Authors: Gabriel Sherman
Tags: #Business & Economics, #Corporate & Business History, #Political Science, #General, #Social Science, #Media Studies
Meanwhile, Ailes’s relationship with his news chief, John Moody, was fraying. It was a tension that had existed from Fox’s early days.
Moody told executives that his role was “to be the antagonist” and “the conscience of news.”
“Roger is not a news guy,” a producer said. “He will respect you for a period of time. After a while, you’ll get on his nerves and he will kill you.”
A Fox contributor recalled that Moody “would try and impose some standards and Roger would override him.” Ailes increasingly relied more on programming executives such as Bill Shine and Kevin Magee.
Although Moody shared Ailes’s conservatism, friends and colleagues sensed Moody’s growing discomfort with Ailes’s rage and lack of journalistic rigor.
“He was aghast from day one at shit that was going on there,” a person close to Moody recalled. Adam Sank, who left Fox in 2002, said,
“I look at John as a tortured soul.”
For a while, Moody tried to downplay Ailes’s crude view of journalism. “He insults me to my face but I don’t want you to think it’s a sign of disrespect,” he told a colleague.
But, in early 2006, Moody vented about his boss to a friend over lunch. As it happened, his friend knew Bob Wright and decided to give him a call.
“You should hire John Moody to run MSNBC. In one stroke you steal Roger’s number two and he can run the network.”
“That’s a great idea,” Wright said.
GE sent a helicopter to fly Moody to the corporation’s headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. The courtship, however, was brief. Ailes offered Moody a raise to stay.
The MSNBC job went to Phil Griffin instead. Moody’s frustrations were left to simmer, and he would continue to keep an eye on the exit.
Moody was not the only veteran journalist looking to decamp.
Kim Hume, the Washington bureau chief, had had enough. At the beginning of the year, she came under fire for Fox’s coverage of the mining accident in Sago, West Virginia, that left a dozen men dead. Kim had been skiing in the Rockies at the time, and after CNN was first with the news,
Fox and several other outlets reported a false rumor that the miners had been
saved, prompting a barrage of criticism. After returning to work, Kim took her frustrations out on staff members. “You will never embarrass me again,” she told them. In September, Kim resigned.
With the daily headlines no longer driving ratings, Ailes looked for other ways to regain his edge.
In the fall of 2006, he brought in an old hand: Woody Fraser. They reconnected at
the Los Angeles memorial for Mike Douglas, who had died that year.
The following spring, Ailes hired Joel Cheatwood, a veteran television executive from CNN, to gin up programming concepts for Fox.
“Roger would call him Helmet Head, because Joel has a very unique coif,” a colleague said. More than for his hair, Cheatwood was known in the industry for being a tabloid-TV revolutionary. As head of a Fox affiliate in Miami in the early 1990s, he juiced ratings with gory, sensationalized crime stories and flashy graphics.
And at CNN, Cheatwood and his deputy, Josanne Lopez, who had worked for Ailes at America’s Talking, had discovered a charismatic Philadelphia talk radio host and put him on Headline News. His name was Glenn Beck.
Over the summer, Ailes tasked Cheatwood and a small group of executives—Bill Shine, Woody Fraser, and Suzanne Scott—to propose steps that would halt the ratings slide.
“Roger likes things to be produced simply and overtly,” a producer said. “For example, he likes words in graphics to be big. There is a story he tells all the time about the live bug”—the graphic in the lower corner of the screen. “He made his bigger than CNN’s at the launch, then, when CNN made its bigger, Roger made his bigger still. He kept doing that until CNN gave up.”
O’Reilly’s was the only show that seemed to be working and Ailes expressed uneasiness about it.
“One person should not be the identity of this network,” he told executives. Ideas were thrown around about shuffling shows and hosts. One glaring weak spot was
Hannity & Colmes
.
The show typically had higher ratings than its rival 9:00 p.m. offerings, but was far from meeting corporate expectations.
While some observers said the format of left-and-right pundits was an anachronism, the consensus at Fox was that Colmes was the problem. After a decade, liberals were convinced he was a patsy; and conservatives simply did not want to listen to him. It was like a pro wrestling match where the result was scripted, the outcome the same every time. Hannity himself was one of Colmes’s most vocal detractors.
“Sean was bitter he had to do the show with Alan for many years,” a senior producer said. Hannity also complained that Colmes did not hustle to book guests.
As the Iraq War intensified,
Hannity bombarded the White House with pushy personal appeals. “If you don’t give me Powell for the TV show, I’m going to fuck you on the radio,” he snapped to a press aide.
“We don’t do debate shows,” the aide said. Hannity repeated his threat.
“Listen,” the aide replied. “There is a policy of this government that we don’t negotiate with terrorists and those who harbor them.”
In 2007, Hannity and Colmes’s relationship continued to unravel.
“There were times he’d freeze Alan out and be curt with him,” said a former senior producer at Fox. “Sean became less close-mouthed about his feelings about Alan. They’d sit on set right before the show and Sean would say, ‘What’s it going to be like when you’re gone?’ ”
One of the paradoxes of Ailes’s management style was that, while he bulldozed through barriers, he could be excruciatingly cautious when it came to making talent decisions, which frustrated his executives. He wavered when they suggested dumping Colmes.
“Roger wanted the counterpoint,” the senior executive said. “They were a team. That’s what Fox was—these people. The only thing that changed in the prime-time lineup were the women, from Catherine to Paula to Greta.”
As a stopgap, in January 2007, Ailes gave Hannity a Sunday night solo show. But Ailes still had doubts. While he shared Hannity’s hard-right politics, he privately complained that he was too stiff.
“I want you guys to slap him in his head,” Ailes told Bill Shine. “There’s entertainment value here and he doesn’t get it. When he’s on camera, it’s like he expects Alan to have an epiphany on air and say, ‘You know, Sean, you’re right. I’ve been such a moron for fifty years. How did I not see it?’ ”
Hannity’s pressure ate at Colmes.
In the fall of 2008, Fox announced Colmes was leaving the show.
A
s usual for Fox, salvation was on the horizon, in the form of a presidential election, which was certain to provide the armature of a new narrative. For the first time in eight years, Democrats and Republicans would be choosing candidates for the general election. The jump ball for the nomination on both sides of the aisle gave Ailes an opportunity to reignite the passions of his weary audience, who could rally behind a Republican nominee and enjoy a compelling gladiator death match on the Democratic side.
The obvious priority was the Republican primary. In early 2007, Ailes
dispatched senior executives to lock down the highest-profile GOP debates.
Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, recalled how Fox outmaneuvered CNN in the negotiations to air the primary debate on May 15, 2007, in Columbia. Although Wolf Blitzer personally lobbied Dawson on behalf of CNN, Fox was swifter with its official pitch, and had carrots CNN did not. “Fox had a specific South Carolina audience. A very Republican audience,” Dawson said. Fox also had sticks. “I would never want to get on the wrong side of Roger Ailes,” he added.
Those who crossed Ailes during his campaign to win the Republican primary telecasts faced his fury.
On February 14, 2007, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation announced that it was partnering with MSNBC and
Politico
to host a debate, which would be
moderated by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Ailes complained to Fox executives that NBC and
Politico
cut an inside deal with the library.
Frederick Ryan Jr., the chairman of the Reagan foundation’s board, was also the president and CEO of
Politico
. Ryan had recused himself from the selection process, but Ailes was not appeased.
“Roger likes to win, not most games, but every game, every single day,” Ryan said.
Fox hosts began denouncing
Politico
as “far left wing.”
The Republican debates took on more urgency after Democrats mobilized to freeze Fox out of their primaries. Ailes had triggered the backlash himself.
On March 8, Ailes was in Washington to accept a First Amendment Leadership Award from a group of radio and television news directors. During his speech, he mixed up Barack Obama’s name with Osama bin Laden, for humorous effect. “And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move,” Ailes said. “I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called [Pakistan president Pervez] Musharraf and said, ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’ ” Ailes’s impudence fed into a narrative about Fox’s hysteria over Obama’s candidacy.
A couple of months earlier, Steve Doocy announced on
Fox & Friends
that Obama had attended a madrassa funded by “Saudis” in Indonesia. Obama advisers erupted, labeling the claim “completely ludicrous.”
Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications chief, called Moody to complain. Moody said he could not control
Fox & Friends
. “It’s an entertainment show,” Moody explained.
On March 9, a day after Ailes jokingly confused Obama with Osama, the Nevada Democratic Party canceled its Fox News debate. It was a move progressive groups like MoveOn.org had been calling for. Fox quickly fired back. David Rhodes, Moody’s deputy for news, was put out
front, to issue a statement. “News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus, which appears to be controlled by radical fringe, out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party,” Rhodes said.
Ailes triangulated.
Around this time, he ran into Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and suggested Fox could co-host a televised debate with the group in Detroit. It was a difficult sell, because many caucus members saw Fox as hostile to African Americans. Ailes met privately with former Michigan congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick. When she questioned him about his interest in civil rights, Ailes whipped out a photo of himself with Malcolm X on the set of
The Mike Douglas Show
. Kilpatrick was swayed.
On March 29, Fox announced that the CBC would host a pair of debates on Fox News, the first taking place in Detroit in September. But the maneuver failed.
One week later, the Democratic National Committee announced that Fox News would be shut out from hosting the six official DNC primary debates.
The next day, John Edwards pulled out of the Detroit debate, and the following Monday, Clinton and Obama announced that they were aligning with Edwards on the Fox boycott. “CNN seemed like a more appropriate venue,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton told the press.
The problem with the 2008 Republican primaries from an entertainment standpoint was that the talent was weak. Around the second floor, Ailes evinced little enthusiasm for his party’s 2008 candidates, who included former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, John McCain, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and Kansas senator Sam Brownback.
Ailes called them the “seven dwarves.” He made an exception for an old friend: Rudy Giuliani.
In April, Giuliani was a guest at News Corp’s table at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. What’s more, Fox gave the New York mayor an invaluable national platform to propel his candidacy.
A study found that in the first six months of 2007, Fox gave Giuliani more interview time than any other candidate.
Which is why the news that broke on Tuesday afternoon, November 13, two weeks before the crucial GOP debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, threatened to derail Giuliani’s campaign.
Judith Regan, the flamboyantly abrasive HarperCollins book publisher, filed a $100 million defamation suit against News Corp. It was the latest chapter in a tabloid circus that followed Regan’s abrupt firing the previous December, and would soon entangle Ailes and Giuliani in a web of competing agendas.
At the heart of it was television. Books had fueled Judith Regan’s rise. A former
National Enquirer
reporter, she possessed a sixth tabloid sense, which she tapped to publish a string of salacious bestsellers—including Howard Stern’s
Private Parts
and Jenna Jameson’s
How to Make Love like a Porn Star
. But her desire was to be bigger, more famous, than her celebrity authors.
In 2006, Regan got Murdoch’s permission to pay O. J. Simpson $880,000 for the rights to publish
If I Did It
, Simpson’s hypothetical “confession.” The book was a centerpiece of Regan’s plan to reinvent herself as a prime-time personality. (
In 2002, when Ailes canceled her weekly Fox News show,
Regan told the press it had been her decision.) To roll out Simpson’s book, Regan would interview Simpson for a prime-time special to air on Fox TV.
Regan had even relocated to Los Angeles in a quest to become a “multi-platform” media star—an Oprah for the
Sex and the City
Age.
The whole thing blew back massively at Regan and News Corp on November 14, 2006, when details of the Simpson book and television special first appeared in the press. As pundits moralized about Regan’s morally suspect pursuit of profit, the flurry of headlines metastasized into a full-fledged corporate crisis. After days of withering criticism,
News Corp pulled the plug. Although Murdoch and HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman had supported the project, Regan took the brunt of the blame for the scandal. By this point, Regan had few allies left inside News Corp. In a company full of massive egos, she stood apart.
Stories of her office rage and the way she tormented underlings were legend. “Judith would call them ‘cunts’ who only had a job because of her hard work,” one former employee said. Things got so out of control that, in 2003, News Corp opened an HR investigation into her behavior. Jane Friedman, who had clashed with Regan for years, was running out of patience.
In December 2006, Friedman fired Regan. She got the news in Los Angeles when her work computer suddenly was shut off. The two-sentence press release went out on December 15.
Accounts soon leaked to reporters that Regan had been dismissed after she made an anti-Semitic slur to Mark Jackson, a HarperCollins lawyer. During a heated phone conversation, Regan allegedly told Jackson, who was Jewish, that a “Jewish cabal” was out to get her. “Of all people, the Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie,” Regan allegedly said. Her lawyer, Bert Fields, strenuously denied the account, attributing the termination to Regan’s long-running feud with Friedman. As
crass as she sometimes was, Regan vehemently objected to being branded an anti-Semite. Striking back, she had leverage.