Fox News is great.

Former Fox News executive Dan Cooper has claimed that a special bunker, requiring security clearance for access was created at the company's headquarters to conduct ?counterintelligence? including snooping on phone records:

Quote:
?Has Roger Ailes been keeping tabs on your phone calls??
That?s how Portfolio.com began a post back in 2008, when a former Fox News executive charged that Ailes had outfitted a highly secured ?brain room? in Fox?s New York headquarters for ?counterintelligence? and may have used it to hack into private phone records.


After helping chairman Roger Ailes create the Fox News channel in 1996, Cooper was fired for doing an anonymous interview with New York Magazine:

Quote:
?I'm frightened right now,? said a former Fox employee, noting the vast array of powerful connections Ailes maintains throughout the political and media worlds. ?I've been told that if Ailes figures out I talked to you, he'll hunt me down and kill me.?
Negotiating the ground rules for an off-the-record meeting, Ailes came on like an Edward G. Robinson character in a B movie. ?Three people in the world hate me,? he blustered. ?You're not going to get to them, and everyone else is too scared.... Take your best shot at me, and I'll have the rest of my life to go after you.?

Cooper says that Ailes discovered he was the source by gaining access to his phone records through Fox's ?brain room?.

Quote:
Cooper claims that his talent agent, Richard Leibner, told him he had received a call from Ailes, who identified Cooper as a source, and insisted that Leibner drop him as a client--or any client reels Leibner sent Fox would pile up in a corner and gather dust. Cooper continued:
?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.?

In a Rolling Stone piece, Tim Dickenson corroborates Cooper's account of a ?black-ops? room deep within Fox HQ:

Quote:
Befitting his siege mentality, Ailes also housed his newsroom in a bunker. Reporters and producers at Fox News work in a vast, windowless expanse below street level, a gloomy space lined with video-editing suites along one wall and an endless cube farm along the other. In a separate facility on the same subterranean floor, Ailes created an in-house research unit ? known at Fox News as the ?brain room? ? that requires special security clearance to gain access. ?The brain room is where Willie Horton comes from,? says Cooper, who helped design its specs. ?It?s where the evil resides.?
If that sounds paranoid, consider the man Ailes brought in to run the brain room: Scott Ehrlich, a top lieutenant from his political-*consulting firm. Ehrlich ? referred to by some as ?Baby Rush? ? had taken over the lead on Big Tobacco?s campaign to crush health care reform when Ailes signed on with CNBC. According to documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Ehrlich gravitated to the dark side: In a strategy labeled ?Underground Attack,? he advised the tobacco giants to ?hit hard? at key lawmakers ?through their soft underbelly? by quietly influencing local media ? a tactic that would help the firms ?stay under the radar of the national news media.?
 

tank

EOG Dedicated
Re: Fox News is great.

Only at Fox News!!
The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done

By James Fallows Jul 16 2011, 10:42 PM ET
Or at least the most amazingly brazen I can think of at this moment.

Via Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, the simply unbelievable Fox and Friends segment below. It's about the News of the World hacking scandal.

To the good: they treat hacking as a problem and scandal. To the incredible/bad: they present their (now closed) UK sister publication News of the World as a victim of the hacking problem, rather than as a perpetrator.



Watch, if you can stand to. They roll out some expert, Bob Dilenschneider, to say how hacking is a big problem. It's happened at the Pentagon. It's happened at Citibank. It's happened at the News of the World. When are we going to get serious about it?

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!!! Citibank and the Pentagon were the hackees -- the objects of hacking, by criminals or spies. Murdoch's News of the World was the hacker -- the perpetrator, the criminal-or-spy counterpart.

I submit that this could not happen at any other news organization. Rather, it could not happen at a news organization. It happened at the agitprop operation known as Fox News.

Update: As several readers have suggested, I should have pointed out the way the segment ends. Steve Doocy of Fox and his expert agree that it's terrible that the mainstream media are wasting so much time on this old-news London hacking story rather than paying attention to what really matters. Which is the segue to ... Casey Anthony.

The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done - James Fallows - National - The Atlantic
 

markinsac

EOG Dedicated
Re: Fox News is great.

Fox's propoganda is nothing new. Youtube is full of videos where Fox "accidently" stretched the truth.

But let's be fair, after all, they are a victim here.
 

scrimmage

What you contemplate you imitate
Re: Fox News is great.

Only at Fox News!!
The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done

By James Fallows Jul 16 2011, 10:42 PM ET
Or at least the most amazingly brazen I can think of at this moment.

Via Erik Wemple of the Washington Post, the simply unbelievable Fox and Friends segment below. It's about the News of the World hacking scandal.

To the good: they treat hacking as a problem and scandal. To the incredible/bad: they present their (now closed) UK sister publication News of the World as a victim of the hacking problem, rather than as a perpetrator.

Watch, if you can stand to. They roll out some expert, Bob Dilenschneider, to say how hacking is a big problem. It's happened at the Pentagon. It's happened at Citibank. It's happened at the News of the World. When are we going to get serious about it?

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!!! Citibank and the Pentagon were the hackees -- the objects of hacking, by criminals or spies. Murdoch's News of the World was the hacker -- the perpetrator, the criminal-or-spy counterpart.

I submit that this could not happen at any other news organization. Rather, it could not happen at a news organization. It happened at the agitprop operation known as Fox News.

Update: As several readers have suggested, I should have pointed out the way the segment ends. Steve Doocy of Fox and his expert agree that it's terrible that the mainstream media are wasting so much time on this old-news London hacking story rather than paying attention to what really matters. Which is the segue to ... Casey Anthony.

The Most Incredible Thing Fox News Has Ever Done - James Fallows - National - The Atlantic

ECHELON: The Global Eavesdropping Scheme
 
Top