From a 1988 conference:
Roger Ailes: Let's face it, there are three things that the media are interested in: pictures, mistakes and attacks. That's the one sure way of getting coverage. You try to avoid as many mistakes as you can. You try to give them as many pictures as you can. And if you need coverage, you attack, and you will get coverage.
It's my orchestra pit theory of politics. You have two guys on stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?
...
One thing you don't want to do is get your head up too far on some new vision for America because then the next thing that happens is the media runs over to the Republican side and says, "Tell me why you think this is an idiotic idea.
Judy Woodruff: So you're saying the notion of the candidate saying, "I want to run for President because I want to do something for this country," is crazy.
Roger Ailes: Suicide.Getting Information
- Documents
- Interviews
- Crowdsourcing: or how David Farenthold won the Pulitzer
- Leaks: A Typology
- "On the Record," "Off the Record," "Background"
When preparing for interviews, reporters sometimes consult with the interviewee's adversaries.
Case in point: In 1998, Rep. Henry Waxman discovered misconduct by Rep. Dan Burton, chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. To make Bill Clinton look guilty, an aide to Burton had doctored transcripts of a recording by jailed lawyer Webster Hubbell. We pick up the story from Joshua Green, Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency
Rather than issue a press release, Waxman devised something far more attention-grabbing and dramatic. The following Sunday, Burton was booked for an encore appearance on Meet the Press. The show’s host, Tim Russert, was quietly made aware of the discrepancy between the two sets of Hubbell transcripts.* On Sunday, when the cameras began rolling, Burton became an unwitting captive as Russert, the dean of Washington journalism and a maestro of the prosecutorial interview, confronted the chairman on air with evidence of the doctored transcripts. The uproar was immediate and intense. Gingrich, humiliated, condemned Burton’s committee as “the circus.” Republicans fumed at the embarrassment Burton had brought on them and demanded he atone for it. The Washington Post splashed the story across its front page: “Burton Apologizes to GOP.―
* Political hit jobs like the one on Burton are always disguised in order not to divert focus away from the target. The public story of Russert's triumph, detailed afterward in New York magazine, was that Russert himself discovered the divergent transcripts. He did not. He was a fine journalist, but here he had some help.
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