Mike Barnicle: Don’t Blame Roger Ailes’ ‘Genius’ for O’Reilly’s Behavior

EXCERPT:

BARNICLE: “... Ailes innate genius, and it was genius. It was to recognize the simplicity and the power of a single slogan, a marketing device, 'We report, You decide.' And he underlined the 'You.' And he basically took a cable channel and turned it into a power by making that cable channel comfort food for conservatives who had felt drifted away from the political system -- rightly so, I think. I think we already addressed that. And it ends up 20 years after the formation of Fox News where the media markets -- different media markets, people, individuals, consumer of news swimming in their own news channels like a -- like a swim -- swim meet. I mean, nobody crosses over. You’re at Fox News, you’re staying at Fox News. MSNBC, you might switch back and forth, but the Fox News audience is a dedicated audience and it’s attributed to his genius. What’s not attributed to his genius is the blindness and the arrogance that became institutionalized at Fox and resulted in behavior -- long-term behavior of people like Bill O’Reilly.”