The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine

by David Brock

  After taking the ratings lead in January 2002, Fox News never looked back. The network’s cheerleading of the Iraq War only vaulted it forward. Murdoch and Ailes had accomplished their goal: Fox News was number one. With this victory, Ailes’s influence inside News Corp. grew. The question was how he would use it.

  Part II

  Building the Movement

  Chapter 3

  A “Terrorist Fist Jab”?

  It is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said: “Why can’t we catch this guy?”

  —Roger Ailes

  Rupert Murdoch had been flirting with the idea of endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 general election for months. The New York Post, Murdoch’s preferred vehicle for such an announcement, had already supported Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Appearing at the All Things Digital conference in May 2008, Murdoch came close to publicly supporting Obama, saying that “he was leaning toward it, but would know in the next six months.”1

  Now, with the election pending, Murdoch was considering announcing his support. This did not please Roger Ailes, who went to his boss to complain about the potential endorsement and “a book excerpt in Vanity Fair” that claimed the head of News Corp. might be occasionally ashamed of Fox News. The New York Times reported that during their encounter, “Mr. Ailes threatened to quit.”2 Ailes, for his part, denied making the threat.

  When compared with the attacks on Obama launched by Fox News, The New York Post’s endorsement would have been insignificant.

  From the moment Barack Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, people knew he was a different kind of politician. “I have seen the first black president there,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews declared. “And the reason I say that is because I think the immigrant experience combined with the African background, combined with the incredible education, combined with his beautiful speech, not every politician gets help with the speech, but that speech was a piece of work.”3

  As the young future senator faded into the background, Fox News would spend the next several weeks promoting the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in its relentless battle against Democratic nominee and Vietnam veteran John Kerry. The impact of the Swift Boat Veterans’ attacks was highlighted by anchor Brit Hume, who claimed in a post-election report, “Far more voters say the Swift Boat Veterans had the most impact than say that about any other [interest] group.”4

  Four years later, Fox would dust off this playbook when covering the Obama campaign, taking smears and distortions originating from marginal news sources and interest groups and repeating them ad nauseam until they became “fact” to a receptive segment of voters.

  The first and most enduring lie of the 2008 campaign began with an article published on January 17, 2007, by InsightMag.com, a website affiliated with the conservative Washington Times. The post claimed that “researchers connected to” Hillary Clinton had discovered that Barack Obama “spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.” Furthermore, “sources close to [a] background check,” which was “conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton,” said that “the idea is to show Obama as deceptive.” “These ‘sources’ also told InsightMag.com that ‘the specific Madrassa Mr. Obama attended’ might have taught ‘a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.’ ”5

  The story contained the elements Ailes loved to exploit as a campaign manager. Its message was not simply “Barack Obama is a Muslim”; it was “Barack Obama is not like you; he might even be connected to a foreign and dangerous religion.” For Fox News, accusing the Clinton campaign of spreading the story was simply a bonus.

  It is unclear if the “sources” behind the story even existed. On January 9, eight days before the InsightMag.com piece was published, Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The crazies are sending around an e‑mail that attempts to establish that Barack Obama is actually a Muslim who masquerades as a Christian for political advantage.”6 This chain e‑mail may have played a role in InsightMag.com’s “scoop.”

  In spite of the story’s thin sourcing and sensational allegations, on January 19, Fox & Friends reported on the madrassa story and solicited viewer comments. That afternoon, coverage on Fox News continued, with host John Gibson dedicating two segments of his show to the InsightMag.com article. That’s not to say other conservative media outlets did not give airtime to the madrassa smear. The same day, numerous conservative talk radio hosts and media figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage joined in spreading this lie.

  The next day, on Fox News Watch, columnist Cal Thomas said that there are “[a] lot of questions” about whether Obama “spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia,” and that “they start off these schools, if it was a madrassa, with a reference to God and his only prophet is Muhammad.”7

  Even neutral observers of Fox felt the network had gone too far. Howard Kurtz blasted John Gibson for not having “done the firsthand reporting” and noted that Obama wrote “in his autobiography that he spent two years at a Muslim school in Indonesia.”8 On January 22, Fox News finally clarified its story, with Fox & Friends cohost Steve Doocy acknowledging that “Mr. Obama’s people called and they said that that is absolutely false.”9

  Kurtz returned to the topic in his Washington Post column on January 22, calling the InsightMag.com story “thinly sourced,” adding: “These days, the time elapsed between a flimsy charge from some magazine or Web site and amplification by bigger media outlets is often close to zero.”10 That afternoon, Kurtz appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room and commented that the smear “got a big boost from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.”11

  CNN made the effort to actually uncover the truth. International correspondent John Vause went to Indonesia to visit the elementary school Obama attended. Familiar with madrassas from his work in Pakistan, Vause determined the Indonesian school was “nothing like” one.12 Vause’s report was the first of several by media outlets discrediting the claim.

  On January 24, the Associated Press reaffirmed CNN’s story, reporting that “interviews by the Associated Press at the elementary school in Jakarta found that it’s a public and secular institution that has been open to students of all faiths since before the White House hopeful attended in the late 1960s.”13

  The flurry of stories forced Fox executives to respond. On January 25, ABC quoted Fox News senior vice president of programming Bill Shine saying that “the hosts of Fox & Friends gave too much credence to the Insight magazine report and spent far too long discussing its premise on the air. Those remarks were clarified on the next Fox & Friends program.” Shine continued, “When John Gibson focused on the item, he, like other news outlets, presented Senator Obama’s statement on the subject. We consider the matter closed and believe the senator feels the same way.”14

  Shine, who had worked at the network from its first day on the air, delivered the company line. But Fox was not done with the madrassa story. Twelve days after the InsightMag.com story was published, one week after it was first debunked by CNN, and four days after the network’s own executives called the veracity of the story into question, Fox News political analyst Dick Morris continued to speculate on the story. Appearing on Hannity & Colmes, Morris said, “I believe that that Insight magazine story that was inaccurate, that he went to a Muslim school, was indeed planted, as Insight magazine said, by somebody close to the Clinton war room.”15

  Almost two years after the madrassa smear was discredited, it was still being repeated on the Fox News Channel. On December 30, 2009, conservative pundit Ann Coulter told viewers of Glenn Beck’s Fox show: “I think if you polled Americans after 9/11, they would have said drop the political correctness when it comes to boarding airplanes. And like I say, Obama can be doing more than Bush. He is specially situated that way, as having gone to madrassas as a child, not being a white male, which is, you know, the
height of political incorrectness, but just the contrary, we’re moving in exactly doing the—making—repeating the worst mistakes of the Bush administration.”16 These attacks from Fox on Obama’s heritage and faith have continued throughout his presidency.

  During the spring of 2007, questions about Barack Obama’s personal story remained at the forefront of Fox News coverage. For example, on February 28, John Gibson devoted two segments of his show to a claim made in the British tabloid Daily Mail: that Barack Obama was not entirely truthful in his memoir Dreams from My Father.

  Gibson suggested that Obama had lied when depicting his father, Barack Obama, Sr., as “a ray of hope” and “a great man,” obscuring the fact that he was “a wife-beating alcoholic who didn’t bother to get a divorce before marrying the next woman and having a few more kids.”17 Obama’s religion also became a target. That same day, Sean Hannity stated that “many” call the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago “separatist … in some cases, even drawing comparisons to a cult.”18

  This line comes straight out of Roger Ailes’s campaign textbook. Substance doesn’t matter—not when there is a chance to stir up racial and ethnic animosities in order to convince voters that an opposing candidate doesn’t share their values. The goal was never to show that Barack Obama was advocating the wrong policies for America. Ailes wanted to prove that Obama was not American.

  It was no surprise when Roger Ailes, in the form of a misguided attempt at humor, joined in on the attacks. On March 8, while accepting a First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association, he joked: “It is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf and said: ‘Why can’t we catch this guy?’ ”19

  As the attacks on candidate Obama escalated, they turned vulgar. On August 24, Sean Hannity aired footage of musician Ted Nugent “calling Barack Obama a ‘piece of shit’ and referring to” Hillary Clinton “as a ‘worthless bitch.’ ” In the clip, Nugent held up assault rifles, telling Obama “to suck on my machine gun” and Clinton that “ ‘you might want to ride one of these into the sunset.’ ” After airing the clip, Hannity referred to Nugent as a “ ‘friend and frequent guest on the program’ ” and “asked Fox News contributor and former Democratic strategist Bob Beckel: ‘What’s more offensive to you? Is it Barack Obama’s statement about our troops or Ted Nugent?’ Beckel responded by asking Hannity if he was ‘prepared to disavow this lowlife,’ to which Hannity responded: ‘No, I like Ted Nugent. He’s a friend of mine.’ ”20

  After Fidel Castro wrote about the U.S. election in a Cuban newspaper, Fox News jumped on the story. “Fidel Castro, of all people, endorses a Hillary Clinton–Barack Obama presidential ticket,”21 guest host Michelle Malkin said on The O’Reilly Factor. “What is that all about?” The next morning, Fox & Friends continued to push the story with an on-screen graphic reading, “CASTRO’S DREAM TEAM: WANTS CLINTON AND OBAMA IN ’08.”

  Fox also displayed a graphic of Castro, Clinton, and Obama surrounded by a heart.22 The only problem was, Castro never endorsed Clinton or Obama. He was actually critical of the Democratic candidates, writing, “Today, talk is about the seemingly invincible ticket that might be created with Hillary for President and Obama for Vice President. Both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding ‘a democratic government in Cuba.’ They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon.”23

  Many of these incidents occurred when Obama was still considered an underdog. As it became clear he would win the Democratic nomination, the attacks began to resemble those that the network continued to lob in 2009 and 2010. “As more is learned about Barack Obama’s positions, his past, and his affiliations, it seems that the ‘change’ candidate has all the same problems with race as those before him,” Sean Hannity said on March 2, 2008. He added, “It’s only fair to ask: Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?”24

  Hannity was discussing an award given to Louis Farrakhan by Trumpet Newsmagazine, a publication that was founded by Trinity Church. Hannity went on to claim that Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, “honored Farrakhan for lifetime achievement, saying, quote, ‘He truly epitomized greatness.’ ”25 Wright never made the statement; it was the magazine’s managing editor, Rhoda McKinney-Jones. Hannity also did not mention that Obama’s campaign issued a statement disagreeing with the magazine’s decision to give Farrakhan the award, condemning the Nation of Islam leader’s anti-Semitic statements.

  In the next segment, Hannity attacked Michelle Obama for what she wrote in her undergraduate thesis. “She wrote in her thesis,” Hannity said, “that we see at Princeton, you know, the belief—‘because of the belief that blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.’ ”26 Contrary to Hannity’s assertion, Michelle Obama was describing views that black students who attended Princeton in the 1970s may have held, not asserting her own views. Hannity never acknowledged the distinction.

  As the primary season came to a close, the Fox staple of comparing Barack Obama to Hitler and other genocidal dictators began. This was especially hypocritical, considering the outcry four years earlier when two members of the progressive organization MoveOn.org submitted ads to a contest comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. That year, Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie went on Fox News Sunday to attack MoveOn.org, stating, “That’s the kind of tactics we’re seeing on the left today in support of these Democratic presidential candidates.”27 In 2008, these attacks would become par for the course on Fox.

  In February 2008, a caller to Tom Sullivan’s Fox News Radio show claimed that listening to Barack Obama speak “harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they’d come to their feet and scream and yell.” Sullivan then played a side-by-side comparison of Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama speaking.28

  On April 3, Ann Coulter opened the floodgates on Hannity & Colmes, saying, “He’s a dime store Mein Kampf.” Alan Colmes then asked the acerbic right-wing pundit whether Obama was “a two-bit Hitler,” to which Coulter responded: “Yes.”

  “We should be as wary of Obama as they should have been of Hitler in Nazi Germany?” Colmes inquired.

  “If only people had read Mein Kampf,” Coulter answered.29

  Of all the over-the-top attacks on Obama, the first one that caused Fox News to flinch came on June 6, when Fox host E. D. Hill teased a segment about Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist-bumping by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.”30 On June 10, she was actually forced to apologize:

  Want to start the show by clarifying something I said on the show last Friday about an upcoming body language segment. Now, I mentioned various ways the Obamas’ fist pump in St. Paul had been characterized in the media. I apologize because unfortunately, some thought I personally had characterized it inappropriately. I regret that. It was not my intention. And I certainly didn’t mean to associate the word “terrorist” in any way with Senator Obama and his wife. Now, today, the senator is talking about the economy.31

  Hill’s show was canceled a week later, but her misfortune didn’t dissuade other Fox News hosts from jumping deeper into the fray. On June 16, Brit Hume attempted to cast doubt about Barack Obama’s Christian faith, based on a purported statement by the candidate’s half brother. Hume reported, “Malik Obama tells The Jerusalem Post that ‘if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background.’ ”32

  However, as ABC’s Jake Tapper pointed out, nowhere in the audio of the interview did Malik Obama assert that Obama would be “a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background.” Additionally, Tapper’s article indicated that Malik Obama did not speak with the Post but instead with Israel’s Army Radio. Tapper concluded that the piece, cited by several conservative bloggers, “was a sloppy paraphras
e that emerged as false evidence.”33

  Rupert Murdoch, normally accustomed to politicians courting him, had for months pursued a meeting with Obama. When it finally occurred in the early summer, he brought a guest along with him, Fox News chief Roger Ailes. “Obama lit into Ailes,” according to Michael Wolff’s biography of Murdoch. “He said he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.”34

  Ailes shot back that “it might not have been this way if Obama had come on air instead of giving Fox the back of his hand. A tentative truce, which may or may not have historic significance, was thereupon agreed.”35 But this “truce” never seemed to affect the content on Fox News.

  In July, Obama took a highly unusual trip for a candidate, leaving the campaign trail to travel abroad. The tour was viewed positively by the public and the media. Echoing the McCain campaign, Fox News seized on a false allegation to go on the attack. On July 29, Sean Hannity claimed that Obama had canceled a visit with wounded soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because he was not allowed to bring cameras along on the visit. According to Hannity, Obama “abandoned the troop visit because the cameras weren’t … allowed and the campaign wasn’t allowed.”36

  This was simply false. As NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported, “There was never any intention—let me be absolutely clear about this. The press was never going to go. The entourage was never going to go. There was never an intention to make this political.”37

  As the summer campaign season heated up, Democrats braced for a “swift boat” attack on Obama, and conservative author Jerome Corsi, who had worked with members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to bring down the campaign of Senator John Kerry, obliged. His book Unfit for Command had been a bestseller and became the basis for the ad campaign that would help to sink Kerry’s bid for the White House. Now he planned a repeat performance, and Fox News was willing to give Corsi its platform to smear Obama.