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, attempts to take credit for making the elite media see the light on correcting their liberal bias.

"Look," he said in the interview, "we're doing something that is forcing them -- including The New York Times and the LA Times -- to examine how their journalism's being presented."

To illustrate this, Ailes cited a now-famous message sent by Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll to his staff back in May, regarding coverage of the abortion issue. "When the editor of the LA Times sends a memo to his desk, which basically says, 'I know we're all liberals, but shouldn't we be a little more fair and balanced about this issue', that memo gets leaked," Ailes said. "Well, in 50 years of journalism, they never thought to be fair and balanced before we get on the scene."

The problem is -- and this is nothing out of the ordinary for Ailes and Fox News -- this is a wild, politically-driven exaggeration.

Certainly, in his memo, Carroll was concerned about the paper's coverage of that particular issue, but consider his actual words:

"I'm concerned about the perception -- and the occasional reality -- that the Times is a liberal, 'politically correct' newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer."

Note that Carroll called biased coverage only an "occasional" reality and that the perception of the Times as a liberal paper is generally "inaccurate." Also, he said the paper only "occasionally" proves its critics right. This is hardly reflected in Ailes' view that the paper was clueless about being fair and balanced for the past half-century.

Later in the memo, Carroll wrote: "We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times."

Again, note that nowhere does Carroll state or even suggest that "we're all liberals." Living and working in an area or an atmosphere "suffused with liberal values" hardly makes Carroll and his editors "all liberals."

In any event, the chairman of Fox News is hardly in the position to decry the pervasive political values in any other news organization.