Roger Ailes gave an interview to members of Britain’s House of Lords Communications select committee. You can read it below:

Minute of the meeting with Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, Fox News
17 September, New York

24. The Committee met with Mr Ailes accompanied by his colleagues David Rhodes, Vice President of Fox News, John Moody, Executive Vice President of News and John Stack, Vice President of Newsgathering.

Political balance
25. The Committee were told that Fox News was launched because Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch believed that there was space in the market for “fair and balanced” news. They believed that most news reporting has a left of centre bias. The Committee heard from other witnesses that Fox News provides a right of centre product. However, Mr Ailes vigorously denied this. He stated that the channel has no particular political agenda and an effort is made to balance the stories they produce, although he also said that on some days the channel acts as a balance to the rest of the media.

26. Mr Ailes suggested that the liberal bias of other news providers could be seen through the coverage of issues such as the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2005. He believed that papers such as the New York Times covered the US’s troubles at the prison even when it was not news, nothing new had happened. Fox News only mentioned the prison when new developments occurred.

27. Fox News never endorses any political party or candidate. Mr Ailes stated that they do not shy away from stories damaging to the Republican Party. Just before the 2000 presidential election they ran a story that they knew would damage George W Bush’s campaign. The Bush campaign even asked them to hold the story. They were the only news organisation to get hold of the story (which related to Bush having been caught driving under the influence of alcohol 16 years previously). Therefore they decided it was news worthy and ran it. Following their coverage Bush dropped by five points and Ailes believed that Fox News was probably responsible for the run off in Florida.

28. Mr Ailes believed that Fox News’ “balanced” approach is critical to the channel’s success and that if any other news channel were to move away from the left then Fox would have stiff competition.

Ratings
29. When it was launched Fox News’ target was to match CNN’s ratings figures within five years. In fact they caught up with CNN in four years. It took five years of losses and spending of over $900 million to establish the channel. It has therefore been crucial to have the backing of a large company like News Corp.

30. Mr Ailes stated that the success of Fox News was down to a number of factors: it is a cable channel so draws income from both advertising and subscription; it provides news when it is required and is not forced into an inflexible model of providing evening news at 6.30 and it provides “more of what the consumer wants”.

Soft vs hard news
31. Mr Ailes explained that Fox News balance what the audience is looking for with what it is important for them to know “the appeal of the story plays some role in its prominence”. The emphasis is on domestic news and not on foreign coverage. Fox News is not interested in “the failure of the Russian wheat harvest”. They have experimented with limiting their coverage of soft news stories. A case in point was the death of Anna Nicole Smith (Smith was a page three model who married a very elderly oil baron). Fox News experimented by not running this story hour-after- hour like the other channels. However, each time they took it off air CNN beat them in the ratings. Mr Ailes explained that sometimes they would like to walk away from a story, but it is difficult to do so. He was clear that he has to respond to market pressures and that the channel exists “in a ratings society”.

The internet
32. The Fox News executives all agreed that a cable news channel had to invest in a corresponding internet site. It is hard to work out the relationship between the web site and the channel – should one platform push viewers to the other? It is also hard to balance the needs of young and old news audiences. Different age groups have different performance measures that they use to judge which news provider is best.

Older audiences believe in the importance of thorough research and accurate reporting, younger audiences want stories available as they break, before there has been time for thorough research. If a story that is breaking is not immediately on the web site young visitors will never return. The preference for immediacy over accuracy is illustrated by the popularity of sites such as Wikipedia. Mr Ailes believed that it is crucial to educate young people to critically evaluate news sources.