There’s a scene about halfway through where Hyman Roth and

Michael Corleone and all the American gangsters are

gathered in a patio in Havana and it’s Hyman Roth’s 67th birthday,

and he’s giving a slice of cake to each gangster got -

Louis from Chicago you run the Copacabana, Frankie you get

the prostitutes, he’s dividing up the island among all the

American gangsters and appropriately enough the birthday cake has an outline

of Cuba on it, he’s giving them a slice of Cuba. And while

Hyman Roth is doing this he says: “Isn’t it great to be in

a country with a government that respects private

enterprise?” And that’s how media policies have been done

in the United States for the past 50 years and it’s

increasing in the last 20 years. Extraordinarily powerful

lobbyists duke it out behind closed doors for the biggest

slice of the cake. The public knows nothing about it, it

doesn’t participate.

And that’s the problem we face.

Media is the nervous system of a democracy. If it’s not

functioning well, the democracy can’t functioning. We’re

heading towards an election where most people are never

going to be in a room with Kerry or Bush. What they learn

about the candidates is what the media shows them or tells

them. Decides not to show, not to tell.

People are faced with critical choices about the future of

the country when they go into the voting booth.

And I go in. And I have been, through the course of a

campaign cycle subject to false, distorted, caricaturing,

And I may not even know where it’s coming from because

often there’s an echo effect off places like cable and like

radio and those wrong pieces of information are repeated and

repeated, by the time it reaches me, I don’t even know what

the source was.

This is the environment we’re living in and it’s really,

it’s fundamentally undermining democracy which is based on

knowing some good and solid information so I can make an

informed choice.

When you see the properties Rupert Murdoch owns around the

world, the strong, conservative point-of-view that those

properties often reflect, it’s different than ABC or CBS or NBC. Sure, they reflect

a point-of-view but not nearly as strong or consistently

strong from one ideological perspective.

Murdoch actually bought the station in 1985.

And actually left us alone for at least the first three

years of his ownership, partly because we were so successful and prosperous that there

was no reason to monkey with us.

At WTTG our success insulated us to a certain degree.

And it was kind of like being in an office and seeing

people come down with the flu around you. We knew the flu

eventually might reach us, but we were hoping if we took

enough vitamins that we’d never catch the flu.

It was clear during those years that Murdoch, who had

absolutely adored Ronald Reagan, adored him, had a lot of admiration

for the group of Republicans that controlled Congress

and certainly on Capitol Hill.

We received an order from one of Murdoch’s apparatchiks, if

you will, that we should cut away from our newscast

and start carrying a fawning tribute to Ronald Reagan that was airing at the Republican

Convention. We were stunned because up until that point

we were allowed to do legitimate news. And suddenly

we were ordered, from the top, to carry propaganda; carry

Republican right-wing propaganda.

There was a cultural underpinning to what Murdoch wanted.

Race issues, AIDS. I constantly remember complaints that

there was too much being done on AIDS. He also couldn’t stand the Kennedy’s.

Ted Kennedy, who was a long-time opponent of Rupert

Murdoch, and, and one celebrated occasion, we were ordered

to run a long uncut piece from A Current Affair that was rehashing

the whole matter of Chappaquiddick.

It had zero news value. We were told, ‘you had to run this

thing uncut’. You could not even edit it down and just run

a snippet of it. I think they evolved in later years and especially

after Roger Ailes took over and, and really got

the Fox News Channel up and running into a far more sophisticated

kind of operation. What we saw, in my era, was,

was really the, the birth of this sort of thing and the roots

of what came later.

I’d just like to say how delighted I am that we’ve now

reached this moment, when we can firmly announce the

starting of a Fox News Channel and a much greater effort on

a build up of Fox News in every area.

We’d like to be premier journalists. We’d like to restore

objectivity where we find it lacking and ah, certainly there could be that interpretation

because of my background but I left politics a number of

years ago and have running this organization for the last

two years. So we just expect to do fine, balanced journalism.

I was a Fox employee for 3 years. I worked in the News.

On air or behind the camera?

I’d rather not answer that. I think I’d rather keep

myself anonymous. You’ll disguise my voice right?

Larry Johnson Former Fox News Contributor I’ve heard directly from folks, both as

correspondents and as bookers, who have expressed very grave

reservations, almost as if they’re being monitored by

a Stalinist system, afraid to be seen talking to the wrong person

or having the wrong kind of email exchange.

You’re either one of us or one of them, and in leaving Fox

News, for example, there were a number of people at the

organization, at the head of the organization, tried to

ruin my career simply because I was leaving, because I

didn’t leave on their terms, because I refused to sign a

confidentiality agreement, that was another reason for them

Americans Trust only One. The Only Place. American’s Newsroom. Fox

News.”

It’s very much a, an environment of fear.

It was made very clear to us that our activities were being

monitored and if someone wasn’t watching it live they were

at least recording it and they would review it after the

fact to see what we did.

We weren't necessarily, as it was told to us, a news

gathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a

point-of-view.

Anonymous 2 Former Fox News Reporter Fox has already been successful in sort of

branding me as somebody who can't be trusted. And as a result,

I'm already sort of on thin ice regarding my current

employer.

I’d been warned by people. There were a number of people

who pulled me inside and said, “Look, you know, I don’t

know, I mean, I know that you want to work and I know that

you need a job, but you might want to think twice about

taking this job because, really, it is a very conservative

news network.”

Now that I’ve learned comedy writing at the Fox News

Channel I guess I should be doing stand up in the clubs.’

I think that if you don’t go along with the mindset of the

hierarchy in New York, if you challenge them on their

attitudes about things, you’re history.

I suspect your research has discovered, the memoranda that

were written by John Moody and by Roger in terms of setting the tone for

the day. The message of the day is a very political device.

Date: 5/9/2003 From: Moody Let spend a good deal of time on the battle

over judicial nominations, which the President will address

this morning. Nominees who both sides admit are qualified

are being held up because of their POSSIBLE, not demonstrated

views on one issue – abortion. This should be a trademark

issue for FNC today and in days to come.

There was nothing covert about the way the managing editors

in New York or Washington operated. They made it perfectly

clear what they expected from us.

The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting.

In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current

Bush administration officials are testifying gives

it a certain tension, but this is not, “what did he know

and when did he know it” stuff. Don’t turn this into Watergate.

Every morning there was a detailed list of subjects to talk

about and not talk about.

Kerry’s speech on the economy at Georgetown is likely to

move onto the topic of Iraq. We should take the beginning

of Kerry’s speech, see if it contains new information (aside from a promise to create

10 million jobs)and see if other news at that time is

more compelling. It is not required to take it start to finish.

They were just actually issuing edicts to the reporters to

control what they could say and how they could say it.

Let’s refer to the US marines we see in the foreground as

“sharpshooters” no snipers, which carries a negative

connotation.

When Headquarters sent the memo every morning and said, “we

want to touch on the following issues, we want to cover the

following stories, we want to do them in this particular

way”, our job and our objective then was to execute the

plan.

The pictures from Abu Graib prison are disturbing. Today

we have a picture – aired on Al Arabiyn – of an American

hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly

against his will. Who’s outraged on his behalf?

The real revolutionary breakthrough of Fox has been its

eliminative journalism. That’s the thing to understand.

What Fox News Channel has done is it’s stripped out any

notion of journalism as we’ve traditionally understood it

from its product. There is no journalism at the Fox News

Channel.

O’REILLY: Quiet!

Cut his mic.

Chad, stop, stop, stop, stop. Let me finish. Let me finish.

Chad.

I want to test if you’re an honest individual.

I’m sorry cut you off I know we’re in some

controversial stuff here but my religion didn’t teach me

that. But thank you very much for being here. It’s not fair. I know it’s a right-wing

network and you don’t want to hear this stuff.

It’s not about the kids, it’s about you Jamie.

I’m doing, I’m doing…

Thank you Jamie. Thank you. Good night. Thank you Jamie. Good night.

Don’t take your cheap little pathetic shot. I am

telling you that that’s what it is. You’re taking cheap little

pathetic shots. I’m trying to tell you what the truth is.

I’m just giving you his record. No you’re misrepresenting his record.

I’m telling the truth, Sir. That’s the truth

about his record. I understand what your position is but it’s

not correct. It’s probably why you’re on

satellite radio? I’d like to hear one single,

one single… Because you can’t get on regular radio.

Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children

please stop rudely interrupting your guest and telling

them to shut up!

Well the “shut up” line has happened only once in six years, Miss Evans…

I think that asking a student to stay in the closet in order to go to school…

I’m asking you to shut up about sex…

Shut up. Shut up. Father killed at WTC. Jeremy M Glick

You want to know what I was doing. Please don’t

tell me to shut up. As respect. As respect…

Why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn’t have any trouble reading,

why didn’t you just shut up?

What Jimmy Carter should do it privately give Mr. Bush his opinion and shut up publicly.

That would be best for the country.

And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up

once the fighting begins.

Once the war against Saddam begins we expect every American to support our military and

if they can’t do that – to shut up.

All he’s got in 6 and a half years, is that I

misspoke, that I labeled a Poke Award a Peabody. He writes

it in his book, tries to make me out to be a

Hey shut up. You had your thirty five minutes. Shut up.

Jeff Cohen, Former MSNBC/Fox News Contributor The techniques of odd, odd polling and odd

graphics of democrats and weird banners in the lower third

of your screen, these are all pretty sophisticated techniques

and they work

in collaboration

with the most genius

marketing slogan in history

which is fair and balanced.

So if you’re the graphics department and you can put up a

liberal flip flopper as the chyron, hey that’s great, because

the next time the graphics department has a discussion with

management, management say yeah you guys have been doing a

great job.

Graphics are always moving in the background. They’ve sort of pioneered the

use of the American flag as an icon of your news broadcast.

Anonymous 2 Former Fox News Reporter So there’s a lot of stuff that people come

up with on their own, which in other news organizations you

would never think of coming up with some of the stuff, much less even

putting it on the air.

But at Fox News they’re sort of a, that you’re rewarded for

pushing the envelope.

The problem comes if you try to push the envelope or, God

forbid, should put in some sort of similar sort of style or

approach to Republican, then you get yourself in trouble.

Probably 1999 I created the Fox News Alert.

We were striving to accomplish a sense of urgency. Urgency in the sense that

what was about to be delivered after the Fox News Alert was

very important. Quote, unquote, shocking news.

Specifically Columbine. And all the other important news stories of that time

but now, looking back, now that I’m not there

I find it interesting that I’ve seen the Fox News Alert

used for stories like “Bennifer” J-Lo and Ben’s