McGinniss tried to buck up his friend, reminding him of all the things that were going right in his life. The Hot l Baltimore was still running strong, and the Kennedy TV special was moving forward. “You should be feeling great right now,” he said. “Look, it’s not that way,” Ailes replied. “I’m walking around, and I feel just all this anger. I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.”
McGinniss told Ailes he was seeing a therapist and asked Ailes to consider going. “It’s helping me,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Ailes replied, his voice trailing off.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned from the presidency. Watergate hit Ailes like a stomach punch. “He took Watergate really, really personally,” Stephen Rosenfield said. At a party Rosenfield hosted not long after Nixon’s resignation, Ailes fiercely defended the disgraced president when a guest expressed delight at his downfall.
“What should we do?” Ailes said, “be like some banana republic and drag him through the streets?”
Needing work, Ailes took on all manner of projects. In the fall of 1974, he went back to Pennsylvania to manage the gubernatorial campaign of Drew Lewis, a wealthy business executive. Lewis spent lavishly to oust the Democratic incumbent, Milton Shapp, but Nixon’s disgrace had damaged Republican fortunes nationwide; Lewis lost by nearly 300,000 votes. After the defeat in Pennsylvania, Ailes confided in Rosenfield a rare expression of self-doubt. “Everything I touch turns to shit,” he said.
Ailes was once again adrift. The prospects for signing up new candidates seemed grim. Nixon’s undoing had scorched the national landscape for Republicans. It had been four years since Ailes had helmed a national television show, and the theater, which thrilled him for a while, was proving to be a hit-or-miss way to make a living, especially with so many misses. Indeed, the fall of 1974 was a fulcrum for Ailes, the moment the trajectory of his career might have vectored away from politics if his theatrical pursuits had panned out.
Years later at Fox News, Ailes would talk fondly about his theatrical experience. “Whenever he can, he gets into the conversation that he produced Hot l Baltimore,” a senior Fox executive said. Creating the Fox News afternoon show The Five, Ailes found his inspiration on the stage. “He said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do an ensemble concept,’ ” a close friend said. “He said, ‘I wanted a Falstaff, and that’s Bob Beckel. I need a leading man, and it’s Eric Bolling. I need a serious lead and that’s Dana Perino. I need a court jester and it’s Greg [Gutfeld], and I need the leg. That’s Andrea Tantaros.’ ”
As much as he loved New York—its loose, liberal culture seemed to bother him not a bit—the next opportunity came from a very different quarter, with very different values. The American right reached out and pulled him back in, and it marked his career ever since.
SEVEN
THOUGHT PATTERN REVOLUTION
IN MAY 1974, AILES RECEIVED A CALL from a sandy-haired former Denver TV newsman named Jack Wilson, an emissary from a fledgling broadcasting start-up called Television News, Inc. At the time, TVN, as it was known, was beset by numerous problems, riven by staff struggles and failing to attract viewers and advertisers. But in essence, TVN was what Fox News became: a conservative news network, one that aspired to cut through the liberal cant of the Big Three to provide what even then was called a “fair” and “balanced” account of the news. It bridged Nixon’s secret television propaganda efforts with the rise of right-wing media in the 1980s.
TVN was the brainchild of Robert Reinhold Pauley, a waspish broadcast executive with a Harvard MBA. As the president of ABC Radio, Pauley had given Ted Koppel and Howard Cosell their starts. Despite this success, or perhaps because of it, he had become a fierce critic of the network way of producing news. Pauley was an enthusiastic Goldwater supporter and a John Bircher. In his hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut, he denounced a local plan to fluoridate the water as a Communist plot to poison Americans. But in time, his vision would take hold. After being pushed out of ABC in 1967—for reasons he said he never understood—the forty-three-year-old Pauley gave up trying to reform the networks from within and set out to disrupt the existing media order.
Pauley had developed an innovative business plan to sell taped television news stories to local broadcast affiliates. At the time, United Press International Television News was the country’s sole provider of non-network TV news, air-shipping film clips to stations for their evening newscasts. The cumbersome, costly method forestalled competitors, including Nixon’s scrapped Capitol News Service. Pauley instead wanted to send news stories to local affiliates over AT&T phone lines. In an era before cable television, Pauley’s distribution system was a step forward.
In 1972, after four years searching for funding, Pauley heard from Joseph Coors, the ultraconservative beer magnate from Golden, Colorado. By the 1960s, Coors held a dark view of America. Inspired by books like Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, Coors was one of a handful of right-wing millionaires who sought to reverse the left’s advances. Fearing the damage wrought by the counterculture, they believed the news media, as the transmitter of its pathogens, bore special responsibility. “All three networks slant the news with innuendos, accents, the sneers they make,” Coors complained. Coors certainly shared Russell Kirk’s lament that “radical thinkers have won the day. For a century and a half, conservatives have yielded ground in a manner, which, except for occasionally successful rearguard actions, must be described as a rout.”
Coors represented a new breed of conservative philanthropist—ideologically rigid, religiously fervent, immensely wealthy—who poured millions into bringing about a right-wing revival that braided the strands of Christianity, nationalism, and free market economics into a political force. He committed $800,000 to Pauley’s venture and pledged up to $2.4 million more. Coors was also funding such conservative causes as the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the National Federation of Independent Business, the House of Representatives’ Republican Study Committee, and a new think tank called the Heritage Foundation. Of all these investments, TVN was central to Coors’s mission to save America. “We were discussing how we could tell the truth and have news that would not be so lopsided,” Jack Wilson later said. Television had the power to spread conservative values unlike any policy paper. Their goal was to launch with upward of seventy employees in four domestic bureaus by April 1973.
Like Fox News, TVN presented an apolitical face. The press release announcing TVN’s debut stated that it had “no philosophical axe to grind.” Behind the scenes, however, Pauley, Coors, and Wilson maneuvered to exert a firm hand on TVN’s journalism. Two weeks before TVN’s launch, Pauley tasked Wilson and Coors to review tapes of each day’s broadcast. Pauley also solicited the advice of leading conservatives, like William F. Buckley Jr. and Pat Buchanan. “I have suggested to Jack Wilson that he get in touch with you and that he keep you informed of the story line-ups,” Pauley wrote Buchanan. But even these measures did not satisfy Pauley. He asked Wilson to make contact with Accuracy in Media, the conservative watchdog group, to provide feedback. “I would suggest that we hire them to look at our product every afternoon in Washington,” Pauley wrote in a memo on May 2, 1973. He urged discretion. “I don’t really think there is any need to broadcast the fact that we are seeking the opinion of the AIM Group.”
When TVN finally launched in May 1973, a bedeviling problem immediately came into focus. While Coors wanted to control what was shown on the air, the journalists he’d hired, many of them network alumni, including a young Charles Gibson, insisted on nonpartisan newsroom standards. Dick Graf, TVN’s news director, vowed to steer an independent line. “There will be days when I’ll put pieces on the air that will make your flesh crawl because of your personal beliefs. But I’ll be doing it because of my professional news judgment and I’ll play them down the middle,” Graf told Coors. “That’s what we want you to do,” Coors replied.
It was a false promise. Throughout the summer, Wilson fired off a series
of histrionic memos to Pauley and Coors critiquing Graf’s journalistic instincts. In one, he complained that a negative segment on the FBI left viewers with the impression that “the FBI and SS troops fit in the same picture.” In another, he criticized the coverage of Miller v. California, in which the Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not universally protected by the First Amendment. TVN’s coverage of the decision made him want to “explode,” he wrote. Instead of reporting on the dangers of “smut,” the announcer “picks out a fellow that says that smut is OK and is allowed to give his reasons and that is the end of the story.” In Wilson’s view, “on this issue alone, several people should be fired!!”
Coors, too, was growing nervous. “Why are you covering Daniel Ellsberg? He’s a traitor to this country,” Coors barked at Graf during one board meeting. At another board meeting, he decried Graf’s news instincts as “socialistic.” Paul Weyrich, a cofounder of the Heritage Foundation and an unofficial TVN adviser, was also discouraged by TVN’s lack of zeal. “I’ve had no influence,” he told The Washington Post. “In fact, it’s been the single most frustrating experience I’ve ever had.” All of this heavy-handed political interference created dissension on TVN’s board. Ronald Waldman, a board member and BBC executive, told Pauley that he objected to Wilson’s written reports, warning that TVN’s credibility could be ruined if the partisan memos leaked. As a compromise, Pauley applied some safeguards. On August 13, he outlined them to Wilson:
Remove names from report such as “to,” “from,” and “cc.”
Number each page of the copies and keep a record of which went to whom. Mark them “Classified” although this is sometimes a red light to others.
Mark envelope confidential.
Remove “subject.”
If we observe these rules then any unauthorized use would have to be fictionalized to be believable and then it would be a forgery. I’m not going to ask you to stop. It’s a Board matter. Thanks.
Pauley assured Waldman that the matter was under control “to help insure the classified nature of the critique.” Deception was central to TVN’s mission. “Let’s not get labeled,” Pauley later wrote in a memo. “This is the most dangerous thing which can happen to a journalistic institution.”
In February 1974, Graf was finally let go, replaced by the Northeast bureau chief, who lasted all of two months. By the spring, Coors seized control, naming Jack Wilson president of TVN. “I hate all those network people. They’re destroying the country,” Wilson fumed around the office. “We have to unify the country. TVN is the moral cement.” In short order, Wilson fired en masse most of the TVN network-trained journalists, replacing many of them with staffers more in sync with his conservative views.
It wasn’t his television skills, or even his conservative ideas, that brought Roger Ailes into the world of television news. Rather, Ailes was recruited for his experience in public relations. After months of newsroom upheaval, TVN looked to buff up its image. In May 1974, Wilson hired Ailes as a PR consultant on a $1,500 retainer.
In July 1974, Ailes delivered a progress report to the directors, which was partly an exercise in managing up. The board minutes noted that Ailes had been “demonstrating the growth of TVN” to the press and “acquainting the trade with Mr. Wilson as its chief executive officer.” To address TVN’s minuscule distribution, Ailes sought creative ways to present a winning image. “He said that he would also hope to see TVN receive some awards and citations, as these would help establish TVN as an indispensable service in the eyes of the broadcasting community.”
Ailes’s bravado impressed the board so much that they named him news director four months later. His title was the latest identity change for Ailes. Given his responsibilities in the newsroom, there was a giant hole in his résumé. “He didn’t know anything about news. He knew television,” said Reese Schonfeld, a TVN executive. Still, Ailes eagerly played the part, moving into his spacious new office at TVN’s New York bureau at 10 Columbus Circle. “He took on a role of a news guy,” Stephen Rosenfield recalled. “But he wasn’t a news guy. I remember seeing a typewriter in his office at TVN, which amused me. I don’t think he knew how to type. He had a secretary from the time I could remember.”
But Ailes’s lack of a news background proved a selling point rather than a weakness. His partisan political work was what attracted his new employers. “Ran 1968 Nixon campaign publicity,” Pauley scribbled during a board meeting when Ailes’s name was discussed. “Their politics were way further to the right than he was comfortable with,” Rosenfield remembered. “They made Roger look like a New Deal Democrat.” Ailes demonstrated he could translate their mission into management dictums. “Roger Ailes has quickly given needed leadership to his people while fully understanding the Board’s policy statement regarding news coverage,” Wilson wrote in an internal report. “We are now well on our way to the product we have dreamed of all along.”
The week of Thanksgiving 1974, Ailes sent Wilson an ambitious analysis for an overhaul of TVN’s newsroom. The document, an early road map that pointed toward the strategies he would apply at Fox News, called for an authoritarian management structure. He proposed crafting a “statement of news policy which outlines TVN’s reason for being, self-image, goals and news philosophy.” He would “get control of the news department and the daily feed so that the original vision of TVN can be carried out,” adding, “it is my feeling that control of the TVN feed should be placed entirely in New York with the bureau chiefs primarily responsible for implementing the work of others in the bureau.… This will give us the opportunity to coordinate and achieve the goals and philosophy of TVN.” He would also call out dissenters, naming one female employee for example. “I see her as negative to management and TVN. She is maintaining communications with former employees,” he wrote. But he would reward loyalty and good ideas, “thereby reversing the trend of firings, insecurity and desperate searching for jobs presently going on.”
In essence, Ailes treated journalism as he treated politics—it was another market to monetize. Shortly after being named news director, he suggested that TVN offer image consulting. “Roger Ailes has suggested offering a business communications advisory service,” a memo to Jack Wilson noted. “Roger’s reputation and expertise could turn this into a source of continuing contractual income as we coach corporate executives on how to improve their television performance.” It seemed appropriate to Ailes that a news organization could offer PR advice to the very powerful people its journalists were covering.
As Rosenfield updated Ailes daily on his entertainment consulting projects and day-to-day speechwriting duties for clients such as Oregon Republican senator Bob Packwood, Ailes integrated the aims of his consulting firm and TVN. One of the first stories produced after Ailes arrived was a profile of Kelly Garrett. “She’s been called the best new singer of 1974,” the segment reported. TVN Enterprises, a division of TVN, would also distribute Ailes’s documentary with Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Repeating the pattern of the Mike Douglas office dynamic, Ailes inspired young producers eager to advance, but clashed with senior employees who posed threats. Reese Schonfeld, TVN’s vice president of operations, quickly became a rival. He represented a power center in the company, as Wilson had tasked him with studying the economics of satellite news delivery. “Roger and I were reasonably friendly for a while, then we were shouting at each other. He called me an asshole, I called him a fuckhead,” Schonfeld said. Schonfeld sensed his rival’s ambition. “From the day he walked in, he was looking for Wilson’s job, it was my feeling,” he said. “I’m sure he would have been better at it than Wilson.”
Unfortunately for Ailes, he settled into the job at a perilous moment. In the winter of 1975, Stanhope Gould, a former CBS News producer, was putting the final touches on a cover story about TVN for the Columbia Journalism Review. Ailes did his best to parry Gould’s inquiries. During an interview, Gould pressed Ailes hard about the Kelly Garrett segment, asking him why Ailes used T
VN to promote his client. At first, Ailes blamed management, who, he said, had approved the story before he became news director. Gould did not let the matter drop. “There is definitely a question in some people’s minds about conflict of interest,” Ailes responded. “I take full responsibility. It may have been a bum decision—but I made it.” Gould asked Ailes to comment on his lack of journalism training. “I’ve never run a newsroom, but I’ve been around them,” he told Gould. “And 90 percent of what you do in any job is common sense.” He stated that his consulting company stopped handling politicians (he could have meant political campaigns, as the ’74 election cycle had just ended) and that he had turned the company over to subordinates (which was technically true, though Ailes and Rosenfield still spoke every day). Ailes also waffled when asked about TVN’s politics. At one point, he said, “one thing is sure, the networks are not biased to the right.” Just as at Fox, Ailes framed it as less a matter of ideology than of confronting the condescension of the media elites. The moralizing at the networks seemed to Ailes to be a pose, a front for their real agenda. He set himself up as the victim, creating a pretense to go on the attack.
There was one point that Ailes made completely clear: “No matter what has gone on here in the past two years, I’m not responsible,” he told Gould, as he leaned back in his swivel chair.
Ailes was right to attempt to keep some distance between himself and TVN. Gould’s fourteen-page article, which ran in the March/April 1975 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review and called Ailes “the only man in history to run a national news organization while owning an entertainment industry consulting firm,” was a damaging one. The story, headlined “Coors Brews the News,” crackled with embarrassing revelations detailing staff turmoil and allegations of political interference. TVN’s image would never recover.
The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country Page 14