Fox News CEO Roger Ailes gave a very candid interview to WOUB, a public radio station in Athens, Ohio, where he was in town to speak at his alma mater, Ohio University.
Among other topics (many of them Ohio-centric, not surprisingly), Ailes talked about his career, of which he said: “A good friend of mine who later became a mentor said that if I ever write a book about my career I should call it ‘fluke’ because there was no grand plan.”
He also talked about the AP, breaking some news in the process. Ailes recalled his time working at the school’s radio station and paper, and relying heavily on AP headlines: “They used to put up AP headlines back when the AP was a neutral news source, it isn’t as neutral today, but it is still a news source,” Ailes quipped.
He also revealed that he is negotiating a new deal with the AP for (presumably) Fox News, FBN and the O&Os, throwing out a number that as far as I can tell, hasn’t been reported before.
“$24 million is what News Corp. pays them for non-neutral news,” Ailes said.
The AP, which is one of the largest news-wire organizations (Reuters and Agence France-Presse are among the others), already lost a deal with CNN, which cut its AP contract a few years ago to try and rely on more content produced in-house. It sounds as though Ailes has no intention of Fox News dropping the AP, but he may not be haooy with what the company is getting for its company either.