Roger Ailes rarely offers the other TV news operations unsolicited advice, but he is happy to offer solicited advice, when he was asked by The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Tim Cuprisin. The J-S TV critic scored a phoner with Ailes in which the FNC chieftain mimicked the condescending style of other newscasts: "Good morning. How are you? Are you having breakfast? I'm the head of the news division; I know the news, you don't, you idiot." Ailes added, returning to his normal voice, "There is too much of that going on, still, in news."
But not at Fox. At FNC, according to Ailes, "We tell our people: 'Don't talk down to people. Talk directly to 'em and speak to 'em in the way that you would if you were, you know, sitting in an airport waiting room and they were sitting there and you said, 'Hi, how are you, what do you do for a living?' " Ailes explained in a telephone interview. "It's sort of the way they talk in Milwaukee, and where I grew up in Ohio."
