The Daily Beast
Kelly Knaub reports that News Corp.’s building, which houses Fox News, “is guarded by a 24-hour-a-day New York Police Department security detail seven days a week, a patrol that one security expert estimated costs the city at least half a million dollars a year.” Although a police spokesman suggests otherwise, Knaub says no other network receives the same level of police protection.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul Browne, when asked why Fox News receives the protection when other media networks do not, responded in an email to The Daily Beast, “Each of the networks gets police coverage to varying extents based on threat information.” But interviews with security officials at other major networks–including CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC–revealed that the NYPD does not provide any security details to these locations. Instead, they contract security guards from private vendors, employ their own security staff and, in some cases, hire a paid detail of off-duty or retired police officers, whose cost is incurred at the network’s expense.
Her conclusion: “It appears to be fueled by the security obsession of Fox News chief Roger Ailes.”
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