Saturday, February 02, 2008

How power is used

From a Rick Perlstein article on the Fox news network:
Like his account of the time he did an interview with David Brock for a critical article Brock did for New York magazine on Fox News. Roger Ailes was not happy. Our hero gets a call from his agent, one of the most powerful in TV news:

""Danny. Did yoo give an intavyoo to Noo Yawk magazine?... I already know the ansa. I got a phone call from Roger Ailes an owwa ago. He told me that until I drop you as a cloyent, any demo tapes I send ovah for talent jobs will sit in the cawwna and gatha dust."

Here was the interesting part: the article had not yet been published. So how did Roger Ailes learn about his participation? Explains Cooper:

I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called The Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the great and motivating post! I fully agree with you. Do check out http://www.subconscious-mind.org, they have a whole host of interesting and helpful articles

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