In the spring, Lewis presented me with a condition. Before Ailes even agreed to “think” about speaking with me, Lewis said, I must agree to refrain from using any background quotes or anecdotes that Ailes could consider “negative.” I told Lewis that while I agreed that on-the-record sources should be the bedrock of reporting, I could not agree to such a blanket deal, as Ailes might retaliate against people whom he deemed to be disloyal.
In the course of my reporting, I spoke to Ailes twice at public events, both of which encounters were illuminating of his character. On the evening of April 11, 2012, I attended a party hosted by The Hollywood Reporter at the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, where Ailes was being honored along with media industry luminaries such as CBS CEO Les Moonves and Today anchor Matt Lauer. As Ailes and his wife, Beth, entered the restaurant’s Grill Room, I approached them and introduced myself.
“I don’t want to be rude, but you know what? I don’t want to talk to you,” he said.
“I understand,” I replied.
“I don’t think you do understand,” Beth added over his shoulder.
“No, you don’t,” Roger said. “Look, leave her paper alone. You’re harassing her. I don’t care what you do to me.”
I was taken aback. The subject of my book was Roger, not Beth.
“I’m just a reporter, Mr. Ailes.”
“No, no, no. You’re a harasser,” he shot back.
“Roger, he’s got his recorder on,” Beth interjected, then looked at me. “You’re trying to make a buck off my husband.”
“Your entire premise is wrong,” Roger added, referring to a cover story I wrote for New York magazine in May 2011 that revealed Ailes’s efforts to shape the 2012 GOP field. “I’m not going to go into it. But I am going to tell you—leave her alone. Leave her alone.”
They walked off, and I ventured to the other side of the room. Half an hour passed. I didn’t think I’d see Ailes again that evening and began to make my way toward the exit. A bottleneck around the bar prevented me from moving very far. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ailes barreling toward me. At first, I thought he must be walking to see someone else, but his eyes locked on mine. “Listen, your entire premise is wrong. It is just flat wrong,” he said, shaking his arms.
“What do you mean, Roger?”
“I’m not going to get into it. I’m just not.” He was speaking loudly now and people began to look our way. In front of us, CBS president David Rhodes was talking with Moonves and 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft. Rhodes excused himself from his conversation and approached us.
“David, how ya doing?” Ailes said, then addressed me. “You know, I have a present for you. Barbara Walters is back there. She says she’ll talk to you for your book.”
“Great, I’d love to speak with her. I’ve been trying to for months,” I said.
“But you won’t want to talk with her because she’ll only say nice things about me,” Ailes said.
“Listen, I don’t want to get in the middle of any of this,” Rhodes said.
“No, stay here,” Ailes barked.
“Well,” Rhodes said, “you know what Mike Wallace said once”—the veteran 60 Minutes anchor had passed away earlier that week—“ ‘You know when people say nice things about you? When you die.’ ”
Rhodes’s stab at humor did not lift Ailes’s mood. Ailes took a step back. It was unclear now who he was addressing. “Let’s look at this for a minute: Sarah Palin? She couldn’t get elected to anything. Huckabee? He says to me, ‘I couldn’t raise a nickel.’ Santorum? When we hired him, no one, I mean no one, knew who this guy was. And Gingrich has been working here for a long time. So the idea that I’m somehow propping up these candidates is just absurd.”
“Roger, I want to incorporate your point of view,” I replied.
“No!” Ailes snapped. He pointed to Rhodes. “You’re witnessing this! You’re a witness! This is not an interview.”
Ailes spun around and headed off toward his table. “You don’t think if I wanted to I couldn’t get back into politics?” he said, looking back. He stopped in the middle of the room, where I caught up with him. “And what’s it with you going to Warren? I left there in 1958. Anything that anyone says there about me is wrong. They don’t know me.”
“I went to Warren because I wanted to figure out where you came from. You talk a lot about how you program Fox for all the small towns that have been left behind by the media.”
“That’s right. Well, you can write whatever you want. It’s because of people like me that you have the freedom to do what you do. You have freedom of the press because I defend it every day.”
He took a few more steps. “Okay, kid, that’s all I got. You’re a good reporter, but you’re wrong. You don’t get me.”
I decided to leave. Bill O’Reilly was standing alone near the way out. I walked up to him. His air was as frosty as his boss’s. “I know who you are. I have nothing to say to you,” he said.
At the coat check, I bumped into Roger and Beth. “Mr. Ailes, thank you for speaking with me. I’ll see you down in North Carolina.” As it happened, I was flying there the next morning to see Ailes give a speech at the University of North Carolina. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to have you barred. But it’s a public event.”
Ailes did not speak to me in North Carolina, but I encountered him briefly fourteen months later, on the evening of June 12, 2013, in Washington, D.C. I was invited as a member of the press to attend a ceremony at the Kennedy Center, where Ailes was being celebrated by the conservative Bradley Foundation. When I arrived, a young man wearing a blue blazer and a bow tie offered to show me into the reception. He asked me my name as we walked down a long corridor. When I answered, his demeanor changed. “I know who you are,” he said. I asked him his, but he did not respond. Instead, he quickened his pace.
In the reception hall, I saw the young man slalom through the crowd to the far side of the room. He approached Ailes, who was standing with his bodyguard. Ailes’s face tightened. His head turned left and right as he scanned his surroundings.
After a few moments, Ailes, the young man, and the bodyguard walked in my direction. I asked Ailes if he would have time to speak. His bodyguard pushed me aside. Ailes was several steps ahead of me when I regained my balance. He spun around and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but this is a family night!” He turned to the young man in the bow tie. “Zachary, where’s your mother?”
Despite Ailes’s concerted efforts at obstruction, many of his closest colleagues, friends, family members, and business rivals did speak to me at length and offered candid accounts of their firsthand experiences with Ailes. A large number of these people spoke on the record. Many others, however, asked to speak with me on a not-for-attribution background basis. I granted sources anonymity in instances where they expressed credible fear for their professional livelihood. It was not an uncommon occurrence for me to hear things from sources like the following remark one prominent Fox personality made: “It would totally destroy my life if it gets out that I’m talking to you. If he even thought I knew you, he’d see it as a personal betrayal.” Other sources expressed concern that Ailes might be having me followed by private investigators and that my phone might be bugged and my computer hacked.
While Roger Ailes did not grant me a sit-down interview, I strove to reflect his point of view throughout this book. I relied on the thousands of quotes he has given to the press over the years on a wide array of subjects, from his childhood to his thoughts on religion, politics, and culture. Although he may not have intended it, Ailes’s confrontational response to the reporting of this book was as revealing as any comment he would have made in the course of an extended interview. It confirmed one of the defining aspects of his career: he had amassed power by harnessing television to control the images of politicians and media personalities. And so it made sense that he would seek the same degree of influence over the story he
cared about most: his own.
NOTES
EPIGRAMS
1. “An institution” Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance.”
2. “Television rarely, if ever” Roger Ailes, “Candidate + Money + Media = Votes” (transcript of speech), Town Hall of California, June 8, 1971, Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
PROLOGUE: “THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD”
1. On the evening of December 7 A government official familiar with the guest list. See also http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/docs/Holidays-at-the-White-House-2011.pdf.
2. When asked by Tom Junod, “Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?,” Esquire, Feb. 2011.
3. “It’s a shame a man” Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President: The Classic Account of the Packaging of a Candidate, reprint edition (New York: Penguin, 1988), 63. See also Tim Dickinson, “How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory,” Rolling Stone, May 25, 2011.
4. “I never had” Hoover Institution, “Fox and More with Roger Ailes” (video interview), Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, Feb. 5, 2010, http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/26681.
5. “Roger was born for television” Author interview with author Joe McGinniss.
6. More than anyone In his interview on Uncommon Knowledge, Ailes said that he spotted this trend early in his career, as he worked for a wildly popular television variety program. At the 5:07 mark, he notes, “I produced The Mike Douglas Show back in the sixties, so I had a sense of audience. In fact, we began in that show to use politicians’ wives. We filmed in Hubert Humphrey’s home. We had his wife, Muriel, on as a co-host. So I had a sense of what was going to happen in television. That there would be a mixture of entertainment, information, politics. It’s all one now.”
7. “Politics is power” David Nyhan, “Roger Ailes: He Doctors a Politician’s TV Image,” Boston Globe, May 3, 1970.
8. “The difference between” Lloyd Grove, “The Image Shaker; Roger Ailes, the Bush Team’s Wily Media Man,” Washington Post, June 20, 1988.
9. “A couple of weeks” Nyhan, “Roger Ailes: He Doctors a Politician’s TV Image.”
10. “It’s not that I eat” Junod, “Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?”
11. During the 1988 Tom Mathews and Peter Goldman, The Quest for the Presidency: The 1988 Campaign (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 191.
12. “Photo editors are sadistic” Grove, “The Image Shaker; Roger Ailes, the Bush Team’s Wily Media Man.”
13. “I’m never going” Author interview with former Ailes deputy and comedy teacher Stephen Rosenfield.
14. “I think I’ll lead” Nyhan, “Roger Ailes: He Doctors a Politician’s TV Image.”
15. “Revolutionaries” Ibid.
16. “A lot of the time” Email comment from CBS News president David Rhodes.
17. “People need to be reminded” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
18. A few days after Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
19. Obama’s victory Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
20. “When he started the channel” Author interview with a former senior executive at Fox News.
21. Ailes’s battle did not end Author interviews with residents of Philipstown, New York.
22. Ailes even told his advisers Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
23. During a forty-five-minute Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
24. “I see the most powerful man” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter. On the same night Ailes was meeting Obama, Sean Hannity was turning the White House Christmas party into another data point in Fox’s narrative about Obama. He talked with two Fox personalities about the party: Sandra Smith, a young anchor for the Fox Business Channel, and Monica Crowley, the conservative radio host who was once an assistant to Richard Nixon in the 1990s.
“You’re saying that there was a party for the media people at the White House tonight?” Hannity said to the women.
“Yes, and I can’t believe none of us got invited,” Crowley commented. “It’s so lame—”
“Why aren’t we there?” Smith said.
“Wait a minute. Did anyone get to go?” Hannity asked.
“Uh, well, certain media organizations—” Crowley said.
“No, but, did anyone from Fox go?” Hannity said.
“I don’t know, but none of us are there. Cuz we’re workin’, tellin’ the truth about Obama,” she said.
“I didn’t get an invitation. I have never gotten an invitation,” Hannity complained. “And I saw all the liberal media at Bush’s—I went to one party in eight years when Bush was there and all the liberals showed up.”
“Yes, and us conservatives continue to get nixed by this White House,” Crowley said.
“Did anybody from Fox get an invitation?” Hannity repeated.
“Tsss, you know, I don’t know—” Smith said.
“We don’t know, either,” Hannity added.
“Maybe we will hear about it tomorrow, though,” Smith continued.
“It will be interesting,” Hannity said. “We will see.”
25. In 2002, Fox passed CNN Jim Rutenberg, “MEDIA: Gazing into 2003: The Balance of Media Power Is Poised to Change—Cable News; At CNN, Hoping for Restored Glory,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2002. See also Carr and Arango, “A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics.”
26. In 2012, a Wall Street analyst Merrill Knox, “Estimated Fair-Market Value of Fox News at $12.4B,” TVNewser, Feb. 6, 2012, http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/estimated-fair-market-value-of-fox-news-12-4_b110790.
27. “No one could rein Ailes in” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
28. “He’s paranoid” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
29. In 2008, Murdoch even contemplated Gabriel Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room,” New York, May 22, 2011.
30. Murdoch promised Ailes Matea Gold, “Roger Ailes Extends Fox Deal,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 21, 2008.
31. In September, the Post “Post Endorses John McCain,” New York Post, Sept. 8, 2008.
32. In 2010, Murdoch cut off Carr and Arango, “A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics.” Freud released the quotation after getting into a dispute with Murdoch. Freud lobbied Murdoch to kill a story in the New York Post about a client of his PR firm, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi. Murdoch dismissed Freud’s requests. On the morning of January 10, 2010, Freud sent an email to Murdoch’s BlackBerry informing him of his payback: “I’ve given a quote to the New York Times, and you’re probably not going to like it.”
33. “He’s a fucking dope” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
34. “They all hate me” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
35. “He was delighted it was happening” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
36. He openly bad-mouthed Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
37. “I want to elect the next” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
38. “Every single candidate” Author interview with a national Republican official.
39. Although Ailes told one Fox contributor Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room.”
40. “He finds flaws” Author interview with a person close to Roger Ailes.
41. In a meeting at Fox News Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
42. “To be clear” Darren Samuelsohn, “Huntsman on Evolution, Warming: ‘Call Me Crazy,’ ” Politico, Aug. 18, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61656.html.
43. After finishing third Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny, “Huntsman Says He’s Quitting G.O.P. Race,” “The Caucus” (blog), New York Times, Jan. 15, 2012, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/huntsman-says-hes-quitting-g-o-p-race/.
44.
Over the course of his candidacy “The Fox Primary: 8 Months, 12 Candidates, 604 Appearances, 4644 Minutes,” Media Matters for America, Feb. 27, 2012, http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/02/27/the-fox-primary-8-months-12-candidates-604-appe/185876.
45. pizza mogul Herman Cain “The Fox Primary: 8 Months, 12 Candidates, 604 Appearances, 4644 Minutes.”
46. Ailes twice encouraged the brash New Jersey Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room.”
47. Ailes also sent an emissary Bob Woodward, “Fox Chief Proposed Petraeus Campaign,” Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2012. See also “Petraeus in 2011 Fox News Interview: ‘I’m Not Running for President’ ” (audio), Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/lifestyle/style/petraeus-in-2011-fox-news-interview-im-not-running-for-president/2012/12/03/c0aa0c72-3d6d-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_video.html.
48. From the start, he’d been lukewarm Author interviews with Fox news executives.
49. Ailes told Romney once Howard Kurtz, “Roger’s Reality Show,” Newsweek, Sept. 25, 2011.
50. In another conversation Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
51. He told one Fox host Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
52. “Romney’s gotta rip” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
53. “Roger was running a political campaign” Author interview with a person close to Roger Ailes.
The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country Page 52