LAMB: Is there anything wrong with a news organization taking or having a point of view?
AILES: Well, I think there's a difference between news and analysis/opinion. What I saw them do -- they recently did a news meeting up at Stanford, which -- you know, heads of news at Stanford is sort of redundant. But in any case, no. If -- as long as you label it as -- you know, you know this is an opinion show.
What they're trying to do is say that Fox News is mixing opinion and fact. That's just simply not true. I mean, if you watch Shep Smith's show at 7:00, I have no idea what Shep thinks politically. I don't see any particular agenda. Bias can be a lot of different ways -- story selection, story placement, story emphasis. There's a lot of ways you can create subtle bias. But the networks for years have mixed these things, and now they're claiming we mix it, when, in fact, Bill O'Reilly is a news analysis show, or Greta or somebody else, and the hard news we do is not in question. We haven't retracted a story in eight years.
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LAMB: On accuracy, is there a difference between Bill O'Reilly being accurate, or Sean Hannity, and, say, Brit Hume?
AILES: Well, Brit doesn't do opinion television during his. Bill and Sean do opinions. And I think that's quite clear. So my opinion of something may not be accurate, based on facts, it is my opinion, whereas a hard news show really has to have the facts.
And so there's an opinion segment at the end of Brit's show, where journalists -- now, we don't mix journalists and spinners, you know. Some shows do that. They'll take Bob Novak and Tucker Carlson and put them against two guys who can say they had lunch with Martians. There's no journalistic standard for spinners. There is a journalistic standard for journalists. So you either put spinners on the panel or you put journalists on the panel. If you do it the other way, the journalists will always lose because they simply can't say they had lunch with Martians.
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LAMB: If you were to start your own journalism school, how would you teach it?
AILES: I would just teach to do the facts, be fair, make sure that you’ve got the same weigh if there is more than one point of view to every point of view. I always tell our journalists, reach out to a point of view you don’t agree with and make sure it’s in that story.
It’s simple stuff, but you have to do it. And I see the other networks -- I saw David Westin the other day take a shot at Fox News. Now David is the process of trying to turn himself into Fred Friendly, he’s a corporate lawyer who’s trying to be a great journalist. But he has got some problems.
He’s the guy who wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to be a journalist for him. He’s the guy who had his head of politics during the election basically come out and say they didn't have to be fair, they should support Kerry in the debates. I find that odd. I think David's got a lot of work to do in house before he goes out taking a shot at us.