Roger Ailes Tours Xinhua News Agency: “There’s a Lot to Like”
Fox News President admires Chinese news agency's fawning coverage of its athletes. "Here, we have to be more fair and balanced -- unless it involves a godless Democrat who looks French, favors the death tax and supports same-sex activity outside the sanctity of a bathroom stall."
BEIJING, CHINA (Sportsman’s Daily Wire Service) — Journalists with the Xinhua News Agency are hand-picked and indoctrinated to produce media reports that give the official point of view of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While even Fox News’ most vocal detractors would admit that its hiring practices and training programs are several degrees short of those employed by the CCP, Fox News chief Roger Ailes can dare to dream. After Ailes was given a (carefully) guided tour of the Xinhua newsroom (limiting his exposure to their sports reporting apparatus), he came away impressed with what he saw.
“Very professional and disciplined, always on message – a model we can all learn from,” said Ailes, the subject of a recent article in Rolling Stone that portrayed Ailes as a paranoid control freak. “While I’d like to see our athletes covered in a more favorable light, their special effects department is second to none. I was watching an international competition where our girls compete on the uneven bars and I notice they all have six o’clock shadows and unnatural, uh, bulges – very deft Photoshop work.”
Ailes was particularly impressed with the powers the news agency attributes to the Communist leadership.
“As a former adman, I’m just in awe of their ability to turn the news into a continuous ad campaign for an underarm deodorant that’s also supposed to cure halitosis and increase the size of your sex organ. Watching the six o’clock news you’d think the Communists pluck gymnasts and badminton players from the womb, and turn them into champions through a steady diet of Mao and pork fried rice.”
Ailes admits he applied similar techniques after 9-11, and had a good three year run until even the staunchest Fox loyalist came to the grudging realization that President Bush, contrary to what they’d been lead to believe, lacked the biblical ability to turn back the floodwaters in New Orleans. While Ailes conceded the “progaganda-ish” aspect to Xinhua’s coverage, he applauded their “relative restraint” – which begs the question, “relative to what?”
“Well, relative to North Korea. If anyone gave fair and balanced a bad name…man, those guys make Sean Hannity sound like Walter Cronkite.”