AILES, Roger

see dereg

SEE PSEUDO-POPULISM

SEE LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS BS}:

see hannity talk radio RUSH LIMBAUGH

see bkup 2

BODY COUNT: RR, B41, B43, PHIL GRAMM, MCCONNELL

html here tesimony sic

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roger ailes laid fdn for end of the world? 16 tags 9/20

no trump? covid faIL post death but teed up

funny fox never got tagged w/ jrnlism fail b/c it was expected/normal

120 aha: jeez beck and fox have been fuelling fake populism from at least the TP; cf ailes loudest voice based on gabe sherman: anti-govt wacko?

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OMG SEE FIASCO BENGHAZI MIKE SCHMIDT HAD HILLARY EMAIL HRD22 ? BUT ASSUMED SHE ALSO USES AN OFFICIAL ACCT? INVESTIGATTOR MIL INTEL ON 2ND TREY GOWDY SPECIAL COMM DID NOT SEE PROBLEM

THINKING MAN’S TP? BOEHNER LONGTOME PAL OF AILES; APPROVED OF 2ND BS COMM IF HE WD GET THE “CRAZIES” TO BACK OFF?! BLACK HELOS, MADE SAFE RM IN HOUSE ~ SPY, ARMED SECURITY TO ~ ASSASSINATION?!

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Intelligencer

no lnx

About Ailes, Nixon, and That Snake …

By Gabriel Sherman

Jan. 10, 2014

:{:{During an interview today on CBS This Morning, I discussed with hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell the moment Roger Ailes met Richard Nixon on the set of The Mike Douglas Show in January, 1968. At the time, Ailes was the show’s 27-year-old executive producer, and Nixon was there to be interviewed as he ramped up his presidential campaign. CBS This Morning opened the segment with a clip of Ailes recounting his version of the encounter in an earlier interview with Rose on his PBS show.}:

Ailes said he spoke to Nixon about his campaign because he had booked him on the same day as a belly dancer and, wanting to spare Nixon an awkward encounter, let him wait in his office until the interview started. It is a story he has told in many interviews and speeches. “The guests were Richard Nixon and a dancer called Little Egypt — with her boa constrictor,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “I didn’t wanna scare Nixon and I didn’t wanna scare the snake, so I stuck Nixon in my office for 15 minutes. If I’d put Little Egypt in there, I’d be managing belly dancers right now.”}:

:{:{The story is a masterful bit of myth-making by Roger Ailes that downplays his early ambition to amass political power. He casts himself as a wunderkind producer who by a fluke stumbled into Republican politics. But, according to several of Ailes’s Mike Douglas colleagues who were present, there was no belly dancer named Little Egypt booked that day. Their assertion is backed up by the show’s talent logs, which I viewed.}:

The guests during the Nixon taping, which took place on January 9, were the singer Margaret Whiting, the actress Stella Stevens, the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble, and Tony Sandler’s children. According to the talent log for that week’s shoots, the dance duo John Brascia and Tybee Arfa had been scheduled to come into the studio when Nixon was there, but were bumped back a day. Tybee, as she was known, was certainly exotic. But she never performed under the name Little Egypt. And the snake? “No one has any recollection of Tybee ever dancing with a boa,” recalled John Brascia’s daughter, Christina. }:

:{:{Mike Douglas later told an interviewer it was his idea to have Nixon wait in Ailes’s office, and because Ailes wanted to get into politics, he seized the opportunity to have a private conversation with Nixon. “He wanted so to get into that area,” Douglas told an interviewer. Producer Kenny Johnson was standing in the hallway and saw Ailes enter his office with Nixon and shut the door. The meeting lasted an hour. Afterwards, Johnson saw Ailes emerge shaking his head and flashing a raffish grin. “I may have just shot myself in the foot or gotten myself another job,” Ailes told Johnson. Kenny Johnson recalled to me a conversation he had in Ailes’s office around that time about the power of propaganda.}:

Like Ailes, Johnson loved the theater. He had performed in high school plays and studied directing at Carnegie Tech, where he had become fascinated by the Nazi propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, especially Triumph of the Will and Olympia. “I was blown away,” Johnson remembered. “I had an enormous hatred of Hitler, but when I saw Triumph of the Will, you find yourself thinking, ‘Wow, he’s pretty cool — no, wait, I hate these guys.’” Ailes told Johnson that he too was a big fan of Riefenstahl. “He thought her work was brilliant,” Johnson said. They talked about “how she made different versions of the films for different countries not only to aggrandize the Nazis but to throw a bone to the other folks.” Ailes was especially taken by Riefenstahl’s use of camera angles. “There’s so many subtle things you see in propaganda,” Johnson said. “If you put the camera below a subject’s eye height, it’s the ‘hero shot.’ It gives him dominance. We talked about the psychological impact of the placement of the camera.”}:

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carter 1976 vs incumb jerry ford/ dole

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OBIT

LAT ENTERTAIN? NO LNX

Roger Ailes, polarizing and controversial Fox News founder who changed cable news, dies at 77

The controversial former Fox News chairman turned the cable channel into a ratings powerhouse over his 20 years at the helm.

By Stephen Battaglio

Staff Writer

:{May 18, 2017

When Rupert Murdoch launched a 24-hour news channel nearly two decades ago, he turned to Roger Ailes, a brash, veteran TV producer and strategist for Republican presidential candidates who helped get Richard Nixon and George W. Bush elected by improving their images through television.

Murdoch contended that a conservative cable news network was needed to counter “liberal” CNN.

Ailes, however, told The Times in 1996 that the new network would not have any political bias. “We just expect to do fine, balanced journalism,” he said.

Ailes, 77, who died Thursday, would go on to create a cable news juggernaut at Fox News that provided an outlet for conservatives who felt their views were under-represented by the major broadcast networks.

But Fox News also would alter how Americans view the media, ushering in the era of personality-driven, opinionated journalism that now dominates the cable news business.

“Roger Ailes understood the power of television to shape the public agenda more than most, and he used it to great partisan effect in supporting an ideology focused on conservatives,” said Rich Hanley, associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University.

Ailes’ death caps a period of turmoil at Fox News, which is still facing lawsuits over alleged sexual harassment claims by women who worked at the network.

Ailes was ousted in July 2016 after embarrassing allegations that he had sexually harassed former anchor Gretchen Carlson. He dismissed the allegations, but he faced additional claims of misconduct and the company paid $20 million to settle the suit.

He also was a subject of an ongoing federal investigation into whether 21st Century Fox violated any securities laws in its handling of payments to women to resolve sexual harassment claims.

He was reported to have received $40 million in an exit agreement with Fox.

Though he left in disgrace, Ailes’ legacy as a powerful force in the media business and the nation’s political culture will be lasting.

“No one did more to change the media landscape than Roger Ailes, but no media executive did more to divide America,” said Joe Peyronnin, a former network news executive who worked for Fox before Ailes was hired to launch the news channel. “Ailes was a brilliant TV executive who saw an opportunity two decades ago to build a conservative news source and seized it.”

While liberal critics characterize Fox News as a right-wing propaganda channel, Ailes did succeed in creating a full-fledged news operation that broke the hegemony of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN — all of which were seen by a large segment of the country as being too sympathetic to liberalism.

Not only did Fox News provide a platform for conservative voices, it made other news organizations consider their point of view in coverage.

“I do think part of Roger’s legacy is that other newsrooms always wondered: How will Fox play this?‘” said Neal Shapiro, former NBC News president. “And part of Roger’s game plan was to draw sharp distinctions between the way Fox would cover a story and the rest of the media would do it.”

Ailes was also a larger-than-life personality known for ruthlessly attacking his competitors as if they were opposing political candidates.

Rick Kaplan, a former president of CNN, recalls how Ailes had described the established channel as the “Clinton News Network,” perpetuating the idea that the channel favored the Clinton White House. Kaplan was a personal friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton before he took over the cable channel.

“How else were you going to be heard in a media landscape like this?” Kaplan recalled.

The two ended up becoming friends, and Ailes even called Kaplan’s mother to assure her that his public comments were just business and not personal.

Kaplan said Ailes was also a brilliant TV producer who was keenly aware that even with talking heads, he was working in a visual medium. Fox News always had state-of-the-art graphics and animation. His penchant for putting attractive women on the air, with legs displayed on the set, was well known.

“Roger has a very visually pleasing network in terms of look and color and form,” Kaplan said. “Roger cared about what it looked like.”

Ailes was so effective in the way he produced and packaged TV programming, he was able to take personalities who were little known or had limited success elsewhere and turn them into stars.

Ailes took a journeyman TV correspondent, Bill O’Reilly, and turned him into cable TV’s most popular host, with an aura of the educated guy at the end of the bar who wasn’t afraid to give his opinions. Ailes discovered a young local radio talk show host in Atlanta, Sean Hannity, and made him a TV star.

“To this day I have no earthly idea why I was hired and not fired early on, as I had little television experience when I was hired by FNC,” Hannity said in a statement. Ailes “saw something in me and many others he hired that we never saw in ourselves, and forever changed the trajectory of thousands of people’s lives.”

Ailes died after falling at home and injuring his head, according to the Palm Beach County medical examiner’s office. It said the cause of death was complications of a subdural hematoma, with hemophilia as a contributing factor.

Ailes was known to be in poor health.

“The actuaries say I have six to eight years. The best tables give me 10. Three thousand days, more or less,” he told biographer Zev Chafets in 2012.

“Because of my hemophilia, I’ve been prepared to face death all of my life,” Chafets’ book, “Roger Ailes Off Camera,” quotes him as saying. “As a boy I spent a lot of time in hospitals. My parents had to leave at the end of visiting hours, and I spent a lot of time just lying there in the dark, thinking about the fact that any accident could be dangerous or even fatal. So I’m ready. Everybody fears the unknown. But I have a strong feeling there’s something bigger than us.”

Some former colleagues on Thursday praised Ailes’ contributions.

“Many people out there would say he saved this country by starting the Fox News Channel,” said Ainsley Earhardt, the co-host of “Fox & Friends.”

Hannity asked the media to leave Ailes’ family alone to allow them to grieve. “But knowing that people that hated him and his politics, and those that forget ‘all have sinned and fallen short’ and ‘cast the first stone,’ I doubt that will happen,” he tweeted.

At the time of Ailes’ resignation, Rupert Murdoch — executive chairman of 21st Century Fox and a longtime Ailes supporter, said: “Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country. Roger shared my vision of a great and independent television organization and executed it brilliantly over 20 great years. Fox News has given voice to those who were ignored by the traditional networks and has been one of the great commercial success stories of modern media.”

In a statement read on the air Thursday, Murdoch said everyone at Fox News was “shocked and grieved” by Ailes’ death.

On social media, news of his death prompted many who had a different view of Ailes and his legacy to take him to task for creating a hostile workplace for women and minorities. Instead of a hero, some saw Ailes as a promoter of bigotry and fear, who left behind a culture of sexual harassment at the network he built.

“Ailes was a monster who was pushed out of the network he founded because dozens of women who had worked for him came forward and reported that he had sexually harassed them,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog. “And the legacy he leaves behind is a propaganda machine he created in his own image that has done incalculable damage to the country.”

Born in Warren, Ohio, on May 15, 1940, Roger Eugene Ailes made his early reputation as a strategist and media advisor to Republican political candidates, beginning with Richard M. Nixon and including Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. His behind-the-scenes work to shape a more appealing television image for Nixon during his successful 1968 presidential campaign was chronicled in Joe McGinniss’ bestselling book, “The Sellling of the President.”

During his earlier days as a political consultant, Ailes was a sought-after debate coach, working with Reagan in 1984 and readying then-Vice President Bush for his presidential debates with Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in 1988. After his resignation from Fox News last summer, Ailes helped Trump prepare for his televised debates with Hillary Clinton.

Ailes often told the story of how he prepared Reagan for his second debate with then-Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 1984. Ailes asked Reagan, then in his early 70s, how he would handle being asked about his age.

Reagan’s answer during the debate was memorable: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” he said. “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Roger Ailes

1/8

Former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, shown on the Fox News set, died on Thursday. He was 77.

(Jim Cooper / Associated Press)

Roger Ailes

2/8

The former Fox News chairman was credited with making the channel a ratings powerhouse over his 20 years at the helm.

(Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times)

Roger Ailes

3/8

Roger Ailes speaks at a Jan. 30, 1996, news conference with Rupert Murdoch after it was announced that Ailes would be chairman and CEO of Fox News. Ailes was hired to create the channel as an alternative to the established TV news networks, targeting an audience outside the New York-Washington media nexus.

(Richard Dre / Associated Press)

Roger Ailes

4/8

At a 2003 news conference, Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, right, speaks with, from left, Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), and Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes after announcing that the Congressional Black Caucus would partner with the channel to host two presidential debates.

(Gail Burton / Associated Press)

Roger Ailes

5/8

Ailes with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, right, in New York in 2005.

(Catrina Genovese / WireImage)

Roger Ailes

6/8

Roger Ailes, shown in 2006, resigned from Fox News on July 21, 2016, amid sexual harassment charges.

(Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times)

Roger Ailes

7/8

Ailes speaks during the Summer Television Critics Assn. Press Tour in Pasadena in July 2006.

Roger Ailes

8/8

Roger Ailes at the premiere for “Kingsman: The Secret Service” on Feb. 9, 2015.

(Charles Sykes / Associated Press)

Ailes took the helm at CNBC in 1993 and helped boost its ratings and revenue. In 1994 he launched America’s Talking, an all-talk cable channel that NBC later turned into MSNBC. He was president and chief executive of both NBC-owned channels until he resigned in early 1996.

Ailes was hired to create the Fox News Channel to be an alternative to the established TV news networks. Its aim was to reach an audience outside the New York-Washington media nexus and speak to people who believed that traditional American values were being abandoned and that government interfered too much in their lives.

But many observers blame Ailes for ushering in the era of opinion-based journalism that has eroded trust in the media.

“He helped craft an enormous gulf of distrust between people and news,” Jeffrey Jones, director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia. “He took ideological and partisan talking points and called it ‘news.’ That is the brilliance and the detriment of how Ailes has impacted the news industry.”

Ailes was a skilled TV producer, but he was not a journalist. When he arrived at Fox News, the company already had a veteran network news executive formerly from CBS, Joe Peyronnin. “Roger asked me to continue,” Peyronnin recalled. “He told me ‘I don’t know anything about the news.‘” Peyronnin said he had no interest in staying on to be a part of a plan to work for what Ailes called an “alternative news network.”

Fox News Channel was not driven by journalism as much as it was a collection of people who talked about the news in a way no one else on television was doing.

Fox News started gaining traction during the impeachment proceedings of President Clinton in 1998 and truly took hold after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. By the end of 2002, the channel had passed CNN to become the top rated cable news channel and has remained No. 1 ever since.

Ailes is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Zachary.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Times staff writers Meg James and David Ng contributed to this report.

Early life

Ailes was born and grew up in the factory town of Warren, Ohio, to Donna Marie (née Cunningham) and Robert Eugene Ailes, a factory maintenance foreman.^[6] Ailes had hemophilia and was often hospitalized as a youth. He attended the Warren city schools, and later was inducted into Warren G. Harding High School's Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame. Actor and playwright Austin Pendleton was a childhood friend of Ailes.^[7][8]

Ailes's father was an authoritarian parent who was often physically and verbally abusive, while Ailes later recalled that his mother feared his hemophilia and was only physically affectionate "once in a while".^[9]: 560 His parents divorced in 1960; when he came home from college for Christmas break, they informed him that he would have to stay at a friend's house.^[10] In 1962, Ailes graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he majored in radio and television and served as the student station manager for WOUB for two years.^[11][12]

Career

Early television

Ailes's career in television began in Cleveland and Philadelphia, where he started as production assistant (1961), producer (1965), and executive producer (1967–68) at KYW-TV,^[13] for a then-locally produced talk-variety show, The Mike Douglas Show. He continued as executive producer for the show when it was syndicated nationally, and in 1967 and 1968 he won Emmy Awards for it.^[13]

In 1967, Ailes had a spirited discussion about television in politics with one of the show's guests, Richard Nixon, who took the view that television was a gimmick.^[14] Later, Nixon called on Ailes to serve as his Executive Producer for television. Nixon's successful presidential campaign was Ailes's first venture into the political spotlight.^[15] His pioneering work in framing national campaign issues was later chronicled in The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss.^[15]

Ailes was an employee of Television News Inc., a syndicated television newsfilm service owned by Joseph Coors, from January to September 1975.^[16][17]

Political consulting

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nixon_Contact_Sheet_WHPO-0514_%28cropped%29.jpg)Ailes with President Richard Nixon in 1969[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan_Contact_Sheet_C36903_%28cropped%29.jpg)Ailes with President Ronald Reagan in 1986[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_Contact_Sheet_P15686_%28cropped%29.jpg)Ailes with President George H. W. Bush in 1990

In 1984, Ailes worked on the campaign to reelect Ronald Reagan. In 1987 and 1988, Ailes was credited (along with fellow consultant Lee Atwater) with guiding George H. W. Bush to victory in the Republican primaries and in the victory over Michael Dukakis.^[18]

Ailes was credited with the "Orchestra Pit Theory" regarding sensationalist political coverage in the news media, which originated with his quip:

If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?^[19]

Ailes's last campaign was the unsuccessful effort of Richard Thornburgh in his run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in November 1991.^[20] He announced his withdrawal from political consulting in 1991.^[20]

Days after the 9/11 attacks, Ailes advised President George W. Bush that the American public would be patient as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible.^[21] The correspondence was revealed in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War.^[22] Criticized for giving political advice, Ailes lashed out against Woodward, saying "Woodward got it all screwed up, as usual", and "The reason he's not as rich as Tom Clancy is that while he and Clancy both make stuff up, Clancy does his research first."^[21][23][24] Ailes refused to release a copy of the memo he sent to Bush.^[21]

Book

In 1988, Ailes wrote a book with long-time aide Jon Kraushar entitled You Are the Message: Secrets of the Master Communicators.^[25] In 1989, Ailes wrote a book with Jon Kraushar entitled You Are the Message: Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are.

America's Talking channel

Ailes eventually made his way back to television, this time focusing on cable news. In 1993, he became president of CNBC and later created the America's Talking channel, which would eventually become MSNBC. He hosted an interview program on America's Talking.^[26] In 1995, NBC hired a law firm to conduct an internal investigation after Ailes allegedly called NBC executive David Zaslav a "little fucking Jew prick." This was not confirmed as the reason for his departure.^[27]

20th Television/Fox News

Ailes was hired by News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to become the CEO of Fox News, effective on October 7.^[28]

After the departure of Lachlan Murdoch from News Corporation, Ailes was named Chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group on August 15, 2005. Following his newest assignment, one of his first acts was canceling A Current Affair in September 2005 and replacing it with a new Geraldo Rivera show, Geraldo at Large, which debuted on Halloween, 2005. Rivera's show drew about the same ratings as A Current Affair^[29] in January 2007.

Ailes hired former Viacom executive Dennis Swanson in October 2005 to be president of the Fox Television Stations Group. Additionally, there were changes in affiliates' news programs with the standardization of Fox News Channel-like graphics, redesigned studios, news-format changes, and the announcement of a new morning television show called The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet to be produced by Fox News Channel.^[30]

In January 2011, 400 rabbis, including leaders from various branches of Judaism in the United States, published an open letter in The Wall Street Journal on the UN-designated Holocaust Remembrance Day. They called on Rupert Murdoch to sanction Fox News commentator Glenn Beck for his use of the Holocaust to "discredit any individual or organization you disagree with."^[31] An executive at Fox News rejected the letter, calling it the work of a "George Soros-backed left wing political organization."^[31] Ailes is also said to have once referred to Jewish critics of his as "left-wing rabbis."^[32]

Also in 2011, Ailes was criticized for referring to executives of the public radio network NPR as "Nazis" for firing a news analyst, Juan Williams, after Williams had made remarks considered by NPR to be offensive. Ailes apologized to a Jewish group, but not to NPR, for using the expression, writing to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL): "I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word, but I was angry at the time because of NPR's willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough ... My now considered opinion 'nasty, inflexible bigot' would have worked better."^[33] The ADL welcomed and accepted the apology through its National Director, Abraham Foxman;^[34] in a subsequent letter to The Wall Street Journal Foxman said that both Ailes and Beck were "pro-Israel stalwarts."^[35]

In October 2012, Ailes's contract with Fox News was renewed for four years, through 2016. If completed, he would have served as head of Fox News Channel for 20 years. Salary terms were not made public, although his earnings for the 2012 fiscal year were $21 million (_$27.6 million in 2023) inclusive of bonuses.^[36] In addition to heading Fox News and chairing Fox Television Stations, Ailes also chaired 20th Television, MyNetworkTV and Fox Business Network.^[36]

Sexual harassment cases

In a book published in 2014, Gabriel Sherman alleged that, in the 1980s, Ailes offered a television producer a raise if she would sleep with him.^[9][37] Fox News denied the allegation and rejected the authenticity of Sherman's book.^[37]

On July 6, 2016, former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes; Carlson's allegations were the impetus for more than a dozen female employees at 21st Century Fox to step forward regarding their own experiences with Ailes's behaviour. Carlson alleged that she had been fired for rebuffing Ailes's advances.^[38][39] Ailes, through his attorney, Susan Estrich, denied the charges.^[40][41] Three days later, Sherman reported accounts from six women (two publicly and four anonymously) who alleged sexual harassment by Ailes.^[42] In response, Ailes's counsel released a statement: "It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue."^[43]

Resignation

Ten days later, New York magazine reported that an internal review into Carlson's claims had expanded into a broader review of Ailes's stewardship. It also claimed Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan and James, had seen enough information in the preliminary review to conclude that Ailes had to go. They disagreed on the timing, however; James wanted Ailes out immediately, while Rupert and Lachlan wanted to wait until after the Republican National Convention.^[44] On July 19, New York reported that Megyn Kelly told investigators Ailes made "unwanted sexual advances toward her" at the start of her career. The magazine also reported that the Murdochs had given Ailes an ultimatum—resign by August 1 or be fired.^[45]

On July 21, 2016, Ailes resigned from Fox News, receiving about $40 million (_$49.8 million in 2023)^[46] from 21st Century Fox (the then-parent company of 20th Century Fox and Fox News) in an exit agreement. Rupert Murdoch succeeded him as chairman, and as interim CEO until the naming of a permanent replacement.^[47][48] In a letter to Murdoch,^[49] Ailes wrote: "I will not allow my presence to become a distraction from the work that must be done every day to ensure that Fox News and Fox Business continue to lead our industry." Ailes was thanked for his work, without mention of the allegations. He continued to advise Murdoch and 21st Century Fox through 2017 until his death.^[50]

After 20th Television and Fox News

Following Ailes' resignation, Andrea Tantaros claimed in August 2016 that she approached Fox News executives about Ailes' behavior towards her in 2015. She stated that her allegations resulted first in her being demoted, and then in her being taken off the air in April 2016.^[51] Tantaros filed a lawsuit against Fox News in August 2016 for sexual harassment, also accusing Bill O'Reilly and Scott Brown.^[52][53]

On August 8, 2016, Shelley Ross, writing for The Daily Beast, described her encounter of sexual harassment with Ailes in 1981. She claimed that at a lunch meeting Ailes asked her, "When did you first discover you were sexy?" When Ross explained to Ailes that she found the conversation "very embarrassing," he responded that "the best expression of loyalty comes in the form of a sexual alliance."^[54] The next month, 21st Century Fox announced it had settled a lawsuit with Carlson over her allegations of harassment against Ailes.^[1] 21st Century Fox was also reported to have made separate settlements with at least two other women who made complaints about Ailes.^[1]

In November 2016, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly wrote in her book about the details of her sexual abuse allegations against Ailes. According to Kelly, when she first joined Fox News, Ailes would have meetings with her, during which he would make sexual remarks. Kelly alleges that he also tried to kiss her several times during a closed-door meeting, but she was able to get away and leave the office. After that incident in 2006, Kelly says that Ailes did not sexually harass her again. Then, in 2016, when Gretchen Carlson first made her sexual abuse allegations, 21st Century Fox pressured Kelly to defend Ailes, which she refused to do.^[55]

In 2016, after he left Fox News, he became an adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, where he assisted with debate preparation.^[56]

Personal life

Ailes was married three times.^[57] He married his second wife Norma Ferrer in 1980 after meeting while working together on the Mike Douglas Show. Ailes adopted Norma's daughter Shawn Ferrer upon their marriage, walking Shawn down the aisle at her own first wedding to Alexander Visco on April 12, 2001. Norma and Roger were married until 1995. He married his third wife Elizabeth Tilson (born 1960) on February 14, 1998. Formerly a television executive, she was the owner and publisher of local New York state newspapers The Putnam County News & Recorder and The Putnam County Courier.^[58][59] Roger Ailes had one son, named Zachary, with Tilson.^[60] The family resided in Garrison, New York, on a hilltop parcel in a home constructed of Adirondack river stone across the Hudson River from United States Military Academy at West Point.^[61] Ailes also had residences in Cresskill, New Jersey,^[62] and Palm Beach, Florida. Ailes was a longtime friend of journalist and media personality Barbara Walters.^[63]

Philanthropy

Ohio University

In October 2007, Ailes donated to Ohio University for a renovated student newsroom. Ailes had majored in radio and television while at Ohio University and served two years as manager of the school's radio station.^[64] Starting in 1994, he funded scholarships for Ohio University students in the school's telecommunications programs.^[65]

Putnam County senior center

Ailes and his wife Elizabeth, through their charity, ACI Senior Development Corp., promised $500,000 toward the completion of a senior center in Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York. Local opposition to Ailes's participation in the project arose after publication of the sexual harassment accusations against him and in response to a Journal News report about previously undisclosed conditions attached to the proposed gift. Under those conditions, ACI would act as general contractor for the project with no obligation to conduct competitive bidding before awarding construction management and other subcontracts.[citation ^needed]

Further, ACI was excused from any obligation to pay prevailing wages to workers on the project, workers and subcontractors would have no recourse against ACI in case of payment disputes and ACI would deliver its work without warranty.^[66][67] There was extensive public objection to Ailes's participation. At an August 2, 2016 public hearing, the Putnam County Legislature suspended adoption of the proposed charitable donation agreement with ACI.^[68] The next day Ailes withdrew the gift.^[69]

Death

In a 2013 book excerpt from Roger Ailes: Off Camera, Ailes spoke about facing death, saying, "Because of my hemophilia, I've been prepared to face death all of my life. When it comes, I'll be fine, calm. I'll miss life, though. Especially my family."^[70]

On May 10, 2017, Ailes fell and hit his head at his Palm Beach, Florida, home. He died on May 18, three days after his 77th birthday, due to injuries from the fall.^[71][72][73] The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner attributed his death to a subdural hematoma, aggravated by hemophilia.^[74][75] His wife, Elizabeth, announced his death in a statement on the Drudge Report.^[76][75]

George H. W. Bush, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Bill Hemmer, Bret Baier, Geraldo Rivera, Laura Ingraham, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Jesse Jackson, Ainsley Earhardt, Shannon Bream, Al Sharpton, David Axelrod, Jeanine Pirro, Martha MacCallum, Newt Gingrich, and Lou Dobbs paid tribute to Ailes.^{[77][78][79][80][81][82}]

In popular culture

In 2018, Ailes briefly appears in the Adam McKay film Vice.^[83]

In 2019, Russell Crowe portrayed Roger Ailes in Showtime's limited series The Loudest Voice alongside Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson. Crowe won a Golden Globe for the performance.^[84]

The same year, John Lithgow received critical acclaim for playing Ailes in Jay Roach's film Bombshell, also starring Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson.^[85]

Biographies

Kerwin Swint (2008). Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and Fox News Founder Roger Ailes. Union Square Press. ISBN 978-1-4027-5445-6.
David Brock (2012). The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine. Anchor. ISBN 978-0-307-27958-3.
Ze'ev Chafets (2013). Roger Ailes: Off Camera. Sentinel. ISBN 978-1-59523-108-6.
Gabriel Sherman (2014). The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – And Divided A Country. Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-9285-4.

Documentaries

Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_Conquer:_The_Story_of_Roger_Ailes)* (documentary, 2018, dir. Alexis Bloom)}:

References...

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guk

1960s and 70s – On the political trail with Nixon

In 1967, a 27-year-old Ailes was working on the Mike Douglas Show when he met and impressed Richard Nixon. The following year he was hired as a political consultant to be “Nixon’s executive producer for television”. Ailes successfully recast the awkward Nixon, whose presidential run in 1960 crashed after a stilted debate with John F Kennedy. The partnership with Ailes helped Nixon win the 1968 presidential election.

As a political consultant, Ailes would later help Ronald Reagan win in 1984, and run an infamously negative campaign to get George HW Bush into the White House in 1988.

1970s to 1990s - Political consultancy and CNBC

Off the back of the success with Nixon, Ailes joined Television News Incorporated, a new rightwing TV network [goptv?]with more than a hint of what was to come with Fox News, in 1974. It collapsed in 1975 and Ailes went mostly back to political consultancy. But in 1993, he was made head of CNBC, creating the first and still most-watched financial news channel.

1996 – Joining forces with Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch had long wanted in on the TV news business – he made a failed run at CNN, which was snapped up by Time Warner – and signing up Ailes led to the launch of Fox News.

Over the next 20 years, Ailes would to build the business into the most profitable part of the Murdoch empire and a formidable rightwing news machine.

2000 – Calling the presidential election for Bush

Ailes’s planning of the election-night coverage, including having George W Bush’s cousin and former Boston Globe columnist John Prescott Ellis lead Fox’s decision desk, proved a masterstroke of political manipulation.

The trigger-happy Ellis, who had admitted in a Globe column he was biased in his loyalty to Bush, jumped on data showing Bush had a narrow lead and called the election in his cousin’s favour.

That moment revealed the power of Fox News, as every other network followed suit – even though Florida was still rated too close to call by the vote-tracking consortium used by all the networks.

“We’ll never know whether Bush won the election in Florida or not,” says Dan Rather, who was anchoring the election coverage for CBS that night. “But when you reach these kinds of situations, the ability to control the narrative becomes critical.”

2005 – The all-powerful Ailes coup

Ailes, by this time one of the most powerful executives in the Murdoch empire, nevertheless has an occasionally fractious relationship with the younger generation of the Murdoch clan.

Tensions with Lachlan, Rupert’s eldest son, reportedly resulted in Lachlan’s departure from the business in 2005. Ailes, who took credit for his departure, took over Lachlan’s portfolio, becoming chair of Fox Television and reportedly even his office.

2014-17 – Sexual harassment allegations and Fox News exit

By 2009, a seemingly all-powerful Ailes earned himself a $24m pay package – a deal slightly larger than that of Rupert Murdoch that year.

In 2014, allegations emerged in a book about Ailes and inappropriate behaviour toward a female executive. Fox News and Ailes denied them.

A string of allegations and lawsuits emerged over the next two years.

In July last year, 11 years after ousting Lachlan, now back in the fold running the family business with his father and younger brother James, he negotiated an exit package from Fox News worth a reported $40m.

Ailes continued to advise Murdoch and 21st Century until the end of 2018 but died in May 2017, aged 77.

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no lnx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/12/08/before-roger-ailes-was-disgraced-mogul-he-was-george-hw-bushs-wily-media-man/

Before Roger Ailes was a disgraced Fox News mogul, he was George H.W. Bush’s ‘wily media man’

A new documentary charts his rise and fall

December 8, 2018

Roger Ailes, President of Fox News Channel attends the Hollywood Reporter celebration of "The 35 Most Powerful People in Media" at the Four Season Grill Room on April 11, 2012 in New York City. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

By Lloyd Grove

Roger Ailes, the founder and chairman of Fox News, was once a GOP kingmaker and media adviser to Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Now, a new documentary, “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes” charts the rise and fall of the mogul and accused sexual harasser. This article appeared in The Washington Post on June 20, 1988.

Every so often in his work as a Republican media consultant, a hundred campaigns shrewder than when he began with Richard Nixon, Roger Ailes finds it necessary to pose a simple question. He generally saves it for business meetings on the upper floors of Manhattan skyscrapers, although altitude per se is not the controlling factor. He has also asked it in Washington buildings of 10 stories or less.

The question is, “Can you fly?"

He put it to Sen. Alfonse D'Amato one day as they were mapping out strategy for the New York Republican's 1986 reelection race. The senator had just vented his spleen at one of Ailes' employees.

"Can you fly?” the consultant asked his high-paying client.

"Why?” D'Amato wondered.

"Because we're 42 stories up, and you're going to go out that window if you say one more word."

Today D'Amato laughs off the incident — after all, he was reelected. “Roger,” he says, “can be tough and emotional. I like that."

Ailes has yet to ask George Bush about his aerodynamic abilities. Of greater concern are the vice president's on-air abilities, especially now that he's the designated Republican presidential nominee and his Democratic counterpart is a former television host.

As Bush's senior media adviser in the race against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis — late of public television's “The Advocates” — Ailes is responsible for the most visible element of the campaign, the most expensive, and the one that may very well decide the election. He's the keeper of his candidate's flickering image, a job that permits no fear of flying.

"If he has a fault that bothers me,” Ailes says of his latest customer, “it's that he doesn't have enough personal ego."

"He knows my shortcomings,” says Bush, who is running behind in the polls, “and he's helpful in trying to overcome them."

"I love pressure situations,” Ailes says. “I won't run for cover, and I'll try to take as much of the heat as possible. Because I feel I can stand it better than most people."

"He's a mature professional in a very flamboyant art,” Bush says. “Not like the ones who get in some posture where they're always building themselves up."

"I consider myself a freedom fighter, fighting for my clients,” Ailes says in his office at Bush for President headquarters, around the corner from the White House — so near and yet so far.

Plump and balding, he seems an unlikely freedom fighter. The knot of his tie rides down his chest. A whitening goatee hangs from his fleshy face. He looks battered beyond his 48 years.

He's been battle tested by two decades in politics, a profession he embraced after a precocious career in television. He started in 1962, after Ohio University, as a prop boy in Cleveland and rocketed up the ranks. Six years later, when he jumped to the Nixon campaign from his $ 60,000-a-year job as the Emmy-winning producer of “The Mike Douglas Show” — then one of the most popular talk shows in America — he was all of 28.

Nixon had spotted him a few months earlier while doing a “Douglas” guest shot. The former vice president, mounting his second attempt on the White House, had been waiting in Ailes' office. “It's a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected,” Nixon told the young producer. “Television is not a gimmick,” Ailes replied, “and if you think it is, you'll lose again.” Nixon was smitten.

Ailes went on to invent the “Man in the Arena” commercials, a series of live television shows in which Nixon gave carefully honed answers to questions from a carefully selected panel. Nixon, a' la Ailes, positively glowed with spontaneity. The studio audience was instructed to mob him at the end. It was a pivotal moment in American politics, the creation of an industry, and Ailes was duly celebrated in “The Selling of the President,” the classic campaign book by Joe McGinniss.

"Now you put him on television, you've got a problem right away,” Ailes told McGinniss in 1968 with the sort of brash candor that he studiously avoids when discussing his current client. “He's a funny-looking guy. He looks like somebody hung him in a closet overnight and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, 'I want to be president.' I mean this is how he strikes some people. That's why these shows are important. To make them forget all that."

Ailes arrived on crutches for Nixon's election-eve telethon in California, having discovered skydiving the day before, and directed it swathed in bandages, his ankle in an ice bucket. “Roger didn't have any of the tentativeness that you might expect from somebody as young as he was,” McGinniss recalls today. “He was,” says Leonard Garment, a comrade-in-arms from the Nixon days, “the Ernest Hemingway of campaign advisers."

Ailes has grown since then in both girth and reputation. Robert Teeter, Bush's pollster, likens him to Orson Welles. He calls himself “the Old Fox” but answers to other noms de guerre. After a debate last December on NBC, during which Bush quipped that viewers were probably so bored they were switching to “Jake and the Fatman” — a line fed to him by Ailes — senior aides suddenly had nicknames for the vice president and his media adviser. But, Ailes says, “for some reason, he calls me 'Jake.' "

Ailes winces with pain as he rises from his desk to stretch out a stiffened hamstring — the result of overzealous base-running during a recent Bush league softball game. He limps around the room as he verbally swaggers, “The difference between pros and amateurs is that pros play hurt.” Mid-hobble, he bends over majestically to pull up a pants leg, showing off a giant bruise — his purple badge of courage.

In a moment of bluster, he compares himself to Babe Ruth. “I never want to lose. I hate to lose . . . But Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times. You can't hit the home run every time you come up to bat."

In a moment of introspection, he says, “Your paper called me 'pugnacious' — do you think I am? . . . I would appreciate it if you said somewhere that this guy was the most reluctant of anybody to cooperate. I don't ever want George Bush to think that I'm doing this for some kind of personal publicity."

In fact, Ailes has just cowritten a book on the subject, “You Are the Message: Secrets of the Master Communicators,” wherein he advises prospective interview subjects: “Remember to stay composed — at all times. A reporter may provoke you with the hope that you will blow up and leak sensitive information or blurt out a controversial quote . . . Occasionally, you'll run into a reporter who appears to be on a search and destroy mission."

The master communicator, who had earlier confided that “there are not many situations that make me uptight,” refuses to let his picture be taken. “Photo editors are sadistic bastards,” he says. “And photographers always make me look heavy.” He can't resist adding, “Believe it or not, a lot of it's muscle."

'That's It! The Race Is Over!'

The fall of Roger Ailes: He made Fox News his ‘locker room’ — and now women are telling their stories

In his youth Ailes aspired to be a fighter pilot, but couldn't meet the Air Force's physical requirements. Yet he has safely steered Bush, who flew World War II bombers, through the occasionally stormy airwaves of the primary season, coaching the candidate through seven televised debates and a spectacular dogfight with Dan Rather, and making commercials that sold the theme “Ready on Day One to Be a Great President."

While Ailes is paid handsomely for his trouble — $ 25,000 a month plus advertising commissions that will likely exceed $ 1 million — there are doubtless easier ways to get rich. The consensus, even among Democrats, is that Bush is lucky to have him in the cockpit.

"What is most surprising about people like Roger is that they are the last romantics in politics,” says Democratic media consultant Robert Squier, who entered the business, opposite Ailes, as Hubert Humphrey's television director in 1968. “They're very competitive, care about winning, care about who they work for, care about what other people think of their work, and are really aware that they're involved in changing the most important political system in the world."

Since signing on last summer Ailes has managed to persuade his charge to remove his wire-rims from time to time, slow his habitually breathless rate of speech — which serendipitously lowers the pitch of his voice — and, as Bush himself reports, “keep my eyes still."

The vice president has further work to do. He is often caught grimacing and scratching — live and in color, before audiences of millions. On ABC's “Nightline” earlier this month he kept addressing his interviewer as “Dan.” It was left to Ailes, on the scene in Houston, to scrawl the word “TED,” as in Koppel, on a piece of paper and hang it up beside the camera where Bush couldn't miss it. Later Ailes “raised a little hell” with Bush's senior staff for not being consulted about the scheduling of the appearance. “I thought it was a lousy idea,” Ailes says. “He was tired."

And Bush has yet to talk consistently in well-parsed sentences. As he recently observed: “So I think to kind of suddenly get my hair colored, and dance up and down in a miniskirt or do something — show I've got a lot of jazz out there — drop a bunch of one-liners. We're talking about running for president of the United States."

Roger Ailes, architect of conservative TV juggernaut Fox News, is dead at 77

"The good news,” says Democratic media consultant David Sawyer, “is that George Bush takes direction terrifically. The bad news is that one of the reasons he takes direction terrifically is he doesn't seem to have a real persona. He seems to be molded by whoever he is talking to at that particular time. Often he seems like an old preppy, running around saying, 'Kick a little ass, gosh, jeez,' and there's a dissonance there — something out of sync. But if anybody can meet that challenge, Roger Ailes can meet it."

Ailes is at pains to discount such talk. “George Bush is not a showman, but he's very sincere,” he says. “To mess with who he is, is stupid . . . One of the things that you learn in this business is what hurts and what doesn't hurt. And I get calls every day from friends of his or friends of mine who say, 'Oh my God! Did you see what he said? That's it! The race is over!' But there are peaks and valleys, good days and bad, some things that count and some things that don't count."

As for Bush's alleged malleability, Ailes says, “A couple of times, he's told me, 'Go to hell! I'm 63 years old and I'll do what I want!' . . . But the good news is we can say whatever we think and clear the air the next morning. This is a guy you can go into the fire for, because he's for real."

Yet for all of the qualities that propelled him to the vice presidency, Bush isn't the nimblest of politicians, often telling voters more about the machinery than the message of his campaign. For instance, he recently went public with his anti-Dukakis strategy — “I'm going to be attempting to help him into the [liberal] mold, shoehorn him, help him in” — thus violating the cardinal rule that a candidate should never discuss “process."

"I don't know why he's talking about that,” Ailes said a few days later, when the statement was repeated to him at Ailes Communications Inc., his home office in New York's theater district. “I guess I haven't been around enough. That's usually a signal that I have to get back to Washington.” He grinned. “I don't talk much about process. I let him talk about process."

'KILL!'

On Ailes' desk in Washington, where he has finally taken an apartment, is a videocassette of Michael Dukakis in action. Is he looking for chinks in the armor?

"I'm looking for the armor,” he replies. “I get feelings from watching television. Right now I'm trying to figure out how I feel about Mike Dukakis.” So far, Ailes feels that the governor is “the kind of guy who wants to know whether it's time to eat."

"I think Dukakis will be very tough in debates,” he adds. “He knows how to duck and dodge and twist words and shade arguments and do other subtle things because of his 'Advocates' experience. He clearly has a skill at presenting himself as other than what he is. And that always makes for a dangerous debater."

Ailes knows whereof he speaks.

In 1970 he was working for Senate candidate Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, who was opposing Gov. James Rhodes in the Republican primary. Taft, the underdog despite his famous name, was laconic and aloof. Rhodes was affable and articulate, by far the superior debater. But Ailes had an idea for the crucial matchup on statewide television.

Thirty seconds before the red lights came on, Ailes bounded onto the stage and handed Taft a folded piece of paper. “Don't use this unless you need it,” he stage-whispered to his candidate. As Rhodes watched with evident concern, Taft unfolded the note, read it and chuckled. When the debate got underway, viewers saw an unnerved Rhodes and a smiling, confident Taft. Rhodes never regained his footing. It was the turning point of the campaign — and Taft came from behind to win.

The note said: “KILL!"

Ailes had grasped early on what is now universally understood: Televised debates can be decided by a telling gesture or a flip phrase that becomes the sound bite on the evening news. That was certainly the case in the fall of 1984, when Ronald Reagan flopped in his first debate against Walter Mondale, turning in a befuddled performance that made him seem old. Ailes, a $ 12,000-a-month consultant to the “Tuesday Team,” Reagan's advertising group, was called in to help.

In several private sessions, Ailes went about building up the president's sagging confidence, urging him to trust his instincts and not worry about details. The day before the second debate in Kansas City, Ailes asked, “What are you going to do when they say you're too old for the job?” Reagan fell silent, then remembered a line from his repertoire. “Fine,” Ailes said. It was typical of Ailes that he told the president's aides he needed a final session alone with Reagan half an hour before the debate. “If you give me that, he'll win. If you don't, he'll probably lose."

Ailes got his half-hour, and Reagan got his sound bite: “I want you to know I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.” Ailes writes in “You Are the Message”: “As far as I was concerned, the debate was over . . . The public had the reassurance they were looking for, and Reagan had the election won."

1984 United States presidential debates - Wikipedia

In this year's primary campaign, the vice president's nemesis, Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas, ran a commercial suggesting that Bush has left no footprints in his long succession of government jobs. But Ailes' footprints were all over his combative debate performances. These received better reviews than his shrill display four years ago (when he taunted Geraldine Ferraro, “Whine on, harvest moon!"), and Ailes' role was crucial last January in the confrontation with Rather. “This is a political assassination about to happen,” he recalls warning Bush in the limousine on the way to the Capitol, where the “CBS Evening News” crew was setting up. By most accounts (Ailes won't say), he supplied his client with the famous coup de gra|ce.

"It's not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran,” Bush told the CBS anchor at the climactic moment. “How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?"

"It was one of the great moments in television,” Ailes says of the thrust, actually a reference to an incident last January in Miami. “If you freeze-frame it when he asked Dan Rather that question, and watch his eyes, he had long eye blinks and his head went down just like a fighter who had taken a hard punch. He took a right cross to the jaw that no anchorman in the history of television has ever taken."

For the fall matches with Dukakis, Ailes promises more of the same. “If you hit George Bush, he's going to hit you back. But he's not a guy who's looking for a fight."

:{'Where to Go, Who to Bite'

Ailes himself has personal ego enough to match his weight, which he rarely hesitates to throw around. His aggressiveness goes back to his youth in Warren, Ohio, as the son of a factory maintenance foreman who gave him pointers on self-defense.}:

"Violence never solves anything,” Ailes says, quoting from his store of epigrams, “but the threat of violence can be very useful.” Except, of course, when violence is very useful.

The stories of Ailes in combat are legion. As a television director in Cleveland, he grabbed a loyal but “obnoxious” advertiser by the seat of his pants, ran him through the control room and threw him off the loading dock into a pile of snow. He remembers the incident as “a fun thing.” In 1984, around the time he advised Phil Gramm's successful Senate race, Ailes was checking into a hotel in Texas late one night and ended up brawling with two “butch” young men in spiked leather. They started it, he says, but he finished it — pouncing on one of them, flipping him to the lobby floor and deftly breaking his wrist.

"My father always told me, 'If you have to take two, disarm one,' " Ailes says.

He attributes his moxie to his “blue-collar blood” and the many nights he spent in hospital rooms as a child — frightened and alone, the butt of schoolmates' jokes — because of chronic illness. At age 13 he was sent to a YMCA camp in the wilds of northern Ontario, where the once-frail boy helped rescue two canoeists who had capsized in a squall on Lake Tenegami.

"He did things to prove to himself that he could do it,” says his older brother Robert, a doctor who helped Ailes start his consulting business in the post-Nixon years.

"All I wanted to do was to make enough money so I'd never have to live the life my father lived,” Roger says. Robert Ailes Sr., a gregarious Mason, had to paint neighbors' houses at night to make ends meet, and helped support the family after divorcing Roger's mother in the late '50s. “Had he dumped us kids, he could have had an opportunity. He had a driving sense of responsibility that overwhelmed everything. The poor guy never had a new suit. He had two pairs of shoes in the closet, one for Sunday and the other for the rest of the week. That's a tough way to live."

"Roger is the antithesis of preppy,” says Republican pollster Lance Tarrance, a frequent partner in campaigns. “Ailes will fight at the drop of a hat. Bush might contemplate for 30 days."

Ailes is decidedly meat-and-potatoes as a maker of political commercials, despite a knack for show business, producing plays on and off Broadway and documentaries about such nonpoliticians as Federico Fellini. His style favors utility over beauty, videotape over film — at its best crisp and hard-edge, visually humdrum at worst. Many of the Bush spots feature the candidate talking straight to the camera.

"He is more of a message communicator than a graphics or technical director,” says Tarrance. Unlike Republican media man Robert Goodman, known among his peers as an artist who works by feel, “Roger is driven by research,” says political consultant Eddie Mahe. “He is more of a mechanic, but a very talented and skilled mechanic."

Ailes is proud that his advertising campaigns have no easily discernible pattern — and, indeed, rivals are hard pressed to describe an “Ailes formula.” This makes him unpredictable. Ailes' “Bloodhound” spots for Mitch McConnell's successful 1984 Senate race in Kentucky were widely credited with reversing his 30-point deficit against the Democratic incumbent, Dee Huddleston. The spots featured a brace of bloodhounds chasing a Huddleston look-alike as an announcer decried his absenteeism and charged him with “running from his record.” They were funny — and deadly.

"The ones I regret,” Ailes says, “are the ones where I say, 'I could have done more, I should have done more,' or 'Gee, if I'd only thought of that three weeks earlier.' Those are the ones I replay in my mind, and they torment me."

In the 1982 reelection campaign of Sen. Harrison Schmitt (R-N.M.), Ailes relied on Schmitt’s staff research to produce two ads attacking Democratic state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman. Roundly denounced as inaccurate and unfair, they claimed Bingaman “hid from responsibility” by “refusing to prosecute” inmates involved in a prison massacre and that he recommended a gubernatorial pardon for a prisoner previously on the FBI's most-wanted list. The spots blew up in Schmitt's face, and may have cost him his Senate seat — although he says Ailes was not at fault. “It was my decision to run them,” says Schmitt, now an Albuquerque businessman. “We were behind, and we had to do something."

Ailes has learned from defeats. After his candidate Lew Lehrman spent $ 12 million against Mario Cuomo's $ 2 million to narrowly lose the 1982 New York governor's race — in no small measure because Lehrman's profligate time-buying operation was “putting death penalty spots in 'The Muppet Show,' " Ailes recalls — he vowed to take control of the media buys in all his future campaigns. Indeed, he hired Cuomo's buyer, Catherine Farrell, and today owns two-thirds of Farrell Media, which is placing Bush's ads.

After Bush's near-fatal loss to Dole in Iowa last February, it was Ailes who hurried to New Hampshire and, despite walking pneumonia, went sleepless for three nights to whip up a half-hour television show, “Ask George Bush” (“Man in the Arena” redux), a five-minute endorsement spot featuring Barry Goldwater and a negative ad implying that Dole would raise taxes.

He pushed Bush to approve the spot, then got it on the air the weekend before the primary, when all the television stations had officially closed their logs. At one point he put Bush on the phone with a Boston station manager to thank him for his help. All in all it was a decisive performance, without which Bush might have lost New Hampshire — and kissed the nomination goodbye.

"He's like a pit bull, with no fear,” says Robert Ailes. “Tell him where to go and who to bite — and he's on him."

Yet, says his second wife Norma, Ailes is also the kind of man who will crawl out of bed to sleep on the floor with a sick dog. “After 11 years, I'm never bored with this man,” she says. And he is the kind of man, says his first wife Marge, who can remain friendly with an ex.

Others claim to see a vindictive side — as when he worked last year for Rep. Bob McEwen's abortive Senate campaign in Ohio, letting it be known that he was doing it for less than his usual fee. Ailes had hoped to make ads for the Republican front-runner, Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, and was angry that Voinovich, who had hired Bob Goodman, never gave him the chance. “I wouldn't know George Voinovich if he hit me in the ass with a banjo,” Ailes says today.

He “definitely views every campaign as a full-blown war,” says media consultant Greg Stevens, who recently opened the Washington office of Ailes Communications after making spots for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), including several attacking Bush.

Indeed, the prospect of working against Ailes, says Dukakis ad maker Ken Swope, “scares the hell out of me."

"For me it's personal chemistry,” the vice president says. “I just plain like him."

Ailes, meanwhile, suggests Bush is a candidate who can fly.

“You study a guy with that war record,” he says. “Twenty years old and your wings are on fire and you try to make a decision whether you’re going to complete the mission — there’s something in there that says, when it hits the fan, you do what you have to do. George is tougher than a lot of people suspect.”

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mma 2 23

fox News’ Brian Kilmeade acknowledged on Thursday that federal regulations may be necessary to protect people and the environment, a rare admission on a network that has pushed for mass deregulation for decades. Kilmeade, who co-hosts Fox & Friends, made the comments while discussing the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and its aftermath.

“I knew nothing about these derailment numbers,” Kilmeade said. “I'm stunned by it – that we have thousands of derailments all the time and how costly it is, and how they're not kept up and maybe the regulation needs to be there"

fox News has long vilified federal regulations as governmental overreach, and needless red tape that eats into corporate profits.In 2011, the network launched Regulation Nation, a series that would “expose how excessive laws are drowning American businesses.” The series was the brainchild of then-Fox News President Roger Ailes, who said at the time that bureaucrats “draw up regulations to try to ruin your life.” [vid]

That same year, Fox News also waged a full-on war against the Environmental Protection Agency, and continues to argue against environmental regulations, including in its so-called straight news programs.

More recently, Fox News personalities and their guests have railed against federal regulations for the oil industry, argued that federal regulations are a way to divide families, blamed regulations that purport to limit police violence for resulting in the police killing of Tyre Nichols, and pushed for further deregulation of the cryptocurrency market, just to name a few examples. Fox News and other cable networks also largely ignored the Trump administration’s broad deregulatory agenda to benefit massive polluters in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Television coverage of East Palestine was scant and decontextualized, including on Fox News, immediately after the derailment, with only 3% of coverage mentioning the decadeslong deregulatory push by the rail industry. The Obama administration attempted to make more effective train brakes mandatory following a series of derailments in 2014, which the industry fought against, effectively hollowing out the proposed rules. In 2018, the Trump administration completely repealed the regulations.

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-host-ohio-train-derailment-regulations-regarding-train-safety-were-changed-during

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aha-let: trump says usa is broken and the system is rigged (ripped off bernie?) then offers hims self as the only strong man who can fix it (to those who feel economically and politically dis-em POWERED, this might seem like a good bet, esp if BS braINWASHED by govt is bad, free mkt will fix all bs? he then breaks system more, undermines norms/moderation, makes a mess tha makes ppl more desperate and disillusioned? death spiral?

naomi klein said several factors lines up in right way at same time to torpedo climate action at the inflection pt that we needed to act?

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https://www.salon.com:{/2018/01:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/05/peter-thiel-may-be-trying-to-launch-a-conservative-cable-news-network-report/

Fox News have a competitor in the near future? Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel is reportedly eyeing the possibility of creating a conservative cable news network,BuzzFeed reports — and the billionaire’s representatives have allegedly recruited the Trump-allied Mercer family to assist with funding.

The information was reportedly given to BuzzFeed by “two sources familiar with the situation.”

According to the report, the prospect of a right-wing cable news network has been on Thiel’s mind for quite some time. He is alleged to have had talks with Roger Ailes, the former CEO of Fox News, before Ailes' death in May 2017 — a tidbit of information that came from Michael Wolff's upcoming book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House."

Wolff's book claims both Ailes and Thiel were concerned that “Trump could bring Trumpism down.” The two were planning to meet in May, according to BuzzFeed's account, but Ailes passed away before the meeting happened. BuzzFeed says that the book suggests that had Ailes not died, right-wing commentators Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity could have been part of the network, too.

Neither Thiel nor Ailes’ late wife, Elizabeth, commented on the BuzzFeed News report.

If true, the prospect of a news network would be an interesting move for Thiel, who has had his own quarrels with the media. The Paypal co-founder and early Facebook investor — who has publicly supported Trump, and spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 — financed Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, helping to purposely bankrupt the online magazine.

Thiel had a personal vendetta against Gawker, but denied that he wished to get revenge on the magazine for negative publicity. “It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he told The New York Times in a 2016 interview about the lawsuit. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

Of particular interest is the Mercer family’s supposed involvement. Robert Mercer, a hedge fund tycoon, was one of Trump’s top campaign donors. After it was revealed that Robert Mercer had helped fund right-wing firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos and Breitbart News, Mercer stepped down as CEO of his firm and disputed claims that he supported Yiannopoulos's views.

“Actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate,” Mercer wrote in an open letter. “I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him.”

Mercer reportedly also removed himself from his connections with Breitbart and Steve Bannon at this time too, according to the New York Times.

Yet would a right-wing cable news network run by Thiel and Mercer be that different from Fox News? It's tough to say.

---

roger ailes laid fdn for end of the world?

120 aha: jeez beck and fox have been fuelling fake populism from at least the TP; cf ailes loudest voice based on gab sherman: anti-govt wacko?

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naomi klein said several factors lines up in right way at same time to torpedo climate action at the inflection pt that we needed to act?

https://theconversation.com/trump-the-transgressor-the-psychological-appeal-of-leaders-who-break-the-rules-130247

Many of today’s politicians appear to appeal to the basic human need for safety, presenting their versions of strong leadership as the best hope for order and safety in a fearful world of growing instability and risk. Much evidence confirms that this appeal is certainly an important factor in the political landscape.

But alongside this, other psychological dynamics are currently influential in a number of Western democracies – particularly in attracting people to support populist leaders and their agendas.

One of these – which is of particular relevance to the impeachment trial of the US president, Donald Trump – concerns the pleasure and excitement that some citizens appear to find in a leader who breaks rules and ignores taboos. These transgressions can come in various forms, such as controversial statements, unconventional lifestyles or disrespectful approaches to the political process. But they can also extend to improper activities and abuse of power – such as those detailed in the impeachment charges against Trump – or anti-democratic activity and violence.

Rule breakers

===

mayer on franken

According to McIntyre, Hannity wanted to use the photograph in 2007, when it would have derailed Franken’s first Senate bid. But he deferred to Tweeden, who feared that, because she had been a lingerie model, her credibility would be attacked. “To Sean Hannity’s credit, he never said a word about it,” McIntyre told me. (Hannity, through a spokesperson, praised Tweeden as “patriotic” and called Franken “literally insane.”) McIntyre emphasized that Tweeden and KABC-AM deliberately chose not to break the story with Hannity, or on Fox, because they didn’t want it to be tainted with charges of political bias.

There was a history of deep animosity between Fox News’ conservative hosts and Franken. Fox sued Franken over his 2003 best-seller, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” which relentlessly disparages the network and its big star at the time, Bill O’Reilly. It includes a chapter mocking Hannity as, among other things, “an angry, Irish Ape-man.” Franken writes that, after having a greenroom shouting match with Hannity about Rush Limbaugh, in 1996, he “had never in my life hated a person more.” Fox dropped the suit, but O’Reilly reportedly threatened vengeance.

When Andrea Mackris later sued O’Reilly for sexually harassing her while she was a producer at Fox News, she revealed that, in 2004, O’Reilly had told her, “If you cross Fox News Channel, it’s not just me, it’s Roger Ailes”—at the time the head of the network—“who will go after you. . . . Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what’s coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he’s going to get a knock on his door and life as he’s known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.” When Tweeden accused Franken, one of his wife’s first thoughts was of O’Reilly’s prediction.

....

Tweeden began working through every detail with McIntyre and Baker, and, later, with Hayes. McIntyre also suggested that Tweeden talk to her friend Lauren Sivan, a former anchor for the station, who was one of the witnesses against Weinstein. Sivan had risked her reputation to speak out about Weinstein’s having masturbated in front of her. When Tweeden told her about Franken, Sivan said to me, “the story, it was strange—because they were doing it as a skit.” She sympathized with Tweeden, whom she described as having felt “mocked and humiliated” by Franken. But she wasn’t sure how a public accusation would be received. She suggested that Tweeden take the story to a mainstream outlet, and even gave her the name of a reputable reporter. Instead, Sivan told me, Hayes controlled the process, which she considered a “mistake,” because “it’s a right-wing conservative radio station” and “it seemed like they just wanted to milk the story.” Nevertheless, Sivan said, of Tweeden, “it was absolutely something she wanted to do—I think she hated Franken.”

A week before Tweeden went public, Roy Moore,the Republican nominee in a special Senate election in Alabama, was accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with several teen-age girls, one of whom was fourteen at the time. Moore denied the allegations, and Trump, who had endorsed Moore, stuck by him. But the allegations handed Democrats a wedge issue and put Republicans on the defensive. Hannity was particularly on the spot: having dismissed Moore’s conduct as “consensual” and mere “kissing,” he issued a rare on-air apology.

At the same time that the Republican Party was contending with the scandal, Franken was rising in prominence, in part because of his deft cross-examinations of such Trump Administration appointees as Betsy DeVos and Rick Perry. Bystanders applauded when Franken walked into Washington restaurants. His latest book had reached No. 1 on the Times best-seller list.Feminists had welcomed his support of the #MeToo movement, and praised him for drafting a bill to prohibit mandatory arbitration in employment-related cases of sexual harassment and discrimination. The legislation would guarantee women the right to publicly press charges, rather than submit to secret settlements. He was also praised for supporting advanced training for law-enforcement officers who dealt with rape victims.

But along with the adulation came detractors. Several far-right news sites appear to have known about Tweeden’s story shortly before it broke. In Southern California, a gossip Web site, Crazy Days and Nights, was contacted by an anonymous tipster who predicted that Franken was about to get caught in a sex scandal. There was a link to an online message board where someone calling himself Sam Spade was claiming that Franken had “groped” his aunt on a New York City subway in the nineteen-seventies. (Asked about this, Franken joked, “Ah, yes, Aunt Gertrude—I remember her well.”) Archives show that “Sam Spade” separately posted a message saying that he “hoped Al Franken would die a slow painful death.”

At 1 a.m. on November 16th, Roger Stone, the notorious right-wing operative, announced, on Twitter, “It’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel.’ Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of ‘grabby’ behavior.” After Tweeden’s story was posted, Alex Jones, the extremist radio host, boasted on his show that Stone had told him, in advance, “Get ready. Franken’s next.” Stone told me that an executive at Fox who was friendly with Tweeden had tipped him off.

Sean Hannity exulted when the news broke. Tweeden called in to his radio show live, and Hannity described her as “a longtime friend.”Hannity, who, when Ailes died, celebrated him as one of America’s “great patriotic warriors,”pronounced the Franken photograph “disgusting”—and declared that Franken had been accused of “sexual molestation.” Trump joined the fray on Twitter, insinuating that the photograph documented an assault in progress: “Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6?”

Twelve minutes after KABC-AM went on the air with the news, Franken’s office got its first press inquiry, and hundreds soon followed. Shelleby, the deputy chief of staff, recalls, “It was bedlam. No one looked into the details. There was no way to catch up.”

Franken tried to devise a response, but, he told me, he found it “impossible to explain the context of the goofing around everybody had been doing, so I just said, ‘It was a joke—it wasn’t funny, and I apologize.’ ” His statement was lambasted on social media as hopelessly inadequate. He released a longer, more self-critical apology. But, he told me, “I was in shock, and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have.” He went on, “You feel very trapped. And the press was just reporting it as she said it.”

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http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/4/13518350/republican-party-turmoil-fox-news-ailes}:}:

...Ailes, however, was all in; from the start, his interest was in advancing the Republican Party. After TVN failed, Ailes wandered through a number of Republican administrations. Then in 1992 he crossed the politics-media barrier one last time. With talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s star rising and George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign flailing, Ailes swapped Bush for Rush, becoming executive producer of Limbaugh’s new television show. Before he did, however, he used the radio star to try to rescue the embattled president. In the summer of 1992, Ailes and Limbaugh were Bush’s guests at the White House, a move that led to far more favorable coverage on Rush’s program.

Ailes backed the right horse. Bush lost, but Rush kept accruing power. Over the next few years, he was hailed as the voice of the Republican revolution, an honorary member of the GOP. The merger of conservatism and Republicanism was complete. It was in this political setting that Ailes, partnered with Rupert Murdoch, launched his new cable venture. Murdoch provided the money, Ailes the vision, and on October 7, 1996, the Fox News Channel went live.That the first conservative network was a news network mattered. The denizens of talk radio seldom positioned themselves as the opposite of journalists:

They were brash, opinionated, ideological. Fox News blended that talk radio aggressiveness with a hard news persona —with the sort of pro-Republican reporting that Ailes sought while working for Nixon.Under the winking tagline "Fair and Balanced," Ailes and Murdoch created a new media model more reminiscent of 19th-century party papers than 20th-century journalism. Those papers had delivered the news with a partisan spin, and sometimes even had overt ties to parties. They functioned as the campaign surrogates of the day, before they were crowded out first by the penny press and then by the rise of objective reporting.What Fox News had that those papers didn’t was a sharp-eyed auteur with an entertainment background.

Ailes’s vision informed most decisions at the network, where politics blended with entertainment, just as news mixed with opinion.And it wasn’t just the glossy sets and flashy chyrons. Women hired as on-air talent had to meet his standards for beauty, which gave rise to the "Fox News blonde" — blonde being Ailes’s preference. He installed glass-topped desks and a leg cam to make sure audiences got an eyeful of the women’s legs, always on display thanks to requisite knee-length dresses. He passed it off as a part of entertaining audiences; in 2016, as more and more accusers came forward, it started to look like a pathology.

FOX NEWS WAS IN A NEW AND DANGEROUS POSITION. IT HAD BECOME PART OF THE CONSERVATIVE ESTABLISHMENT — JUST AS THE GRASSROOTS RIGHT WAS TURNING ON THAT ESTABLISHMENT. But that was after the fall. At the time, it was a winning formula. By 2001, the station was in a prime position, with the best ratings in cable news and the best-case scenario in Washington: a Republican president and Congress.The Bush years were good for Fox News, which had become the go-to channel of the GOP right. Nor was Bush’s defeat much of a problem. Just as Limbaugh had thrived in the Clinton years, so too was Fox set to stay on top during the Obama years. The channel became the media arm of the government in exile.

The Tea Party may have been born on CNBC – with a rant by correspondent Rick Santelli — but it was raised at the News Corp. building, where Fox News personalities nurtured the movement, appearing at rallies and offering wall-to-wall coverage of the raucous 2009 "town hall" meetings.With the White House in Democratic hands, Fox News took on a new role: an incubator for presidential hopefuls. Sarah Palin transitioned easily from the campaign trail to the news studio. After she resigned as governor, her spot at Fox scored her a million-dollar paycheck and a chance to keep her face front and center.

Nor was she the only one using the tactic. Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum: These out-of-office 2012 hopefuls all had contracts with Fox in the runup to the primaries. And if their membership in the pundit class led them to say impolitic things from time to time — well, maybe the base, filled with Fox News watchers, had developed a taste for the impolitic.They weren’t the only ones eyeing 2012. With a wide-open primary, Ailes wanted to be kingmaker.

:{As Gabe Sherman recounts in The Loudest Voice in the Room, Ailes told Fox executives, "We’re making a lot of money — that’s fine. But I want to elect the next president." And with GOP presidential hopefuls scrambling to reach Fox’s audience, it seemed like he would get his wish. Home of the Tea Party as well as the GOP’s presidential bench, Fox had achieved Ailes’s vision. The Republican Party had its media voice, and conservatives had their network.

The unraveling of Fox News

The trouble began, counterintuitively enough, with the Tea Party. Fox News had blanketed the airwaves with early coverage of the movement, and the Tea Party’s figureheads, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were stars at the network. }:

Beck in particular was a ratings juggernaut. But Palin and Beck were independent operators who increasingly pushed back against Ailes’s advice; Ailes was reportedly uncomfortable with Beck’s gold-bug politics and apocalyptic worldview. Moreover, untested Tea Party candidates seemed to be hurting the GOP as much as helping it.Reticence toward the Tea Party began to open up an establishment-grassroots divide — with Fox News on the establishment side. In 2012, both Gingrich and Santorum took public swipes at the network, arguing it was biased toward establishment favorite Mitt Romney. Shortly thereafter, with their interests increasingly diverging from those of Fox, Palin and Beck both parted ways with the network. Soon, both started new media enterprises of their own.More trouble came in 2013.

As Marco Rubio began to push for immigration reform, so too did a number of Fox News personalities, including Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. For conservatives opposed to reform, this seemed like too much of a coincidence, and they were right. In early 2016 the New York Times broke the story that Rubio and Chuck Schumer had met with Ailes and Murdoch in January 2013 to get the channel to back reform. The network executives agreed, not anticipating the scale of the backlash against the Senate reform efforts.Fox News was in a new and dangerous position. It had become part of the conservative establishment — just as the grassroots right was turning on that establishment.

Other threats appeared as well, driven by new technologies. The conservative web exploded during the 2000s. New digital cable and internet news networks popped up: Glenn Beck’s the Blaze (which is now struggling), the One America News Network, Newsmax TV. They had a brasher style and wore their ideology even more openly than Fox. Fox News might interview Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash. One America News aired the documentary based on his book.There was also a heavier dose of conspiracy on the new networks.

Newsmax TV has aired "Roswell Top Secret," and it features Dick Morris, author of the 2012 book Here Comes the Black Helicopters!. Fox was no longer the only place for the grassroots right to turn, nor the only channel where would-be conservative personalities could go to make a name for themselves.But the conservative media world didn’t just expand. It fragmented. There was no longer any reason to stick with conservative media sources that didn’t quite match your politics. If National Review was insufficiently anti-Muslim, there was Pamela Geller’s blog Atlas Shrugs.

If the neoconservative Weekly Standard was too hawkish, there was the relatively non-interventionist American Conservative. And if Fox News shows were pushing immigration reform, there was Breitbart.Breitbart News started off as the Fox News of the internet: a news-ish site guided by conservative politics. That changed when, following the death of Andrew Breitbart, Stephen Bannon took over. Bannon’s politics were right-wing, but not strictly conservative. They were decidedly more populist, with far more tolerance for the political fringes.Bannon brought aboard Milo Yiannopoulus, the spokesperson of the alt-right. Yiannopoulos described himself and the alt-right as free speech fundamentalists, whose willingness to offend was an expression of their freedom.

:{But that language provided cover for anti-Semites, white nationalists, misogynists, and other fringe groups long banished from American politics. They now have a home on Breitbart. In Trumpland, Stephen Bannon holds the role that Ailes envisioned for himself in the Republican Party. Chip Breitbart now rejects the label of conservative, opting instead to call itself populist-nationalist. The site calls for conservatives to give up their ideological commitments to free trade and become populists on immigration, trade, and foreign policy — in other words, to transform from the base of the party of Reagan to that of the party of Trump.

Is Bannon the new Ailes? Both men moved over to the Trump campaign from their respective organizations — Bannon as campaign manager, Ailes as a consultant (now reportedly at odds with his client, who is apparently less coachable than Nixon).}:

Both come from entertainment backgrounds. But Bannon is the younger man, and seems temperamentally to be more in touch with Trump and his more avid supporters. And unlike Ailes, he’s no acolyte of the Republican Party. Unless the next Republican nominee is a Trump-like candidate, Bannon may want to challenge the GOP rather than shore it up.The fragmenting of the right-wing media mirrors the fracturing of the American right. The conservatism forged in the postwar era still exists, but it now shares space with populist nationalists, unreconstructed libertarians, and the alt-right.

The Republican Party has not yet figured out how to accommodate this contentious coalition of interests.Except for a few establishment types and a sprinkling of foreign policy experts, most of these factions are doing their best to give an impression of unity, but that will fall away after November 8 – especially if Trump loses. Party leaders need the grassroots right, the source of the party’s energy. And they have no real way to purge the Trumpists from their ranks.But how do these factions square their incompatible preferences? How do free traders coexist with protectionists? How do reformicons, keen to build a broader, more inclusive party, make peace with the decidedly non-inclusive supporters of the Trump campaign? Coalition building is not out of the question, but civil war seems far more likely.And Fox News?

As it marks its 20th anniversary, it too is in flux. Without Ailes at the helm, it may be easier for the organization to adapt to this new American right. Sean Hannity, a Trump booster from the start, could be the entering wedge, along with Eric Bolling, Trump’s defender on the panel show The Five.Or, equally likely, it will be a casualty of the anti-establishment war, a sacrifice to the gods of populism. Either way, it is unlikely to retain its singular place in the conservative media landscape. Having benefited from the labors of the first generation of conservative media, Fox News is well on its way to being eclipsed by the third.Nicole Hemmer is author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. She is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and co-host of the Past Present podcast.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/10/headlines/new_york_mag_roger_ailes_ran_used_fox_funds_to_spy_on_journalists}:

Another former Fox News host has accused former Fox Chair Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. Andrea Tantaros says she repeatedly reported Ailes’s harassment to senior Fox executives last year. She says she was demoted and then taken off air as a result. Ailes has now been accused of sexual harassment by more than 20 women, including Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and former anchor Gretchen Carlson. This comes as New York Magazine is reporting Ailes ran his own "Black Room" operation out of Fox News, in which he used Fox money to hire private detectives and political operatives who carried out Ailes’s personal campaigns, including targeting journalists.

The magazine reports Ailes sent private detectives to follow around multiple journalists who had been reporting on him. Ailes has denied these allegations. Ailes resigned in July. He has received a $40 million severance package---http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/ailes-used-fox-budget-to-finance-campaigns-against-enemies.htmlAs Rupert Murdoch seeks to stabilize Fox News in the wake of Roger Ailes’s ouster, a crucial question remains unanswered: How was Ailes able to spend millions of dollars to settle sexual-harassment claims without setting off alarm bells?

According to three highly placed sources, part of the answer is that there were few checks on Ailes when it came to the Fox News budget. “It was the culture,” one Fox executive said. “You didn’t ask questions, and Roger wouldn’t entertain questions.” One former News Corp executive explained that because Fox made more than $1 billion in annual profits, the funds that were used for settlements amounted to little more than “a roundingerror.”But with Ailes gone, Fox executives are now looking closely at how Ailes spent Fox money.

And what they are discovering is that, beyond the sexual-harassment claims, Ailes was also able to use portions of the Fox budget to hire consultants, political operatives, and private detectives who reported only to him, according to a senior Fox source. Last week, according to the source, Fox News dismissed five consultants whom Ailes had hired to do work that was more about advancing his own agenda than Fox’s. One of the consultants, Bert Solivan, ran negative PR campaigns against Ailes’s personal and political enemies out of Fox News headquarters, a source said. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed, “Solivan was recently informed that his services were no longer needed.” Solivan, who had previously worked for Fox News as a general manager of the channel’s website, did not respond to requests for comment.

According to one highly placed source, Solivan worked out of what Fox insiders called “the Black Room,” an operation Ailes established around 2011 to conduct PR and surveillance campaigns against people he targeted, both inside and outside the company. The “Black Room” was located on the 14th floor of the News Corp building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, a quiet part of the office that housed Fox News Latino and some marketing and promotions employees. Fox employees Ken LaCorte and Jim Pinkerton — veteran political operatives who’ve worked with Ailes since the 1980s — also worked with Solivan, the source said, adding that Ailes’s personal lawyer and Fox contributor Peter Johnson Jr. advised the team. (In an email, Johnson denied any involvement in “Black Room” campaigns, saying, “The only online campaign I’m aware of is yours, attempting to create a truth from a fiction with this account.”)

Fox operatives also targeted Joe Lindsley, the former editor of Ailes’s local newspaper, the Putnam County News and Recorder. In April 2011, Lindsley had a falling-out with Ailes and quit the paper, along with two co-workers. Ailes assigned private investigators to follow Lindsley around Putnam County. He also asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts, two sources said. Meanwhile, Solivan posted negative comments about Lindsley on blogs, a source said.Targets of the campaigns included journalists John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, who have aggressively covered Ailes for Gawker.

According to one source, private detectives followed Cook around his Brooklyn neighborhood, and Fox operatives prepared a report on him with information they intended to leak to blogs. (According to the source, one proposed line of attack claimed that Cook — whose wife, Slate news director Allison Benedikt, is Jewish — was anti-Semitic.) “I’m honored to be among Roger Ailes’s enemies,” Cook said.I was also the target of an operation, a source told me: In 2012, while I was researching a biography of Ailes, Fox operatives set up webpages to attackmy reputation, and Fox funds paid for Google search ads against my name that linked to the sites.

One source also said private investigators employed by Fox contributor Bo Dietl were instructed to follow me and my wife. (Dietl’s firm was used to track Andrea Mackris, the producer who accused Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment in 2004, the source said.) When reached by phone, Dietl said, “I have no real comments. I love Roger Ailes. He built one of the great news channels out of nothing. He’s a very successful guy.”The allegations about Ailes’s questionable use of Fox resources raise the issue of how much other high-ranking officials knew about his activities. Fox News CFO Mark Kranz, for instance, approved budget expenditures throughout this period, and general counsel Dianne Brandi approved contracts.

Through a spokesperson, both Kranz and Brandi said they had no knowledge of expenditures for surveillance and online attacks. Ailes, through his attorney Susan Estrich, said, “These allegations are totally false.”Meanwhile, Fox executives continue to analyze the list of consultants on Fox’s payroll to determine who is doing legitimate work for the network and who was hired by Ailes to do his personal bidding. The senior source said that more people will likely be let go in the days ahead.RelatedHow Fox News Fired and Silenced a Female Reporter Who Alleged Sexual Harassment

http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/wealthiest-person-map/

see ailes bkup for 2014 sherman loudest voice--PR guy lewis fired for talking to bk author?

==http://www.alternet.org/media/rupert-murdochs-donald-trump-nightmare-he-cant-control-monster-fox-news-created

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:{6/15

After reports surfaced that Rupert Murdoch planned to step down as head of media giant 21st Century Fox, many were left to wonder where the shakeup would leave Fox News Channel and its longtime head, Roger Ailes.CNBC broke the news last week that the billionaire CEO of 21st Century Fox was to step down as head of the media conglomerate, leaving the management to his two sons, Lachlan and James. It seemed like a bad omen for the right-wing network:}:

Murdoch’s sons reportedly detest it.But Ailes, the evil genius behind Fox News, was said to be left unaffected by the change, somehow managing to continue to report to Murdoch directly despite his impending departure.Well, who said that? Fox News, of course:Rupert Murdoch would continue to serve as executive chairman, according to Stuart Varney, host of Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.” Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes will continue to run the news network, reporting directly to Rupert Murdoch, according to Fox News Channel.Nope. Not true. Not happening. Just more Fox fiction.“Roger will report to Lachlan and James but will continue his unique and long-standing relationship with Rupert,” 21st Century Fox spokesperson Nathaniel Brown said in a statement to The Hollywood ReporterAiles will not actually get any special arrangement to continue reporting directly to Rupert.

Instead, Ailes’ new boss will be an environmentalist.Ailes biographer and veteran Fox News watcher Gabriel Sherman describes a scene at Fox last Thursday that reminds me of the infamous on-air Karl Rove meltdown after getting word from Megyn Kelly that Mitt Romney had lost Ohio and the 2012 election:According to a well-placed source, Ailes directed Fox Business executive Bill Shine to tell anchor Stuart Varney to read the statement on air. “Ailes told Shine to write the announcement of the move for Varney to say,” the source said. “In it, Ailes inserted language that he would report to Rupert.”That’s the Roger Ailes way, just make stuff up to feed to your anchors who enthusiastically repeat the baseless claims on-air. News.

Well, it finally appears to be blowing back in Ailes’ face now. Sherman writes of the impact of Ailes’ “demotion“:For much of the past 15 years, Roger Ailes has operated with virtual impunity inside Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Nothing, it seemed, could induce Murdoch to rebuke Ailes publicly, even if Ailes forced Murdoch to choose between him and his sons. Such was Ailes’s power that he has been able to run a right-wing political operation under the auspices of a news channel.This week, for the first time, there are signs that this remarkable era may be entering its twilight. Yesterday, 21st Century Fox announced that Ailes would be reporting to Lachlan and James Murdoch. For Ailes, it was a stinging smack-down and effectively a demotion....http://www.alternet.org/media/fox-news-we-know-it-may-be-toast-roger-ailes-new-bosses-smack-him-down

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fox effect includes beck. breitbart, okeefebrock http://www.scribd.com/doc/93030859/The-Fox-Effect-How-Roger-Ailes-Turned-a-Network-into-a-Propaganda-Machine#.UiEAWhvVDmg

major force in polarization; even media corps now have to declare their ideology, not so esp pre WWII when partisan jrnl supplanted by profl ethos brought msg discipline, control of image and narrative from campaign to Fox (makes heroes and villans: welfare queen, al jazeera, michael moore, etc LOUDEST VOICE 2014

http://www.booktv.org/Program/15358/After+Words+Gabriel+Sherman+The+Loudest+Voice+in+the+Room+How+the+Brilliant+Bombastic+Roger+Ailes+Built+Fox+News+and+Divided+a+Country+hosted+by+Jane+Hall+American+University.aspx i have written notes includes a few left as red meat and for cover; TVN ur-fox vetted stories w Acc in Media

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Gabriel Sherman should be flattered. People seem to believe that the New York Magazine writer’s pending, unauthorized biography of Roger Ailes will be a big deal. Look at all the attention that’s come his way since he started working on it:Last spring, he saw his subscription to the Putnam County News and Recorder summarily cancelled. That’s the community paper published by Elizabeth Ailes, the wife of Roger Ailes. “I don’t want to get into a financial transaction with him and his credit card,” Elizabeth Ailes explained to the Erik Wemple Blog last June regarding the subscription cutoff.

Andrea Tantaros of Fox News subsequently issued this tweet:The “harasser” @gabrielsherman of NY Mag stoops 2 new low going after Roger Ailes’ wife. What do u expect from a Soros puppet?Then Sherman sustained a rash of third-rate online sliming, in which he was described as a self-absorbed snob and a “pure con artist.” Among other things, of course.About a month ago, an anonymous Fox News source told an anonymous Breitbart.com reporter, “Gabe Sherman is Jayson Blair on steroids.”The past week has brought another set of developments.

Sites like GabrielShermanBook.com,GabrielShermanBook.net,GabrielShermanFoxBook.com,RogerAilesbook.com and other Internet domains with similar formulations have been registered.The Ailes book, which will be published later this year, is titled “The Loudest Voice in the Room: Fox News and the Making of America.” URLs that riff off that title — including LoudestVoiceinaRoom.com – also have been registered of late.The registrations are private, meaning that outsiders cannot learn the identities of the registrant(s). Sherman won’t discuss the matter except to confirm that he registered one URL, theloudestvoiceintheroom.com, on Oct. 8 and none of the other domain names associated with his book or Roger Ailes. An inquiry is pending at Random House, the book’s publisher.

A similar domain-registration pattern has cropped up around the pending book of “Fox Mole” Joe Muto, the former Fox producer who wrote unflattering things about his then-employer on Gawker. Those posts earned Muto a book deal that made news last May. Last week, someone registered Molebookaboutfox.com, JoeMutobook.com, among others. Muto says he neither he nor his publisher registered those domains.Whoever registered the domains appears to have a solid understanding of the terms that people use to search for books on the Internet.

Someone who hears about Sherman’s Ailes biography at dinner with friends, for example, may well head home and pump “Gabriel Sherman book” into Google. That search could well yield GabrielShermanbook.com as a prominent search result. All of this makes GabrielShermanbook.com a great place to plant information that counterprograms Gabriel Sherman’s revelations about Roger Ailes.Lawrence Wright, the author of the Scientology-documenting book “Going Clear,” knows how this marvel of info-democracy works. According to the Daily Beast, Wright bought up 30 domain names related to his book, just to head off search debunkment. Check it out — he missed one

.==

Roger Eugene Ailes is the chairman of Fox News Channel and is Chairman of Fox Television Stations. 1 Career In PR & Politics2 Working For Big Tobacco3 Articles and resources 3.1 References3.2 Related SourceWatch articles3.3 External resources3.4 External articles 3.4.1 By Roger Ailes3.4.2 Articles & Commentary about Ailes 3.4.2.1 2005 to present3.4.2.2 Before 20053.4.3 Documents from UCSF tobacco archives Career In PR & PoliticsAiles began his career in television as a production assistant at Cleveland's KYW-TV, the station that launched the Mike Douglas Show, a popular daytime talk and variety show of the 1960s.

At age 28, Ailes became the show's producer. He met Richard Nixon for the first time when Nixon appeared as a guest on the Douglas show, beginning the relationship that led to Ailes' hiring as a media consultant for Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign.[1]Ailes founded Ailes Communications in New York which he owned between 1970 and 1992 which is described in his biographical note accompanying tesimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee as "a diversified communications consulting company whose clients included three U.S. Presidents, several senators and governors, as well as Fortune 500 CEO's". [1]Ailes political work has included:

{{ hannity history

ggl 4 25 2016 election

Sean Hannity}:

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Sean_Hannity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity)

Sean Patrick Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American conservative television presenter, broadcaster and writer. He hosts The Sean Hannity Show, ...

The Sean Hannity Show · ‎Hannity & Colmes · ‎Ainsley Earhardt · ‎Alan Colmes

[### Sean Hannity: I'm not Donald Trump's foil

Politico

https://www.politico.com › story › 2016/04 › sean-han...](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/sean-hannity-donald-trump-221923)

Apr 13, 2016 — Sean Hannity wants to make one thing clear: He's not propping up Donald Trump. The conservative media host shot down a recent ThinkProgress story.

[### Hannity apparently asked what to say on Election Day. ...

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › politics › 2022/04/25](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/25/hannity-apparently-asked-what-say-election-day-then-he-said-it/)

Apr 25, 2022 — ... Fox News host Sean Hannity on the day of the 2020 election. ... Hannity had endorsed Trump before the 2016 election, an odd act for ...

[### Has Sean Hannity's Trump support crossed the line?

The Christian Science Monitor

https://www.csmonitor.com › USA › Politics › 2016](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0921/Has-Sean-Hannity-s-Trump-support-crossed-the-line)

Sep 23, 2016 — Conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity has been a vocal supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but critics, ...

[### Sean Hannity cites misleading Obama quote in coverage ...

PolitiFact

https://www.politifact.com › factchecks › jul › sean-han...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jul/17/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-cites-misleading-obama-quote-coverage/)

Claim: "In 2016, when Hillary Clinton appeared to have a firm lead in the polls — oh, just before the election, it was President Obama who laughed off any notion...

Claimed by: Sean Hannity

Fact check by PolitiFact: Mostly False

[### Hannity: I'm voting for Trump

Politico

https://www.politico.com › story › 2016/06 › sean-han...](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/sean-hannity-supports-trump-223763)

Jun 1, 2016 — Donald Trump on Tuesday sat down for an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, who made his support of Trump explicit.

[### US election 2016 daily briefing: Fox News stars in feud ...

BBC

https://www.bbc.com › election-us-2016-37570387](https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37570387)

Oct 6, 2016 — Two of the conservative news channel's biggest stars have turned their sharp tongues on one another after Sean Hannity accused Megyn Kelly of being in league ...

[### Trump and Sean Hannity Promote Ukraine-Clinton Theory

Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com › donald-trump-sean-hanni...](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-sean-hannity-theory-ukraine-colluded-hillary-clinton-1376867)

Mar 27, 2019 — How Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Are Promoting Theory Ukraine Interfered in 2016 Election to Help Hillary Clinton. Published Mar 27, 2019 at ...

[### Sean Hannity campaigns on stage at Trump's Missouri rally ...

CNN

https://www.cnn.com › 2018/11/06 › media › trump-ral...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/06/media/trump-rally-missouri-hannity/index.html)

Nov 6, 2018 — Sean Hannity defied his own words on Monday, appearing on stage at President Donald Trump's final election rally after having said he ...

[### How Sean Hannity Became Influential In Conservative ...

Texas Public Radio | TPR

https://www.tpr.org › 2016-12-19 › how-sean-hannity-...](https://www.tpr.org/2016-12-19/how-sean-hannity-became-influential-in-conservative-media-and-politics)

Dec 19, 2016 — Sean Hannity, host of the Fox News show “Hannity” and a syndicated talk radio show, helped rally conservative support for Donald Trump.

How Sean Hannity Became Influential In Conservative Media And Politics

During the presidential campaign, Sean Hannity, host of the Fox News show “Hannity” and a syndicated talk radio show, helped rally conservative support for Donald Trump. That trend will most likely continue throughout the Trump presidency.

But how did Hannity become so influential in conservative media and Republican politics? Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Brian Rosenwald ( @brianros1), a media historian and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who is writing a book about the rise of talk radio and its influence on public policy.

Interview Highlights

On Hannity’s talk radio background

“One thing that people sometimes forget in the political world is, TV might be sexier, but radio can often reach more listeners, and the audiences are intensely loyal. And Sean Hannity, his background is radio. Before he was doing TV, he was doing radio in Huntsville, Alabama, in Atlanta, Georgia, and a lot of these guys who do both will tell you they like radio more, they reach more people, they have more time, they like the medium better.

:{:{“He started out, he actually flopped on a college radio station in Santa Barbara, that was way to the left, where he went out there after he dropped out of college, and he admittedly says, ‘Look, I was terrible.’ And then he ended up starting his rise in Huntsville, Alabama, and he migrated to Atlanta, and he was doing morning drive on a talk station down there, and then he did some TV work, and Roger Ailes discovered him. And he comes to New York to do ‘Hannity & Colmes,’ and joins the powerhouse station on WABC.}:

And he’s there for a few years, and they decide in 2001… they’re looking for syndicated stars, especially conservative ones. ABC Radio decided to syndicate Hannity, and they have him set up to go in a bunch of major markets, and he has the, sort of, fortune to have his national debut be Sept. 10, 2001. And obviously the next day, sort of changes the face of the country, and the ratings for talk radio across the board skyrocket — people want to talk about it, they want to hear what other people are saying, it becomes kind of a virtual community, and people who had never heard Sean Hannity start to hear him, they like what they’re hearing, and he sort of goes from there to become the No. 2 guy in talk radio.”}:

Array

On Hannity’s relationship with his radio listeners

“I’ve heard callers say, ‘Thank God you’re out there Sean, we have a voice now.’ There are some people who spend more time with their favorite talk radio host than they do with their spouses. People who were driving a truck all day, or out on a tractor, or doing some other job where they can listen three hours a day, five days a week, 48, 50 weeks a year, to the same person, they feel like they get to know that person, and that person reflects their views. And then in a lot of cases, for conservatives, that person punches back at people who they feel like are maligning them and scorning them and mistreating them.”

On Hannity’s impact on the 2016 presidential election

“I think that, in the primary election, had people like Sean Hannity really been hardcore against Donald Trump, from day one — we’re going back to 2015 here — they might have been able to knock him off in the primary. In terms of a general election, people were bombarded on all sides with information, and usually, I don’t think talk radio has a huge influence in presidential general elections for that reason, but in this case, insomuch as the key to the election, or one of the keys, was getting conservatives who had misgivings about either Trump’s morals or his qualifications, or some of what he said, or some of the policies he supported, to go out and vote for him.

“I think talk radio’s kind of drumbeat of, ‘Hillary is worse,’ and attacking her and keeping her emails front and center from day one for a year and a half, that helped drive those conservatives with misgivings back onto the reservation, and this is what Hannity and other talk radio hosts do at election time, which is, they frame tings in such a way, and they keep their audience kind of understanding the stakes, and why Republicans — whatever misgivings you might have — Republicans are still the best way to go.”

2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

---}}

AILES, Roger

Early life

Career

Early television

Political consulting

Book

America's Talking channel

20th Television/Fox News

Sexual harassment cases

Resignation

After 20th Television and Fox News

Personal life

Philanthropy

Ohio University

Putnam County senior center

Death

In popular culture

Biographies

Documentaries

References...

1960s and 70s – On the political trail with Nixon

1970s to 1990s - Political consultancy and CNBC

1996 – Joining forces with Rupert Murdoch

2000 – Calling the presidential election for Bush

2005 – The all-powerful Ailes coup

2014-17 – Sexual harassment allegations and Fox News exit

Rule breakers

Interview Highlights

Attachments