January 10, 2010
A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media
and Politics
By DAVID CARR and TIM ARANGO
In the fall of 2008, Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, went to his
boss, Rupert Murdoch, with two complaints: he had heard that Mr.
Murdoch was considering endorsing Barack Obama for president in
The New York Post, and he had read a book excerpt in Vanity Fair
suggesting that Mr. Murdoch was sometimes embarrassed by the
right-leaning Fox News.
Mr. Ailes threatened to quit, a person familiar with the conversation
said. Instead, Mr. Murdoch soon rewarded him with a new, more
lucrative contract — he made $23 million last year in salary, bonuses
and other compensation, more than Mr. Murdoch — and The New
York Post endorsed John McCain.
In an interview in late December in his office at News Corporation
headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Ailes conceded that he had
opposed an Obama endorsement. (“I didn’t think he had the
experience,” he said, adding, “I don’t tell Rupert Murdoch who to
endorse.”) He was outraged by the Vanity Fair article but said he
“demanded nothing” and did not threaten to quit. He said he did not
have to.
“If you’re making money and you’ve hit your targets for five years, you
don’t need to demand a new contract,” he said.
Mr. Ailes is certainly making money. At a time when the broadcast
networks are struggling with diminishing audiences and profits in
news, he has built Fox News into the profit engine of the News
Corporation. Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN,
MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined.
The division is on track to achieve $700 million in operating profit
this year, according to analyst estimates that Mr. Ailes does not
dispute.
This outsize success has placed Mr. Ailes, an aggressive former
Republican political strategist, at the pinnacle of power in three
corridors of American life: business, media and politics. In addition to
being the best-paid person in the News Corporation last year, he is the
most successful news executive of the last 10 years, and his network
exerts a strong influence on the fractured conservative movement.
Mr. Obama told The New York Times Magazine in October 2008 that
the “Fox effect” had cost him two to three points in the polls. Since
that election, Mr. Ailes and his cohort of conservative anchors like
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have been riding a wave of
discontent that sometimes puts them at odds with the Republican
Party’s establishment, most recently with Fox News’s advocacy of an
independent candidate in the 23rd Congressional District in upstate
New York. The Republican candidate eventually withdrew.
“When you think about that, it’s the equivalent of the endorsement
major newspapers used to provide,” said David Gergen, an analyst on
CNN who has been an aide in Democratic and Republican
administrations.
He went on: “Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger
Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built
a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at
times, the political process.”
Mr. Murdoch, in a statement relayed by a spokesman, said: “I’m
proud of Fox News and what it is accomplishing, and I am grateful to
Roger and his team for creating such a great asset for News
Corporation.”
Mr. Ailes’s approach has put him at odds not just with the Democrats
but also with the more liberal members of his boss’s family.
He played a well-chronicled role in the decision in 2004 by Lachlan
Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s eldest son, to leave the company; he thought
Mr. Ailes was intruding on his corporate turf. Two other Murdoch
children, Elisabeth, a television producer in London, and James, the
only Murdoch scion employed at the company, are sympathetic to
Democratic causes and frequently voiced concerns to their father
during last year’s presidential campaign about Fox News’s coverage of
Mr. Obama.
And those concerns have only grown.
“I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being
ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained
disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its
founder and every other global media business aspires to,” said
Matthew Freud, who is married to Ms. Murdoch and whom PR Week
magazine says is the most influential public relations executive in
London.
In the interview, Mr. Ailes said that both Mr. Murdoch and the News
Corporation had been consistently supportive of Fox News and its
approach.
Mr. Ailes, the son of a foreman at the Packard Electric plant in
Warren, Ohio, described his upbringing with three words: “God,
country, family” and said that credo was responsible for the success of
Fox News.
“I built this channel from my life experience,” Mr. Ailes, 69, said. “My
first qualification is I didn’t go to Columbia Journalism School. There
are no parties in this town that I want to go to.”
Mr. Ailes majored in radio and television at Ohio University and
worked for “The Mike Douglas Show,” where at age 27 he met thenpresidential candidate Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
“The camera doesn’t like you,” he told Mr. Nixon, according to “Crazy
Like a Fox,” a book by Scott Collins about Fox News.
“It’s a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected,” Mr.
Nixon said.
“Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again,”
Mr. Ailes said. The Nixon campaign hired him a few days later.
The night in 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Mr.
Ailes was inside the Oval Office setting up a screen on the president’s
desk. The next year, Mr. Ailes was sent to Hawaii in advance of the
attempt by the troubled Apollo 13 mission to return to earth. He
prepared for two events in adjacent hangars: a funeral and a welcome
home ceremony. Apollo 13 made it home safely.
Joe McGinniss, who wrote about Mr. Ailes in his 1969 book, “The
Selling of the President 1968,” keeps in touch with him. “Success
never made that chip on his shoulder go away,” Mr. McGinniss said.
“He holds onto what he envisions to be the values of the heartland and
is suspicious of people on either coast.”
After serving as a communications consultant for politicians and
executives, Mr. Ailes ran CNBC, the business network, in the early
1990s under Bob Wright, then the chief of NBC.
“He’s got a very good sense of simplicity on air,” Mr. Wright said.
“Because he had that background of being involved in political
campaigns, he could develop a message and deliver it, and test it
quickly to see if it’s effective.”
Mr. Ailes started Fox News in 1996 and faced skepticism that it ever
could be a rival to CNN, much less the ratings and profits leader it is
today. As recently as 2002, the network made very little money, said
Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.
Today, its vast profits secured by ever-rising fees from cable
companies make it “probably the single most important asset at News
Corporation,” he said.
“I built this business to throw off a billion dollars in profit,” Mr. Ailes
said. “That was the goal from Day 1. In my own mind.”
Rick Perlstein, author of “Nixonland,” sees a strong resemblance
between Mr. Ailes’s political experience and his approach to
television.
“Like Richard Nixon, like Spiro Agnew, Fox News can never see itself
as the attacker,” he said. “They are always playing defense because
they believe they are always under attack, which attracts people that
have the same personality formation. By bringing that mind-set, plus
the high energy seamless stream of the aggression of talk radio, he has
found an audience.”
Not all of Mr. Ailes’s political interests are national in scope. In 2002,
after buying a weekend home in Putnam County, N.Y., an area rich in
American history (a passion of Mr. Ailes’s) about 60 miles north of
Manhattan, he became keenly interested in local issues. In 2008, he
bought two local newspapers and installed his wife, Elizabeth, as
publisher of both. He also has a young son.
There, he has engaged in a more direct version of politics. He is
extremely concerned about zoning, among other local issues.
At a town hall forum on Oct. 26 sponsored by one of his newspapers,
he had a heated exchange with Richard Shea, a Democratic
councilman who was running for town supervisor. “I turn around, and
there he is,” said Mr. Shea, who won the election. “He starts right in
on the zoning. He says, ‘What are you trying to hide from me in the
zoning?’ He said, ‘I own the newspaper.’ ”
Mr. Shea continued, “My takeaway was that this guy is pretty much
threatening me.”
Mr. Ailes said he simply asked for Mr. Shea’s phone number and
complained about “environmental zealots” in the town. “I am a
conservationist,” he said. “I try to put the bottle in the right can.”
As powerful as he is within the News Corporation, Mr. Ailes remains a
spectral presence outside the Fox News offices. National security had
long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the
interview that the 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes.
They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.
On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the
minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air.
The answer: 42. “I am one of them,” he said. “I’ve got a bad leg, I’m a
little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.
“We had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any
communications company could be a target.”
His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporateprovided security. He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy
of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the
comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the
blinds drawn.
Mr. Ailes said he received frequent threats over the years, but his
concerns for the safety of his family were heightened by an incident at
his New Jersey home after the 9/11 attacks. There was an intruder on
his property, but no arrest was made. In Putnam County, he has
bought several properties surrounding his home. A sign outside his
house shows an illustration of a gun and advises visitors that it is
under video surveillance.
After 9/11, Mr. Ailes sent a memo to President George W. Bush urging
harsh action. Despite the influence Fox News has over many
Republicans — the megaphone of Fox News is a valuable one for
Republican politicians — he is generally not eager to be seen as having
any relationship with the party. His influence in politics is onceremoved, expressed through the talent he chooses and the tone he
sets.
In a sense, trading intelligence with party officials would be a step
down for Mr. Ailes. “He understands the news media, politics and the
American people as well as anyone in the modern age,” said Newt
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.
Even Mr. Ailes’s political foes understand the influence of what he has
built at Fox News.
“If he were a Democrat, I think there would be 67 Democratic senators
right now,” said the political consultant James Carville, a former
Clinton aide and a frequent guest on CNN. “In terms of the news
business, the cable television business, and the political business,
there is him and then there is everybody else.”