Roger Ailes was a TV innovator, and Fox News Channel was a welcome relief when the news was dominated by the left leaning networks. That's changing. Ailes is gone, and Rupert Murdoch has shifted control to his sons who have less faith inclination to cater to the conservative audience.
Oh, I'll still watch my favorites, Fox News Sunday and Special Report with Bret Baier, but the word "loyalty" seems misplaced when applied to a TV channel.
FNC has always had a few outspoken Democrats available to make their case on the air. Juan Williams comes to mind. Williams is articulate, credible, and cordial. If they lose him, that would be a big loss.
But their newest arrival, Ezekiel Emanuel, leaves a lot of us wondering about the new direction the Murdoch boys want to take the network. Emanuel, you will recall, was one of the geniuses who wrote Obamacare with the goal of making it so ingrained that Republicans could never repeal it. His strategy seems to be working, and at least he was honest about that.
Dr. Emanuel reminds me of Thomas Frank who was hired by the Wall Street Journal to placate Democrats on the staff there when Murdoch's company bought that paper. Thomas Frank was one of those Democrats who seemed to hate the political opposition with a passion. And that passion came through in his WSJ columns. It prompted some observers to speculate that his hiring was part of a scheme to discredit Democrats by exposing them at their worst.
Maybe Zeke Emanuel was hired with that in mind, because he isn't someone FNC viewers want to see regularly. I would suggest that if they want to give him a job then give him his own show, like they did with Shepherd Smith, and keep him off the panels that appear on the regular news shows. That way viewers can vote with their remote controls.
Meanwhile, here are some articles related to this subject: Fox News Takes a Sharp Left Turn; Fox News squanders its reason for being; and finally, The New Coke Flop.
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