Swint: Plan for putting GOP on TV news began with 1968 Nixon bid, plus help from Roger Ailes

CNN reports: A fascinating document from the early-1970s, obtained by CNN from the Nixon Presidential Library, is entitled "A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News."

The memo openly says it's an idea to avoid "the censorship, the priorities and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators." The stated goal: "To provide pro-Administration, videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States." In extraordinary detail, the memo lays out how to accomplish this.

It's not clear who wrote the memo. The Nixon Library tells CNN it's in the files of Richard Nixon's later-convicted Chief of Staff, H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman. But there is handwriting all over the memo with detailed suggestions on how to make the plan work better.

The handwriting says "Bob, if you decide to go ahead we would, as a production company, like to bid on packaging the entire project." He later signs off, "Best regards, Roger.” The website Gawker.com, which first discovered this memo, says the handwriting is that of Roger Ailes. Ailes was then an outside media consultant for President Nixon, and went on to establish Fox News Channel in 1996. CLICK HERE to read the CNN.com story.

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today's five OFF-SET questions is Kerwin Swint, Professor of Political Science at Kennesaw State University. 

One of the foremost experts on presidential campaigns and state and local elections, he is author of "Mudslingers: The Twenty-five Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Times," "Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and Fox News Founder Roger Ailes" and "The King Whisperers: Power Behind the Throne from Rasputin to Rove." 

If the handwriting is indeed that of Roger Ailes, is it at all probable that his vision for Fox News was baking while he was consulting Nixon decades before?

I don’t think there’s any question about it. I believe the idea goes all the way back to the 1968 Nixon campaign, in which Roger Ailes produced the famous Nixon television specials that helped Nixon begin to change the cold image people had of him.

The success of those TV programs I think is where the idea germinated – Ailes and the Nixon staff were inspired to try and shape the information and images the public receives through the media.

What does the memo say about the relationship between the Nixon White House and the news media?

It’s well known that the Nixon White House had an enemies list, and many prominent journalists were on it. They viewed the establishment media as their adversary – an entrenched, eastern, elitist group of liberal snobs who would do anything it could to bring Nixon down.

The Nixon TV specials in ‘68 were an attempt to go over the heads of the mainstream media – right into people’s living rooms, where journalists couldn’t edit and alter what he wanted to say. And it worked to a great degree.

That’s where the memo comes in. The Nixon people, and Ailes, wanted to take the idea and begin producing their own news segments and distributing them to local news outlets – completely bypassing the national media. 

The plan detailed in that White House memo never appears to have gotten off the ground. Conjecture here, but could it have possibly succeeded?

It could have succeeded, but probably only in the short term. It would not have been long before the New York Times or the Associated Press would have caught on, or been tipped off by someone. Then the White House would have been accused of “manufacturing” the news, manipulating the media’s First Amendment rights, and so on.

It would also have been quite expensive and time consuming – the initial budget estimates uncovered in the memo were way off. The White House would have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (eventually millions) of taxpayer money to produce it’s own news programming – sort of like the old Soviet Union used to do.

It looks like cooler heads ultimately prevailed. Or they were just too busy with other projects.

Ailes went on to work at a right-leaning news service called “Television News Incorporated,"and became a well-known consultant to the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. You've studied him. How much influence on the political discussion does Ailes himself now have?

Yes, Roger Ailes’ tenure as News Director of  Television News, Inc. is I believe, something of a smoking gun. TVN, as it was called, was a venture funded by conservative activist Joseph Coors as an attempt to provide national news from the “conservative” point of view.

Coors started TVS in the early seventies, along with the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, to create institutions that would be a conservative counterweight to America’s dominant liberal media and cultural institutions.

It can be considered an early version, a Beta version if you will, of Fox News. They even had some of the same catch phrases, like “news straight down the middle,” which sounds an awful lot like “Fair and Balanced.” 

TVN went over budget and ran out of money – but in 1996 Rupert Murdoch knew who to turn to when he wanted to start a national news organization to provide a “counterweight” to the dominant liberal news media.

Ailes has immense influence today. He has never stopped talking to national Republican Party leaders, acting as a coach at times to Bush 41 and Bush 43, even after he supposedly left politics. He is in a way a Godfather figure to conservatives. His judgment and his advice aren’t always perfect, but his track record of success over four decades makes him a valuable sounding board.

Does it mean anything to today's politics that the Fox News Channel is so identified with Republican candidates?

It’s almost like a Rorschach test (the ink blots). Republicans look at Fox News and see a principled, straight down the middle newscast.

Democrats look at Fox News and see a phony news organization taking its marching orders from the Republican National Committee.

I look at Fox News and see a very successful effort to have a conservative version of the national news, but positioned and marketed as neutral, fair, and balanced.

By the way, I have no animosity at all toward Roger Ailes. On the contrary, I admire his creativity and strategic genius.

I just get the sense that he is taking us all for a ride and laughing all the way to the bank.