Joe Muto

“There was no reason why Fox, which, by the time I joined, had been in business for nearly a decade and had been number one in the ratings for more than two years, should still have been running such a rinky-dink operation, with broken-down tape machines, control rooms that smelled like a sewer whenever it rained more than half an inch, chronic intentional understaffing, and a workforce composed of barely trained, underpaid children like myself. But that was the business model, and the ratings were good enough—and the on-air product was just this side of mistake-free enough—that there was no incentive for the bosses to change it.”
― Joe Muto, An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media

“But I thought you were a conservative?’ ¶ ‘I am, I guess,’ she said. ‘But I also have eyes and ears.’ ¶ And that’s when it hit me. ¶ No one believed it. ¶ Fair and Balanced. We Report, You Decide. Everyone knew it was bunk. A sham. Over the next eight years at Fox, I never met a single employee, not the truest of true believers, who wasn’t cynical about what our main purpose was. ¶ ‘We all know the “Fair and Balanced” thing is bullshit,’ a very conservative O’Reilly Factor producer told me once, late at night, after we’d had a few drinks. ‘We’re not here to be fair. We’re here to give red meat to our viewers.’ ¶ ‘To stir up the crazies, you mean,’ I said. ¶ He laughed. ‘Yeah, to stir up the crazies. Because outrage equals ratings.”
― Joe Muto, An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media