The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country

by Sherman, Gabriel

  In the control room, producers huddled over monitors watching the morning show hosts, Louis Aguirre, a hunky Cuban-American from Miami, and Allison Costarene, a pretty blonde, running through final preparations sitting at glass-topped desks, in front of a pastel pink and blue backdrop. The teleprompter was loaded with the show’s top stories: a recap of the previous night’s presidential debate at the Bushnell theater in Hartford, Connecticut, and a live report from Rome by correspondent Gary Matsumoto on Pope John Paul II’s hospitalization for appendicitis. For a network that would be defined by its decibel level, the premiere was surprisingly subdued. “Good morning. Welcome to Fox News,” Aguirre said into the camera when the clock struck six.

  For the opening day, Ailes had assembled a guest list of boldface names, the most notable of which served as a counterweight to MSNBC’s prime-time debut with Bill Clinton: Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, live in the studio for his first post-debate interview. Other gets, which firmly leaned to the right, included Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Utah Republican senator Orrin Hatch, Governor George Pataki, and Ailes’s friend Henry Kissinger. When it came to booking liberals, Ailes’s producers tended to recruit guests—Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, imprisoned Whitewater witness Susan McDougal, liberal California senator Henry Waxman, Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey—who could inject culture war conflict into the conversation.

  In his second-floor office, Ailes wrote down the channel’s mission statement. “Fox News is committed to providing viewers with more factual information and a balanced and fair presentation. Fox believes viewers should make their own judgment on important issues based on unbiased coverage. Our motto is ‘we report, you decide.’ Our job is to give the American people information they can use to lead their lives more effectively. And our job is to tell them the truth wherever the truth falls.” Unlike the executives at other channels, Ailes was crafting his message, as one Fox News executive said, to “define the market opportunity in news.” Ed Rollins, the GOP campaign consultant who would later become a Fox News contributor, believed that politics gave Ailes insight that his competitors lacked. “He knew there were a couple million conservatives who were a potential audience, and he built Fox to reach them,” he said. And Ailes’s motto, a cunning tautology, flattered their sense of possessing discernment.

  Fox News’s launch on the morning of October 7 was the biggest moment in Roger Ailes’s television career. But because of the Time Warner battle, he was absent for a good part of it. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., Ailes was three miles south of the Fox News studios, sitting alongside Arthur Siskind at City Hall, ready to deliver a withering indictment of Time Warner before city officials on the Franchise and Concession Review Committee. Time Warner made it clear they would not capitulate to Giuliani’s pressure campaign. Representatives of Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire financial information mogul, were also on hand to testify. Time Warner had previously agreed to carry a six-minute feed from Bloomberg Information Television several times a day on CNN, they explained, but as a result of the merger, the Bloomberg TV feed was being taken off the cable system.

  “Good morning,” Ailes said at the opening of his prepared remarks. “An hour and fifteen minutes ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came into our channel live from Israel and his opening words were ‘Congratulations on the new channel in New York. We need more news. The more news, the more accuracy.’ So we thanked him for that.” (Conspicuously missing was any mention that Netanyahu’s comments had been cut off after a satellite glitch silenced the audio.) Time Warner was standing in the way for two reasons: “one, direct competition; and, two, the well-publicized personal animosity Time Warner’s Vice Chairman, Ted Turner, bears towards Rupert Murdoch.”

  According to Ailes, Fox News was the only channel that could break CNN’s monopoly. MSNBC was “not a true competitor” and therefore Time Warner’s decision to carry it did not inoculate the cable company against criticism. “It is not hard news coverage,” Ailes said. Ailes capped his argument with a patriotic appeal, one that his heartland audience might find objectionable. “New York City is the heart of America, and now Time Warner is trying to stamp us in the heart,” Ailes said. “New York City now has a cable systems czar who can control access and tell New Yorkers what they can and cannot see. Unfortunately, the New York City cable czar lives in Atlanta. His name is Ted Turner. Thank you.” Committee members did not have any questions.

  The story, like many colorful Roger Ailes yarns, relied on a string of selectively chosen facts. As evidence, Ailes marshaled a Los Angeles Times article, reporting that “sources close to Ted Turner say he was instrumental in Time Warner’s decision.” But the truth was that, at Time Warner, Turner was essentially a gadfly, albeit a very loud and wealthy one, rather than a driver of strategy. Gerald Levin stacked Time Warner’s board of directors with advocates, who guaranteed his primacy as CEO and ensured that Turner’s post-merger status as vice chairman and largest shareholder was largely symbolic. The men were frequently at odds with one another. A couple of years later, Turner would effectively be fired from the company that bore his name.

  After hearing about Ailes’s performance before the franchise committee, Parsons made a last-ditch effort at détente. He called Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, a confidant, and told him he was reaching out, not as Time Warner’s president, but “friend to friend.” Parsons had sent a stinging response to the city’s second request for a waiver that morning, a response that was resolute. “Time Warner would have to go to war on these issues if they were not resolved amicably,” Parsons said.

  Privately, Parsons wanted peace. On multiple occasions, he advised Aurelio, whose confrontational posture unsettled him, to seek an accord with Murdoch. “We have to worry about our franchise,” Parsons told him and Levin. Aurelio, in turn, worried about Parsons’s divided loyalty. “I had to go through this with Parsons every time,” he recalled. “He even told me at one point, ‘I guess that’s the end of my friendship with Giuliani.’ ” He was right. Soon after speaking to Mastro, Parsons publicly severed ties with the mayor, releasing a letter resigning as chairman of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

  Thus began the shooting war, which Parsons and Reiter and seemingly everyone on both sides of the fight had wanted to avert. On October 9, two days after the franchise hearing, News Corp filed a $1.8 billion federal antitrust lawsuit against Time Warner in the Eastern District of New York. New York State attorney general Dennis Vacco, whom Arthur Siskind had lobbied at the launch gala, opened an investigation and subpoenaed internal Time Warner documents. Time Warner’s outside attorneys at Cravath, Swaine and Moore continued work on a lawsuit against the City of New York.

  At once, Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, who was preparing to challenge Giuliani in the upcoming mayoral election, filed a complaint to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, citing Giuliani’s wife’s job at WNYW, the local Fox station.

  The board would dismiss the complaint. Giuliani was defiant. “Disagree with me, fine, say you have a different philosophy,” he told a reporter after marching in a Columbus Day parade in Queens. “But don’t start demeaning me with the cheap kinds of things that are being done here because people are involved in business rivalries.” Giuliani kept up his campaign against Time Warner. On October 9, the administration announced it would unilaterally air Fox News and Bloomberg TV, stripped of commercials, on Crosswalks, waiver or no waiver. After receiving a tip from a media executive that Giuliani was about to act on his threat, Time Warner’s leadership gathered at Cravath headquarters in Worldwide Plaza to watch the conference room televisions tuned to Crosswalks. Time Warner had the technical ability to block the Crosswalks signal from their system, but thought they could benefit from allowing Giuliani to overplay his hand. “We decided what we’d rather do is seek an injunction,” Aurelio recalled. At 10:48 p.m., Bloomberg TV appeared on the screen. It was clear to those gathered in the room that Giuliani aired B
loomberg before Fox News in order to blunt allegations that he was rewarding his friends Murdoch and Ailes. A few minutes later, a Cravath attorney left the building and raced downtown. Arriving at the federal courthouse at Foley Square, he deposited a copy of Time Warner’s complaint in the mail slot.

  Judge Denise Cote’s eleventh-floor courtroom was thronged with reporters for a preliminary hearing on Friday, October 11. Though the case officially pitted Time Warner against New York City, partisan politics undergirded the proceeding. One of many amicus briefs in support of Time Warner was signed by a trio of prominent Democrats: Ruth Messinger, New York City public advocate Mark Green, and Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer. Ailes suffered the first of several setbacks when Judge Cote issued a temporary restraining order barring the city from airing Fox News and other commercial programming until she could hear evidence.

  Over the next two weeks, lawyers deposed key players in Time Warner’s dispute with the city. The sworn statements intensified the conflict. Reiter told the lawyers that it was Ailes who personally called Giuliani, a disclosure the mayor was said to be upset about. New York magazine speculated that Reiter might lose her job because of the testimony. Her statements also caused turmoil inside Time Warner. In an affidavit, Reiter revealed that Parsons had told her that Aurelio was near the end of his term. Parsons was forced to do damage control. “You know you’re my man,” Parsons told Aurelio. “I was just trying to calm her down.”

  Meanwhile, during a three-hour deposition on the morning of Friday, October 18, Ted Turner called Murdoch “a pretty slimy character,” a “dangerous person,” and a “disgrace to journalism.” “I was just appalled that he bought the government of New York City,” he said. “I can understand him doing it in England, maybe Australia or China. But here, having it happen in New York, it really surprises me.”

  On Monday, October 21, the New York Post ran the headline “Is Ted Turner Nuts? You Decide,” and published an illustration of Turner thrashing about in a straitjacket. The immature taunts even spilled over into professional sports. That week, when Turner’s Atlanta Braves faced the Yankees in a World Series game, News Corp arranged for a plane to buzz over Yankee Stadium, flashing the message “Hey Ted. Be Brave. Don’t Censor the Fox News Channel.” During the broadcast, Fox cameras captured the footage of the plane as well as Turner at embarrassing moments, such as when he was dozing off or after a Yankee hit a home run.

  A few days later, Turner joked about his feud with Murdoch. “I thought about killing him,” he playfully told guests during a gala at the St. Regis hotel. “I figure that now that his own paper says I’m crazy, I can kill him and get off by reason of insanity!”

  The three-day preliminary injunction hearing began on October 28, and a week later Judge Cote issued her ruling. The 106-page opinion upheld the injunction barring the city from airing Fox News. She flatly rejected the notion that the city was acting to encourage job creation and to ensure diverse programming. “Time Warner has a right under the First Amendment to be free from government interference with its programming decisions,” the judge wrote. “The City’s actions violate longstanding First Amendment principles that are the foundation of our democracy.”

  It was a blistering rebuke. The ruling meant that Fox News would remain unwatchable in Manhattan for the foreseeable future. Limited distribution had foiled the television dreams of conservatives since TVN in the 1970s. It appeared to be happening again. But Ailes would fight. “I used to say, you pull a .45 on Roger, he’ll have a bazooka trained between your eyes,” Catherine Crier said. “I say that as a compliment.”

  Politics were moving against Fox and Ailes as well. The day before Cote’s ruling, Bill Clinton resoundingly defeated Bob Dole by almost 10 percent of the votes. Most Fox affiliates refused to interrupt their programming for the cable channel’s election coverage. Executives considered their refusal a blessing in disguise. The coverage had been riddled with technical problems. Mike Schneider and Crier bickered off-camera and things got so tense that Schneider even threw a phone across the set.

  The day after the election, Ailes purged the remaining Peyronnin employees. Only the most loyal troops would remain. “Chet Collier called us in one-by-one,” Emily Rooney recalled years later. Ailes expressed no reservations about the mass layoffs. When Rooney’s name came up a few days later, Ailes simply said, “She’ll work again.”

  News Corp vowed to continue the campaign against Time Warner with its federal antitrust lawsuit. And Ailes was busy crafting new story lines. It turned out that Bill Clinton would hand him and Fox News the biggest gift the network could ask for in the form of a blue dress.

  FOURTEEN

  ANTI-CLINTON NEWS NETWORK

  ON A SUMMER AFTERNOON IN 1996, John Moody was sitting in his Fox News office when his phone rang. The caller said his name was David Shuster and he wanted a job at the new channel. Shuster was a twenty-nine-year-old television reporter for KATV, the ABC affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas. Before moving to the South to take an on-camera job, he had spent a few years working as a producer in CNN’s Washington bureau, covering the first Gulf War and the 1992 presidential election. Moody had never heard of him before, and Shuster was speaking so fast that it was difficult to make out exactly what he was talking about.

  Shuster sensed that Moody, who had been deluged with résumés in advance of the launch, was considering brushing him off and hanging up. But then Shuster began to talk excitedly about the panoply of scandals that fell under the catchall rubric of “Whitewater.” Shuster told Moody he had covered the story on the ground since January 1994, and knew all of its particulars in granular detail. In the KATV newsroom, there was a timeline of the investigation, which catalogued the failed real estate saga’s murky origins in the 1970s, when the Clintons and their investment partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, purchased a 220-acre tract of land in the Ozark Mountains to subdivide into lots for summer homes. Shuster had the timeline pretty much memorized and all but lived at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas during the McDougals’ recent trial for bank fraud relating to the collapse of their savings and loan, Madison Guaranty.

  Many of President Clinton’s enemies on the right promoted the idea that his connection to the McDougals was only the tip of the iceberg. In 1994, the same year in which Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, appointed Robert Fiske special prosecutor to investigate Whitewater, Jerry Falwell helped distribute the documentary The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton, which with plentiful, grainy, black-and-white, attack-ad-style footage accused the president, in addition to sexual harassment and financial misdeeds, of being complicit in cocaine trafficking and murder. Three hundred thousand copies went into circulation.

  The wider public initially showed little interest in the scandal; the details were too technical, the attacks too outrageous. But Shuster, who intimately knew the ensemble cast of Whitewater characters after nights cultivating sources at the Capitol Hotel bar in downtown Little Rock, was convinced that the Clinton scandals were more than a right-wing fever dream. In their phone conversation, Shuster reminded Moody that Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, Fiske’s replacement, had subpoenaed Hillary Clinton at the beginning of the year to determine whether legal documents from her law firm had been criminally concealed from investigators.

  “Why is this important?” Moody said.

  “Because,” Shuster replied, “there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the first lady is going to get indicted.”

  Moody was intrigued. Fox News’s coverage of Whitewater and other assorted controversies—Troopergate, Filegate, Travelgate, Paula Jones, Vince Foster—would depend on scrappy, well-sourced reporters like Shuster who could translate the investigations into easily digestible news reports.

  “Send me a tape,” Moody told him at the end of their conversation, which lasted an hour and a half.

  Shuster was thrilled. He had submitted his résum�
� to both Fox and MSNBC, but had heard nothing until Moody took his cold call. Eager to get back to Washington, Shuster assembled his best clips. They showcased his hard-charging style—in one of them, he banged on the door of a Little Rock accounting firm that was being investigated by Starr’s prosecutors.

  Two weeks after mailing the tape, Shuster received a promising call from Moody. “Take me through again why you think there’s a chance Hillary Clinton might get indicted,” Moody said. Shuster repeated every angle. “There’s a big chance the story could explode,” Shuster recalled saying. Moody later confided to Shuster that the second phone call was really for Roger Ailes. “Hire the guy,” Ailes said.

  For the next three years, David Shuster would be constantly on camera as one of Fox News’s most visible interpreters of the Whitewater spectacle. The forces at play as it transmogrified from questions about a money-losing land deal into an adolescent sex fantasy were as diverse as they were powerful, and Ailes’s new channel was the most important outlet in weaving them into a coherent story. The unfinished business of the 1960s culture wars, the acceptance of prurient Internet gossip as legitimate news, and the rise of a mobilized Christian base became raw material for a singularly American tragicomedy.

  A crucial theme of the plot, which Fox News and conservatives wasted no opportunity to emphasize, was the notion that elites in the media were covering up for their good-times president. “I remember Roger once referred to CNN as the ‘Clinton News Network,’ ” former Fox producer Adam Sank said. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s a strange thing for the head of a news network to say. So the conclusion is, we’re the anti-Clinton news network?’ ” But this idea had large elements of fiction. In fact, many of Clinton’s most ardent pursuers—starting with Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff—were members of the very newsrooms and networks that Ailes tagged as bastions of Clinton-loving liberalism. It was The New York Times, after all, that published one of the first major investigations into Whitewater.