Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Meet the Roger Ailes of the Left

His name is Phil Griffin, and he has turned MSNBC into the Fox News of the left.

Actually, after reading the article, he doesn't sound much like Roger Ailes at all. Roger Ailes is a true believer; a political animal. Griffin sounds more like Rupert Murdoch. All Murdoch cares about is money. All Griffin cares about is ratings. This paragraph from the piece sums it up to me...
“Phil is the perfect distillation of the television mentality,” says one former MSNBC employee, “which is: whatever the audience wants.” And, actually, no one at the network knows much about his politics; he’s probably a Democrat, but it’s just not something he cares much about or discusses with ease. “[Fox News President] Roger Ailes is a lifelong TV guy,” says Chris Hayes, MSNBC’s new 8 p.m. anchor, “but he’s also a political consigliere. Phil is not. Whatever his politics are, they are not woven into the DNA of what we’re doing.” Put another way: Fox News is a TV network that succeeds because of its ideological slant. MSNBC is a TV network that has an ideological slant because that’s what happened to succeed.
As someone who actually wants to see news when he watches a "news" channel, it makes me shake my head.