I was driving home today and I wasn't too interested in the Sirius Left channel's discussion. NFL Radio was similarly not doing it for me, so I started surfing the channels.
I blew through Fox talk and a few others and stopped suddenly when I heard the words "fired" and "Fox news".
I started listening, and turns out it was Marc Lamont Hill - the very same man who was recently fired from Fox News.
I heard the interview on NPR Talk, but to be honest I'm not sure exactly who produces it. I found this link to the show (Radio Times).
The portion I heard (it was probably 80% of the total interview) was fantastic. He was not bitter about the story, and he made a very good case that the role he played on Fox was essential to try to reach some malleable viewers. He placed the blame for his firing on a single man's campaign to Van Jones him and on Rupert Murdoch, while noting that Ailes and the rest of the news division backed him up prior to the firing, noting that his views were no more extreme than Glenn Beck's. He also notes that it was an exchange between he and David Horowitz, where Horowitz was clearly out of line, which started the whole process.
The best part of the interview wasn't necessarily the "news" above that's hardly news. It was, instead, the insider view of the way things work, and the insider's view of how they even deceive their own contributors in a way.
Some examples (I apologize, I wasn't able to find an actual transcript so this is to the best of my recollection):
He called out Hannity's show in particular for this, but noted he'd never had it done to him: turning down the microphone of someone arguing with Hannity in order to swing the impression that viewers were getting.
He noted that the commentators don't know what's going on on the "1/3 scroll" below - so any biasing of the viewers that's going on with a tag like "radical left-wing muslim" or "Obama surrogate" (when he in fact was a Kucinich supporter) he is unaware of while he's speaking.
He also shared a good story from election night 2008. He said that he was in the newsroom at about 5 PM, and the polls were showing clearly that Obama had won, and everyone knew it. He said that the mood inside was akin to a funeral, with the newsroom trying to figure out how they were going to spin a good message out of a bad night for them (in retrospect, as he points out, it's been a ratings win for them after they positioned themselves as the "voice of the opposition").
Another great anecdote was at the DNC in 2008. He, Hannity, and Rove were standing together and Hannity goes "I can't believe that Obama's gotten this far after all the work I've done to derail him. I've tried everything! Wright, Ayers, etc, nothing's worked".
Edit: just remembered that he had good things to say about Shep Smith and Baier, in terms of their objectivity. This echoes what I've heard elsewhere, too.
The entire interview was well done, and I think I gained an appreciation for the work that he had been trying to do while at Fox to at least blunt some of the constant conservative slant. I also think he got a raw deal from Fox News, but it was interesting to note that he only blamed Murdoch and no others for the firing.
Direct link to mp3 of the interview here. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters and Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner are the second half of the MP3 but their portion wasn't as good, in the part I heard.