Obama Met With Fox News Executives

At a secret meeting with Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) three months ago, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes says, he tried to clear the air with the Democratic senator by saying that his organization was determined to be fair but would not be "in the tank" for Obama's campaign. During the sit-down in a Waldorf-Astoria hotel suite in Manhattan that included Rupert Murdoch, the network's owner, Obama expressed concern about the way Fox was covering him. "I just wanted to know if I'm going to get a fair shake from Fox News Channel," Ailes recalled him saying. "Senator, you're the one who boycotted us," Ailes says he replied. "We're not the ones who boycotted you. Nor did we retaliate for your boycott." The meeting appears to have eased tensions between the two camps, which began when all the Democratic candidates, complaining that the network favors Republicans, refused to hold any primary-season debates on Fox. After resisting invitations for months, Obama now plans to appear on Bill O'Reilly's prime-time Fox program on Thursday, the night that John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Sen Obama told the Australian-born mogul that he didn't want to waste time talking to Ailes if Fox was going to keep attacking the senator and his wife and portraying him as suspicious and foreign.