In a column, “Jesus explains the success of Fox News,” American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer claims that Fox News president Roger Ailes’s “leadership style is exactly the style that Jesus taught.” Fischer credits Ailes’s Jesus-like behavior for Fox’s success and says “the key to success in a capitalistic system is to do things Jesus’ way.”
For Fischer, it is “Jesus’ way” to encourage someone to lie under oath, threaten the elderly publisher of a small newspaper, introduce a series of political dirty tricks, including racially charged campaign strategies and television ads, and manage a media outlet which lies and foments extremism on a routine basis.
An interesting story on Politico this morning, explaining the success of Fox News, which has double the audience of CNN and MSNBC. The brainchild of Fox is Roger Ailes, and the Politico piece quotes Shepard Smith about his leadership style:
“We have one dad in this family,” said Shepard Smith, a star anchor who was a correspondent in the Los Angeles bureau at launch. “He makes all the decisions, and you know exactly who you have to go to, and you know when to stop asking. If you get an answer from Mr. Ailes’s office, that’s the answer; it’s time to move on.”
Smith said that when he leaves Ailes’s office, “the last thing he asks me is, ‘What can I do for you?’ And the last thing he tells me is he loves me. That’s not going to work everywhere, and most people will hear that and go, ‘You are full of crap.’ That’s exactly how it is here, and I love it.”
In other words, whether Ailes realizes it or not, his leadership style is exactly the style that Jesus taught.
Remember that Jesus said, in Mark 10:45, “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.” Ailes is successful not because he can throw his weight around, but because he uses his weight to serve the people who work for him. By serving them rather than spending all day ordering them around, he gives them the opportunity to succeed and in turn he receives the considerable reward of their talent and effort.
Bottom line: the key to success in a capitalistic system is to do things Jesus’ way. Who knew?
