Let’s not overthink it.

The problem with FOX News is that it’s a cable news network.

That means two things.

1. It’s a for-profit operation that targets a specific demographic and makes money from carriage fees paid by cable providers and advertisers.

2. It uses the same talent pool as the rest of the industry. Even if the guys and girls in front of the camera are more conservative, the people behind it are the same people who work at other networks and channels. Take David Rhodes, brother of Obama mastermind Ben Rhodes, who went from FOX News to CBS News, after running its news division in 2008, and is now working again for News Corp.

This isn’t just true of FOX News. Either you recruit conservative people to fill the bottom rung positions (Rhodes started as a PA at FOX News) or you recruit from the same talent pool as everyone else, and you end up, at best, with a mixed bag. And the people working there know that they might have to advance their career by making a move to CNN or MSNBC, and they’re prepped to do that by proving they’re not conservatives, even when they occasionally are.

Building an entire news network around conservative workers would be difficult, possibly illegal, and, with union jobs, all but impossible.

That’s why you can build a conservative site.

When you do that, you know you won’t get corporate advertisers and the big companies won’t touch you. But you can grow conservative talent. Doing the same thing as a cable news network is a lot harder. And you end up with executives who started out as PAs who are kissing cousins with the Obama campaign.

In other words, don’t expect FOX News to be anything it’s not. 

Certain industries innately lean leftward. To keep them leaning right, there has to be a sense of mission and a deliberate cultivation of conservative talent. FOX News, behind the scenes, is a lot like any other cable news network because it has most of the same people. And people define organizations, not just in front of the camera, but behind it too.