The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--And Divided a Country (83 page)

105.
“The day after the election”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

106.
“It won’t be easy”
Brit Hume,
Special Report with Brit Hume
, Fox News Channel, Nov. 8, 2000.

107.
“There is a minor brouhaha”
Bill O’Reilly,
The O’Reilly Factor
, Fox News Channel, Nov. 8, 2000.

108.
“I think what’s going on”
John Gibson,
The O’Reilly Factor
, Fox News Channel, Dec. 9, 2000.

109.
On November 26
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 156–57; Paula Zahn,
Special Report with Brit Hume
, Fox News Channel, Nov. 26, 2000.

110.
“If it hadn’t been for Fox”
Howard Kurtz, “Doing Something Right, Fox News Sees Ratings Soar, Critics Sore,”
Washington Post
, Feb. 5, 2001.

111.
In November 2000
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 158.

112.
David Shuster was
Much of the information in the following pages is taken from an author interview with broadcaster and journalist David Shuster.

113.
On Thursday, November 2
Alicia C. Shepard, “A Late-Breaking Campaign Skeleton,”
American Journalism Review
, Dec. 2000.

114.
Carl Cameron broke it
Brit Hume,
Special Report with Brit Hume
, Fox News Channel, Nov. 2, 2000.

115.
“I knew it would hurt him”
Ken Auletta, “Vox Fox: How Roger Ailes and Fox News Are Changing Cable News,”
New Yorker
, May 26, 2003.

116.
the reporter’s source was a Democrat
Shepard, “A Late-Breaking Campaign Skeleton.”

117.
On air, Tony Snow
Tony Snow,
Special Report with Brit Hume
, Fox News Network, Nov. 3, 2000.

118.
“I don’t know whether”
Alan Colmes,
Hannity & Colmes
, Carl Cameron interview with George W. Bush, Fox News Channel, Nov. 4, 2000.

119.
The coverage reflected
Author interview with David Shuster.

120.
As the recount stalemated
Ibid.

121.
Shuster also clashed
Author interview with David Shuster.

122.
Bret Baier
“Bret Baier,”
Foxnews.com
,
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/bret-baier/bio/
; David Folkenflik, “Bret Baier: The Next Generation of Fox News Anchor,”
NPR.org
, April 6, 2011,
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135176903/bret-baier-the-next-generation-of-fox-news-anchor
.

123.
On Fox, Brit Hume
Brit Hume,
Special Report with Brit Hume
, Fox News Channel, Nov. 15, 2000.

124.
Shuster’s time was running out
Author interview with David Shuster.

125.
He would leave the network
“First Bites,”
Bulldog Reporter Business Media
, July 26, 2002.

126.
On November 9
Mayer, “George W.’s Cousin.”

127.
“Jebbie’ll be calling me”
Ibid.

128.
“It was just the three of us”
Ibid.

129.
Gore’s campaign manager
Tapper,
Down & Dirty
, 69n.

130.
There were congressional hearings
Katharine Q. Seelye, “Congress Plans Study of Voting Processes and TV Coverage,”
New York Times
, Feb. 9, 2001.

131.
Cynthia Talkov had become
Author interview with Cynthia Talkov.

132.
On Valentine’s Day 2001
House of Representatives, 107th Congress, Hearing Before the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Feb. 14, 2001.

133.
Prior to the hearing
Author interview with former Associated Press CEO Lou Baccardi.

134.
“Obviously, through”
House of Representatives, Hearing Before the Committee on Energy and Commerce, prepared statement of Roger Ailes.

135.
“That one little moment”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

    
1.
In a few hours
Author interview with attorney and political adviser John Coale, Van Susteren’s spouse.

    
2.
Six days before
Lisa de Moraes, “CNN Nabs Paula Zahn from Miffed Fox News,”
Washington Post
, Sept. 6, 2001.

    
3.
Before she left
Auletta, “Vox Fox.”

    
4.
In March 2001
Allyson Lieberman, “The New King of Cable: WB Whiz Jamie Kellner Is Taking On His Biggest Challenge Yet: Turner’s Empire,”
New York Post
, March 11, 2001.

    
5.
“Give us six months”
Jim Rutenberg, “Hatfield vs. McCoy in TV Land,”
New York Times
, Jan. 13, 2002.

    
6.
“Roger printed that quote”
Ibid.; author interview with a senior Fox News producer.

    
7.
“Who wouldn’t want to be”
Author interview with former Fox News producer Anne Hartmayer.

    
8.
Kellner, whom
The New York Times
Jim Rutenberg, “Mix, Patch, Promote and Lift; A Showman Speeds the Makeover of Ted Turner’s Empire,”
New York Times
, July 15, 2001.

    
9.
offered Zahn $2 million
de Moraes, “CNN Nabs Paula Zahn from Miffed Fox News.”

  
10.
“She thought her career”
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 178.

  
11.
On Tuesday, August 28
The account of Fox’s negotiations with Zahn can be found in ibid., 177–82.

  
12.
“He made it very clear”
Auletta, “Vox Fox.”

  
13.
The following morning
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 180–81.

  
14.
The suit was later dismissed
Bill Carter, “Judge Dismisses Fox News Suit over Anchor’s Defection to CNN,”
New York Times
, March 26, 2002; Bill Carter, “Fox Loses Round in Its Suit over Anchor’s Move to CNN,”
New York Times
, May 1, 2003.

  
15.
“I don’t pay for disloyalty”
Bill Carter, “Fox News Fires a Star Host over CNN Bid,”
New York Times
, Sept. 6, 2001.

  
16.
Ailes said he was
Ibid.

  
17.
“I could have put”
Ibid.

  
18.
“The key to the whole thing”
Author interview with a senior Fox executive.

  
19.
Shortly after 9:00
Author interview with John Coale.

  
20.
“Oh my God”
The account of this meeting is based on author interview with a person in the room as well as the account in Scott Collins’s book,
Crazy Like a Fox
, p. 161.

  
21.
Moody, sitting
Author interviews with senior Fox executives and producers.

  
22.
The producers sitting around
Author interviews with senior Fox executives and producers.

  
23.
“Welcome back to Fox News”
The descriptions of Fox’s coverage of the day of 9/11 can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E8B2399764ABE7D
.

  
24.
Jon Scott
“On Air Personalities,”
Foxnews.com
,
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/jon-scott/bio/#s=r-z
, accessed Sept. 3, 2013.

  
25.
“That means the second tower”
Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.

  
26.
“The country is at war”
Author interview with a person in the room.

  
27.
“Roger rallied”
Ibid.

  
28.
Barely twenty minutes
Kat Stoeffel, “Ticker Taped: The 9/11 News Crawl,” “Our City Since” (blog),
New York Observer
, Sept. 11, 2011,
http://observer.com/2011/09/ticker-taped-the-911-news-crawl/
.

  
29.
“Day of Terror”
For video footage of this text, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNk6jOXRfwo
.

  
30.
“A lot of guidance”
Author interview with a senior Fox executive.

  
31.
“They had this problem”
E. D. Donahey, “Terrorism Hits America,” Fox News Channel, Sept. 12, 2001; video is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1It_PsSENc
.

  
32.
On the night of September 13
Bill O’Reilly,
The O’Reilly Factor
, Fox News Channel, Sept. 13, 2001; video is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQSY4C6CwE
.

  
33.
“it was like a World War Two”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
34.
“I remember running”
Ibid.

  
35.
“What we say is”
Jim Rutenberg, “Fox Portrays a War of Good and Evil, and Many Applaud,”
New York Times
, Dec. 3, 2001.

  
36.
“smoke out”
George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President Upon Arrival,” press conference, South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 16, 2001,
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html
.

  
37.
“dead or alive”
Brian Knowlton, “ ‘We’re Going to Smoke Them Out’: President Airs His Anger,”
New York Times
, Sept. 19, 2001.

  
38.
In January 2002
Matt Kempner, “Fox News Bests CNN in Viewers; Broad-Based Monthly Win Is First Ever,”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, Jan. 30, 2002.

  
39.
“He told me having a kid”
Author interview with former Fox News Channel anchor Bob Sellers.

  
40.
At the time
Alex Koppelman, “Did Fox News Chief Ailes Try to Protect Rudy Giuliani?,”
Salon.com
, Nov. 16, 2007,
http://www.salon.com/2007/11/16/ailes/
.

  
41.
On the night of September 11
Author interview with a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

  
42.
Later, an internal
Leonard Levitt, “The NYPD: Indulging Mort and Roger,”
NYPDConfidential.com
, April 9, 2012,
http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2012/120409.html
, accessed Oct. 8, 2013.

  
43.
“After 9/11”
Author interview with a senior Fox employee.

  
44.
On the second floor
Ibid.

  
45.
About a year after the attacks
Jo Becker, “Murdoch, Ruler of a Vast Empire, Reaches Out for Even More,”
New York Times
, June 25, 2007.

  
46.
“Roger said this insane thing”
Author interview with a person in the room.

  
47.
As the evening wound down
The information in the following paragraphs was obtained from author interviews with sources familiar with the incident.

  
48.
In London, Sam Chisholm
Mathew Horsman, “Sky: The Inside Story: Bowing Out to the Inevitable,”
The Guardian
, Nov. 10, 1997.

  
49.
“On one level”
Author interview with an executive close to Ailes.

  
50.
“Don’t ever fucking fire”
Ibid.

  
51.
“Rupert is not”
Author interview with a source close to the Murdoch family.

    
1.
“The only thing America”
Chafets,
Roger Ailes
, 97.

    
2.
“I wrote that letter”
Author interview with a senior Fox employee. When Bob Woodward revealed Ailes’s memo to Bush in his 2002 book
Bush at War
, Ailes was defiant. He said there was not anything untoward about the head of a news organization offering a president military advice. Ailes defended it by complaining that CNN chief Rick Kaplan had been close to Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and he pointed out that Kaplan even bunked in the Lincoln Bedroom. “I’m not saying [Woodward] deliberately distorted it,” Ailes told
The New York Times
on November 19, 2002. “But he’s like Tom Clancy. They both make up a lot of stories, but Clancy does better research.” When I spoke with Karl Rove’s office, Rove declined to comment.

    
3.
That’s why, he’d say
Hoover Institution, “Fox and More with Roger Ailes,” interview,
Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson
, Feb. 5, 2010; video available at
http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/26681
; transcript available at
http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/UK-Ailes-transcript.pdf
.

    
4.
Rove made sure
Author interview with a senior Bush administration official.

    
5.
“Roger was the bigger figure”
Ibid.

    
6.
“Ailes would call Karl”
Ibid.

    
7.
“It focused on”
Ibid.

    
8.
Around the time
The information in this paragraph comes from author interview with a senior Bush administration official.

    
9.
“Roger was afraid”
Ibid.

  
10.
“Someone has to speak”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
11.
Three days after 9/11
Bill O’Reilly,
Special Report: America United
, Fox News Channel, Sept. 14, 2001.

  
12.
A year earlier, Mylroie
Ibid.; see also Laurie Mylroie,
Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America
(Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2000).

  
13.
“the Neocons’ favorite conspiracy theorist”
Peter Bergen, “Armchair Provocateur,”
Washington Monthly
, Dec. 2003.

  
14.
“No,” she said
O’Reilly,
Special Report: America United
, Sept. 14, 2001.

  
15.
Given the president’s
Gallup, “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Nov. 2–4, 8–11, and 26–27,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx
.

  
16.
“Every story”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
17.
“From a marketing point of view”
“Quotation of the Day,”
New York Times
, Sept. 7, 2002.

  
18.
Twice each day
Author interviews with senior Fox employees.

  
19.
“It’s not easy”
Author interview with a senior Fox executive.

  
20.
In the network’s early days
Author interviews with senior Fox executives.

  
21.
During George H. W. Bush’s
David Q. Bates Jr. interview with James S. Young and George C. Edwards III, Miller Center at the University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/president/bush/oralhistory/david-bates
.

  
22.
“Fox never went”
Author interview with a senior Fox executive.

  
23.
“Roger is very good”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
24.
In the newsroom
Author interview with a senior Fox executive.

  
25.
“You can’t say”
Author interview with a former Fox executive.

  
26.
Judy Laterza
Author interviews with senior Fox employees.

  
27.
“When Roger said something”
Author interviews with sources familiar with the matter.

  
28.
One producer joked
Author interview with a former senior Fox producer.

  
29.
Bill Shine
Information on Shine is from author interviews with current and former Fox News employees.

  
30.
“Call me”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
31.
As payback
Author interview with a senior Fox employee.

  
32.
Lewis had a nickname
Ibid.

  
33.
Like Fox’s prime-time stars
John M. Higgins, “Shine Makes Fox News Glow,”
Broadcasting & Cable
, Dec. 5, 2004.

  
34.
He was “a blue-collar”
Author interview with a former senior Fox producer.

  
35.
From his modest roots
Author interview with a former senior Fox producer.

  
36.
“We looked at them”
Author interview with a former Fox employee.

  
37.
“When Ashcroft was being confirmed”
Author interview with former Fox News producer Adam Sank.

  
38.
In October 2003
Tim Grieve, “Fox News: The Inside Story,”
Salon.com
, Oct. 31, 2003,
http://www.salon.com/2003/10/31/fox_20/
.

  
39.
“People know who’s”
Author interview with Bob Sellers.

  
40.
“Watch out for”
Author interview with former Fox producer Charles Reina.

  
41.
Adam Sank remembered
Author interview with Adam Sank.

  
42.
“Look, I know everything”
Author interview with a person familiar with the conversation.

  
43.
One executive called it
Author interview with a Fox executive.

  
44.
“She had rules”
Author interview with a former Fox producer.

  
45.
“She had no”
Author interview with a former senior Fox producer.

  
46.
Brian Lewis’s department
The descriptions of Fox’s media relations department are based on author interviews with current and former Fox News employees.

  
47.
“He would call”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
48.
“Am I a Republican?”
Author interview with Charles Reina.

  
49.
At the Fox News Christmas party
Dickinson, “How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory”; author interview with Charles Reina.

  
50.
As the administration
Information in this paragraph is derived from author interviews with a senior Fox executive.

  
51.
At the time
Auletta, “Vox Fox.”

  
52.
When the war
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 189–90.

  
53.
Shortly after receiving
Author interviews with sources familiar with the matter.

  
54.
“Fox approached news”
Author interview with a former Fox producer.

  
55.
“I need a better Muslim!”
Author interview with a source who was present in the newsroom.

  
56.
“You’re doing a service”
Author interview with a senior Fox producer.

  
57.
the United Nations
See, e.g., John Gibson, “Is United Nations Irrelevant in Today’s World?,”
The Big Story with John Gibson
, Fox News Channel, Feb. 19, 2003.

  
58.
France
See, e.g., Neil Cavuto, “Stock Market Surges as U.N. Continues to Debate Potential Iraq War,”
Your World with Neil Cavuto
, Fox News Channel, March 13, 2003.

  
59.
Germany
See, e.g., John Gibson, “Three NATO Members Veto Plan to Defend Turkey in Case of Iraq War,”
The Big Story with John Gibson
, Fox News Channel, Feb. 10, 2003.

  
60.
Al Jazeera
See, e.g., Bill O’Reilly,
The O’Reilly Factor
, analysis with Mansoor Ijaz, Nov. 12, 2002.

  
61.
“If they’re going to get us”
Michael Starr, “Geraldo’s Got a Gun … And Bin Laden in His Sights,”
New York Post
, Dec. 4, 2001.

  
62.
In November 2001
Paula Bernstein, “Rivera Vaults to Fox News,”
Daily Variety
, Nov. 2, 2001.

  
63.
“We walked over”
Sridhar Pappu, “Being Geraldo,”
Atlantic
, June 2005.

  
64.
A week later
David Folkenflik, “War News from Rivera Seems off the Mark,”
Baltimore Sun
, Dec. 12, 2001.

  
65.
He attributed the error
Mark Jurkowitz, “Rivera’s Defense of His Shoddy Reporting Is Unconvincing,”
Boston Globe
, Dec. 4, 2002; Folkenflik, “War News from Rivera Seems off the Mark.”

  
66.
“Have
you
ever been shot at?”
Folkenflik, “War News from Rivera Seems off the Mark.”

  
67.
When Dan Rather sat down
Auletta, “Vox Fox.”

  
68.
“Nowhere in the”
Ibid.

  
69.
“Americans and, indeed”
Bill O’Reilly,
The O’Reilly Factor
, Fox News Channel, Feb. 26, 2003.

  
70.
When antiwar protesters
John M. Higgins, “Fox News Mocks Media Protesters,”
Broadcasting & Cable
, March 31, 2003.

  
71.
Five days before
James Deaville, “Selling War: Television News Music and the Shaping of American Public Opinion,”
Echo: A Music-Centered Journal
8, no. 1 (Fall 2006),
http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume8-Issue1/roundtable/deaville.html
.

  
72.
“The other networks”
Peter Dobrin, “Media’s War Music Carries a Message,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, March 30, 2003.

  
73.
After listening
Deaville, “Selling War.”

  
74.
In one, a fighter jet
Deborah Lynn Jaramillo,
Ugly War, Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 156.

  
75.
The script for a thirty-second
Ibid., 181–82.

  
76.
Anchor Bob Sellers
Author interview with Bob Sellers.

  
77.
On March 20
Jaramillo,
Ugly War, Pretty Package
, 113.

  
78.
“The conservatives were not”
Author interview with a former Bush administration official.

  
79.
The New York Times
’s Judith Miller
See, e.g., the following articles written by Miller for the
Times
in the months prior to the commencement of war: “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts” (with Michael R. Gordon, Sept. 8, 2002); “White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons” (with Michael R. Gordon, Sept. 13, 2002); “Lab Suggests Qaeda Planned to Build Arms, Officials Say” (Sept. 14, 2002); “Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say” (Jan. 24, 2003).

  
80.
Both CNN and MSNBC
Author interviews with executives from CNN and MSNBC.

  
81.
In the summer of 2001
John Bresnahan and Mark Preston, “CNN Chief Courts GOP,”
Roll Call
, Aug. 6, 2001.

  
82.
He also wooed
Maureen Dowd, “CNN: Foxy or Outfoxed?,”
New York Times
, Aug. 15, 2001.

  
83.
In October 2001
Howard Kurtz, “CNN Chief Orders ‘Balance’ in War News; Reporters Are Told to Remind Viewers Why U.S. Is Bombing,”
Washington Post
, Oct. 31, 2001.

  
84.
“It was torture”
Author interview with television executive Phil Griffin.

  
85.
Prior to joining
Felix Gillette, “Phil Griffin Gets New Title: President of MSNBC,”
New York Observer
, July 16, 2008.

  
86.
MSNBC was faltering
The accounts and quotations regarding MSNBC’s struggle to compete with Fox News are derived from author interviews with MSNBC executives, and were first reported on by the author in “Chasing Fox: The Loud, Cartoonish Blood Sport That’s Engorged MSNBC, Exhausted CNN—and Is Making Our Body Politic Delirious,”
New York
, Oct. 11, 2010.

  
87.
On the day MSNBC
Auletta, “Vox Fox.”

  
88.
After Andy Lack
Collins,
Crazy Like a Fox
, 130.

  
89.
After MSNBC anchor
See, e.g., “Good Morning Lowcountry,”
Post and Courier
(Charleston, South Carolina), April 24, 2002.

  
90.
“Take her out”
Author interview with a Fox employee.

  
91.
“He was the oppo research guy”
Author interview with a Fox executive.