I have not been a big fan of Fox News but it was the only source of relatively neutral political reporting on TV for years. Some years ago, Charles Krauthammer famously said, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes found a “niche market ” with 50% of the population.
I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.
What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.
A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.
Now, in a trend that has become depressingly common, the heirs of Murdoch are taking over and shifting the programming left. Roger Ailes has been named by a disgruntled ex-employee in a fairly laughable sexual harassment suit. Carlson was fired and then, after being fired, sued alleging harassment.
Ailes, predictably, dismissed the charges as false.
Ailes said in his personal statement: “Gretchen Carlson’s allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network’s decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup. When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit.”
She also accused co-host Steve Doocey.
The Carlson suit also alleged that Doocy “had created a hostile work environment by regularly treating her in a condescending and sexist way.” The suit says Ailes responded to her 2009 complaint to a supervisor by telling her to learn to “get along with the boys.”
While the lawsuit is based in part on alleged comments by Ailes in private conversations with Carlson, it provides no e-mail, texts or voice mail as evidence.
The “Internal investigation” now seems to a hit job by an outside law firm. Murdoch’s children seem to be heavily involved. He is 84 and has turned much of the operation of his two corporations to them.
It now sounds as though Ailes is now being pushed out by Murdoch heirs.
Something happens to heirs when they take over from the founding parent. It may be disaster as in the case of U-Haul, or the Crown Books family feud.
Of course, much more money and probably politics are involved with News Corp and Fox News.
According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News executive, led by New York–based law firm Paul, Weiss, Kelly has told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about ten years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox. Kelly, according to the sources, has described her harassment by Ailes in detail.
There is a backstory to this.
There has been a transparent evolution within Fox News taking place after Rupert Murdoch moved to put his sons James and Lachlan into place.
Despite the financial benefits of running a more conservative/centrist network, like their father, the Murdoch boys are more ideologically aligned with the Mark Zuckerberg “Clintonian” world-view on all things media/political, (see: Bono, Richard Branson, Brangelina peaceniks etc.)
Almost all Fox watchers have noted the recent leftward shift which is factually more than an executive nudge. It would appear the sexual harassment claim, if factual, is fortuitous as a leverage tool toward the convenient and mounting effort to remove Roger Ailes from Fox News stewardship.
Why would the Murdoch family want to risk the goose the lays the golden eggs ?
If these allegations are true, and we suspect they are fact-based, Roger Ailes will be gone very soon… what happens after that is anyone’s guess, but predictably the anti-nationalist undermining of Donald Trump will be much easier to facilitate.
The sun set on Fox News several years ago, it’s been a weird shadowy dusk ever since. Luckily for Murdoch/Ailes Inc. at the same time the center-right apex was reached, then abandoned, their competition went further left. The ideological shift by their competition gave Fox News the false appearance of holding place – they didn’t, the entire media apparatus has shifted left.
What happens to Roger Ailes if he is forced out ? Probably a new success.
What happens to Fox News ? Probably nothing good.
In time, his departure also threatens to upend the the status quo at the nation’s dominant cable news channel. In conversations with CNNMoney, television news executives and media industry insiders predicted that Ailes’ exit would precipitate a flight of top talent, including the network’s highest-rated hosts: Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly.
“Roger is Fox News,” one television news executive said. “Every aspect of the organization reported to him. He held the place together. He’s the only person who’s ever run it.”
As of Tuesday evening, Ailes was in talks with 21st Century Fox that will likely lead to his departure following an investigation into reports of sexual harassment, though no agreement had been reached.
I doubt he would want any part of Megyn Kelly whose new hairdo has cost any interest I had in her show. Also, she is making a big deal of alleged “advances” 10 years ago.
According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News executive, led by New York–based law firm Paul, Weiss, Kelly has told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about ten years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox. Kelly, according to the sources, has described her harassment by Ailes in detail.
Of course, NY Magazine is no friend of Fox News. It may be a new friend of Kelly and the Murdoch heirs.
The biggest problem Fox News faces is that Ailes has no heir apparent. The television executives CNNMoney spoke with speculate that 21st Century Fox will bring in someone from Sky, its British broadcaster. But while Brits may be able to run American news organizations, these executives said, it is much more difficult for a Brit to manage an American political organization — which is what Fox News is, these sources said.
Kelly has high ambitions but I see her as another Paul Zahn, who also thought she was bigger than her current program.
Months later, she helped launch her own prime time news program, The Edge with Paula Zahn. Two years later, FNC discovered she was in negotiations with CNN over a possible move there and fired her for what they alleged was a breach of her contract. A suit FNC filed against her agent was subsequently thrown out by a New York State Supreme Court judge.
She is now doing shows on the “Murder Channel,” as I call “Investigation Discovery.”
What does the future hold for Kelly and Fox News. I can wait to find out.
Tags: politics