Remembering the founder of Fox News also demands remembering the many women in his orbit—women who refused to be silent.
Ailes took her to the day after she accepted her job with the network. During it, she claims, Ailes asked her, “When did you first discover you were sexy?” When she replied that “I am finding this conversation very embarrassing,” her new boss persisted. “He continued to explain,” she recalls, “how much he believed in loyalty and how much he believed the best expression of that loyalty comes in the form of a ‘sexual alliance.’”
.. Other women at Fox remembered Ailes asking them a litany of personal questions, ostensibly to expose vulnerabilities that he might exploit later on. “He asked, ‘Am I in a relationship?’” one woman recalled. “‘What are my familial ties?’ It was all to see how stable or unstable I was.”
“Roger had made sure I knew the stakes, telling me: ‘I don’t like to fight, but when I do, I fight to kill.’ The message could not have been clearer: ‘If you tell anyone, I will destroy you.’”
.. But Ailes, in the end, had aged into a new context—one in which women have access to recording devices, and in which, through the internet, women have access to each others’ stories, and in which, in general, women have had enough. Secrets, now, have a way of getting out. The sins of the past have a way of becoming the scandals of the present. Women today have more ways than ever of fighting back.
Roger Ailes Has Died
Since Ailes has resigned from FNC, the channel has floundered, as Murdoch’s sons James and Lachlan attempt to re-make it in their image — a more “moderate” channel to appease the global elite. Bill O’Reilly, the primetime lineup’s ratings powerhouse, and Bill Shine, a longtime deputy to Ailes, were both ousted after waves of negative press accusing the former of sexual harassment and the latter of enabling sexual harassment.
Roger Ailes, Former Fox News Chief, Dies at 77
Ailes left network last year amid sexual-harassment controversy
Roger Ailes, who combined political savvy with television showmanship to build the Fox News Channel into a conservative media juggernaut, becoming one of American media’s most controversial figures along the way, died Thursday. He was 77 years old.The cause of death wasn’t immediately known. Mr. Ailes had been in failing health, and had recently been hospitalized after a fall... Mr. Ailes pioneered a style of cable news with opinionated, right-leaning prime-time programming delivered by pugnacious hosts.
.. Through a career in politics dating back to the 1960s and his leadership of Fox News, Mr. Ailes helped shape the modern conservative movement.
.. Known for his bluntness and disdain for the so-called liberal media elites
.. Rupert Murdoch: .. “He will be remembered by the many people on both sides of the camera that he discovered, nurtured and promoted.”
.. Mr. Ailes also demanded loyalty, and he usually got it. When Mr. Ailes was building Fox News, almost 100 people from NBC went with him, causing executives there to complain that he was stealing staff. “You don’t know the difference between recruitment and a jailbreak,” he fired back.
.. In his letter of resignation, Mr. Ailes didn’t address the sexual-harassment claims but told Mr. Murdoch, “I am proud that we have built Fox News and Fox Business channels into powerful and lucrative news organizations that inform our audience and reward our shareholders.”
.. I met him once, and he was more than anything unashamed of his role in creating value by increasing an audience by the means he correctly saw as most potent — conflict. Whether you like the message or not, you cannot ignore screaming, and Ailes proved screaming pays very well regardless of whether there is anything remotely worth screaming about.
‘It isn’t a game.” Chris Wallace and Shep Smith tear into Trump’s troubling actions
Chris Wallace and Shep Smith on Friday were perplexed by the recent developments in the ongoing Donald Trump/James Comey saga, with the hosts noting the president’s actions only serve to erode the trust of the American people
The pair discussed the stunning exchange between Reuters reporter Jeff Mason and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer; during that back and forth, Spicer declined—three times—to say Trump is not secretly recording conversations in the Oval Office.
“When I heard that exchange today between Jeff Mason and Sean Spicer, speaking from the podium in the briefing room for the president of the United States, it took my breath away,” Wallace said.
“That was what in Watergate they called a ‘non-denial, denial,’” he added.
Wallace said it’s possible Trump is simply “trolling the press corp, and working them into a frenzy about all this,” adding, “but, why would he do that? Why would he want to decrease the credibility—which is already in question—of this White House.”