This i is an hour. Congratulations on the new book its generating a lot of interest. Whats interesting to me as a person that covered fox for many years in new york and also because i was on a Fox News Program i want to ask you first of all what attracted you to writing a book about roger ailes . Test code that is a great question. Ive covered the media for a decade now and ive been fascinated by the media and politics that covered the New York Times, washington post, msnbc and i wanted to do a bit about the history because the network revolutionized cable news. With the most dominant cable news that would double that of msnbc. Very early into the reporting of the book i realized the weight of the stories the life and career of roger ailes because it is a complete expression of thet worldview. The network is shaped in his image and without the talent i dont think fox would be the success that it is commiserate with developed into a portrait of fox news is the culmination of everything he worked towards both in politics and show business and television. Host use it as a political operation that hires journalists. Can you tell me what you mean by that . Guest it goes bac guest it goes back to roger ailes as a political person. He got his start in television that he owes his career to the republican political strategist and a Campaign Adviser to the republicans like mitch mcconne mcconnell. He thrived on Political Campaigns. Secrecy is paramount. Driving the competitiveness. All of the things we associate with fox news is tied to the career background and so when he came to fox in 1996 and started the network for Rupert Murdoch he brought all of that culture the dna of the Political Campaign. He structured like a Political Campaign and there is a group of executives from the seniormost team that called themselves the g8 and that is in a reference to the g. Six that was a group of Campaign Advisers that worked for george h. W. Bush in 1988 and so you see all of these little for sayings and phrases that occur at fox but more than that the way the network operates is more on the structure of the Political Campaign. It starts with a meeting with roger ailes news meeting and everyone marches in lockstep. There is a sense of mission and purpose that flows in from the top and you see all the attribute that come out of the political world. Host how do you see on the air what you see as a reflection of dictating this agenda as being a republican agenda . Guest what you see is unique and better in terms of Television Host very well produced. Guest he is a television genius and his ideas for picking the talent that speaks authentically through the screen is a testament to his talent. But the way that it manifests itself is that fox drives these narrative storylines that come out of the political world. In 2008 with the rise of barack obama you solve them pursue the storylines through the first term of the residency. It was a big storyline and the idea that the administration was appointing policy advisers that have extra constitutional authority. You solve the healthcare debate was health care debatewas a huge in the book how roger ailes gave the prop to the pond and that could go on camera and make the point that this bill was unyielding. He gave a talking head a stack of papers about this tall that you could wave on the screen to make that point and you see that sort of negative session that comes out of the political world in the programming. Host fox usually says we have democrats on we have dennis kucinich. How is it unilateral . Guest the critique that has been leveled is that its a Republican Network doesnt mean they cant have liberal voices. There are separate issues and its a testament to his talent that he generates the people that appear on the network so that there is a voice so that you have liberals feeding red meat to the conservatives. Its never a fair fight. Anybody that watched hannity and columns would never see them as less ideas and in the book i explain how the producers created this to keep the board and made him feel like an equal partner in the show when in fact he was the de facto executive producer of the show and sean hannity would take the talking points they would cover independent producers say okay what is your feedback, but the whole show was dictated by sean hannity so what he has done is he sort of stacked the deck so they always win while allowing himself to have some liberals to give him thats talking point to say we get to both sides. Host what do you make of the fact that they have good journalists in the Washington Bureau and not every one fits the story line that you set out here. Guest it goes back and i want to talk about his work on behalf of Richard Nixon which will help people to understand why fox can still be a Political Organization while having liberal reporters on the payroll. Lets go back. Roger ailes was a Young Television adviser to Richard Nixon. He came out of daytime tv and hes been a producer of the Michael Douglas sho show and tas his way onto the Nixon Campaign convincing him he needs to Master Television so he goes to work for nixon and how did he structured the campaign . During the town hall events that roger called the man in the arena and they were staged where he would appear in front of a group of panelists that were regular citizens and he would answer questions and the audience with the local republican supporters. The event was staged to make him look courageous but he was facing questions from the panel when in fact the audience and everything was put in place to make an excel. Now fox news if you have roger ailes who wants to communicate the republican message to advance the party interest, he knows that if you feed the right wing talkinrightwing talking pe audience that its not going to be authentic. If he n. Played the same techniques the campaign did by hand picking the audience having people that come for the credibility that are hostile to the message and that exchange of ideas has a level of credibility the same way that makes and wase to convert the credibility on the campaign by picking, by having the panelists asked tough questions famously in the 68 campaign he thought that the best town hall he did was the toughest where he had to face tough questions because the audience wanted to see them fight and its the same thing he knows that the audience wants to see republicans fight for their side and then alternatel alternn they win if even that much more effective. Host they have hit pretty hard because the Public Relations apparatus. Guest host but you didnt talk to roger ailes and check the facts with them and you have a lot of the sources in the book and you have a few some of the comments that you attributed our attributed to the source familiar with the situation. Tell me about how you respond. Hohoward do you stand on that . Guest the book was fact checked. Every word of the manuscript. I reached out to him more than a dozen times. I traveled to different states to see him in person where he was giving speeches at the Public Events i wrote to the Public Relations advisers and i would discuss every single fact. We talked to the sources and we checked the secondary sources in the document and records and ultimately as i say in the end nodes i feel very confident and its important to point out the book has been out now and although the revelations have been out and fox news hasnt challenged a single point in the book. I dont want to go into all of that but he has denied some things so its not true that they havent tried. Guest that is an effort to distract from the record because that episode you are referring to is based on a documentary record from nbc from the internal investigation that nbc Human Resources commission to investigate roger ailes and the lawyer that they hired in the outside counsel to do the investigation, this is in the dock and terry record he produced on behalf of nbc. So as a reporter, i reflect to the denial in the book but i rely on the record in 1995 when this events took place, the episode was discussed. The man in question who allegedly made this remark said at the time that it took place the fact that hes denying it because all the other factors that could come into play he said he is a personal friend of roger ailes and theres other factors and i rely on the Historical Records while giving the subject a chance to deny. Host let me ask you something that you are an encounter with him and ran very true to me and years ago you stated in the book is a direct quote and he said that kids are wrong. He said you are a good reporter but you are all wrong and that isnt what i want to do. Obviously they have had a lot of political people. Sarah pele and people have joked that this is a place where the future might be and yet at the same time he did not elect the president and it was reported by others they tried to get Chris Christie to run and you say that he is disdainful of mitt romney. How do you square this way with what actually he was able to do . Guest what makes a fascinating character is he has competing interests. He is a man that is at war with himself because he is both a tv man and party man. We shaped the landscape through the medium and the television was the all powerful tool. It propelled the candidates and shaped the way they perceive the candidates but what happened is fox news became so powerful that it shaped the brand of the Republican Party that it ultimately eroded his efforts to get the republican into the white house because the brand, the image fox presented while it was compelling to the base and was a phenomenal and Successful Television product it wasnt a winning political message and associate conference at the limits of his power and of the book ends on the note that its a story of decline and i traced the rise and fall to the highest quarters of the power in politics but now he is in the declining phase and they are not this tool to get the republicans into the white house. Host you talk about the base and it is generally perceived i think as an older male audience which the fox news anchors are often attractive women. Who is he appealing to because there seems to be kind of an angry appeal. He has himself in the past. I would say he might even consider himself bigger than the Republican Party how do you think that he is appealing . Guest he has been appealing to the same people for more than four decades. Its the same people that nixon appealed to to get elected in 68. They are the coalition throughout the years they were the democrats in the 80s and the voters that stayed with george h. W. Bush in 1988 when roger was running the Media Campaign and he took down Michael Dukakis and all the notions of patriotism these are the middle class populist white voters often times from the heartland. Roger ailes grew up in a factory town and these are the voters that sort of felt the america they knew was slipping away so that is why fox is so successful making these appeals the war on christmas is the idea that the american traditions are under siege. Its important to point out that the median age of the fox audience continues to go up and its an older demographic. Its a coalition he has been speaking to for decades now. Host do you think that he believes that . Guest i think its both. I think one of the revelations in my book is that he is a conservative true believer. There will always be a guessing game through the years. Its cynical television, show business or is it real and the politics are real and you see it on immigration and Foreign Policy and in the views on Government Spending he is a committed conservative there is no doubt about it. Those are his beliefs. Its interesting why he doesnt want to own than in the past he always wanted to talk his way out of situations and keep people off balance never knowing what he says. Producers can never really talked about roger ailes and there is a saying in the buck when people want to communicate what he wants to see on the screen they say the secondfloor want i this to roger ailes executive suite on the second floor in manhattan. So i think its interesting that he wants to be this kind of man behind the curtain but that is a separate point. With that said he is a true belief or that hes willing to use the techniques to achieve his true beliefs. He does believe the war on christmas is a tradition that is under attack. He knows it is a successful programming strategy and in the interview with his brother, robert, he told me that roger ailes looked out at the demographics and said a vast int majority of the American People celebrate christmas through a Marketing Strategy it should be the network it should be the pro christmas network. It should appeal to the christmas supporters and put the other half works fight over the scraps so i think that is a great anecdote that shows how he is willing to use a show business acumen to achieve his political ends. Host what is the impact of the success of fox news on the other network . Guest one of the lasting legacies is one of the reasons that i argue in the book is divided the country because he has divided the media. This notion of the liberal media that has been a conservative belief going back to the time that nixon and even goldwater in earlier he brought to the surface and the success finally forced them to choose sides. Let me illustrate that. I go into great detail in my book about how cnn and msnbc responded to the success especially in the years after 9 11. Fox passed in the ratings game in 22 and never turned back. In the runup to the iraq war they were concerned and apoplectic at the idea of fox is continuing to run away with the cable race. They said maybe we should be more conservative. We should rebrand ourselves msnbc was called americas news channel. They put american flags all over the screen and they tried to outfox fox. What is interesting is one thing it did work because nobody can match the unique talent to breach the conservatives. But number two, after that failed, they found success with Keith Olbermann during the second term of the presidency. Then they decided to go all in and brand themselves as a liberal progressive cable news network. And so, you see how he is so successful that he forced other networks to literally change their programming strategy. And that has been his legacy he not only changed the media through fox but he changed the media for the other channels and every media now is forced to sort of explained are we conservative, are we liberal, are we down the middle, but the fact that we are even having this conversation and trying to argue whether the New York Times is a centrist or liberal newspaper is a testament to the talent to make others define themselves. Host people were being asked to wear pins on the air or they were being accused of being antipatriotic if they were not waving a flag. As to make one fox producer told me about how after 9 11 they were literally running through times square to buy pins from the vendors on the anchors and everyone in the office. It was this Spiritual Movement fox pushed that had ripple effects throughout the culture. Some of the executives said lets be sure to point out even during some of the worst, fox certainly pointed out during the other grave they were sitting on the other side. That drum beat i would agree has been very successful whether it is attributed to fox or post9 11 there is always pressure. Let me ask one other question i wanted to get to that president obama specifically. You write that he told people he think that obama is bad for the country and that he basically is closasclose to the socialists ah as someone said the technique is more to say. He doesnt know whether to go on the air. He has gone on to bill oreilly. What is it about the depiction of obama that you see as driving some antiobama agenda . Give me some specifics. What is on the air that shows you that they have been unfair to president obama . Fox news ran with the report that they were educated in the dross to him skirting very closely to the line of pushing this idea that in hes hiding his beliefs into the Obama Campaign complained and they issued some apologies. But it if this idea of pointing out the american mainstream. He said in the meetings that obama hates capitalism into that green energy they have hammered the solyndra bankruptcy that is emblematic of this idea that obama wants to get control of americas economy. I think the healthcare debate it wasnt just relegated to the base but this idea that whether the healthcare bill had the Death Penalty and it was a legitimate point of the healthcare debate was because fox was pushing it aggressively. I think what is interesting is that obamas candidacy really changed the mission of fox news. I interviewed someone very close to him and he said prior to the candidacy, he saw himself competing with cnn, msnbc, cbs news, New York Times. Fox is the counterbalance in the american media. But with the right he saw Something Different and he saw the america that he knew as a child and as an adult and he saw the mission to confront the white house and it became almost a personal mission where he was standing up to the president and that is why i opened the book with an exchange that took place at the white house in 2011 at the Holiday Party at the white house post for the administration for the members of the media. And he took his son to the white house and he is on the rope and hes going to greet the president and barack obama turns to roger and makes a joke and he said i see the most powerful man in the world is here. He said dont believe those rumors i made it up myself. You see so much revealed about these men. You see the president who in the year 2011 who is facing a tough reelection while he was making a joke there is truth to it. In his answer making up these rumors you see the humor and the way that he was to selfdeprecation. It is a charm that has been a part of his career and i thought it was such a way to open public to bring them together to show how at the highest levels of the politics roger ailes and barack obama would be adversaries and it shows you the way to get into the book and i think that you learn a lot about fox and the president. Host certainly going back to saying on the air they had a deepseated hatred of white people. What do you say that changed . Guest a lot of it has to do with race. He said there is no reason to have a Civil Rights Movement anymore because we have a black man in the white house. Those are his words, not mine. He grew up in a time when White Christian men were the dominated in the national politics. He was born in 1940 and he lived in the civil rights and through the Womens Movement and he lived through rights. We had all these competing voices now enter the american conversation and i think fox is the channel speaking to that part of america that used to feel they ran the country and no longer do. He sees himself as a protector of that america. Host to play th the devils advocate, you dont have any evidence that they were a racially motivated attack host you are talking about people losing their grip guest his views on in their mental regulation and becoming a more culturally multicultural country becoming a country that has strict environmental law if you look at europe they have much higher taxes on gasoline and energy usage and the idea that america would go down these other forms of policy choices he really sees america as a different country and fox is the network speaking to those americans who feel that america should not be open to other ways of governing itself, so race is one part of it and the idea that obama validated and was addressing whatever path took place now he has done away with this idea that they should have affirmative action, civil rights but its not limited to race. Its just one issue that he uses. Host you may regard him as a socialist, but you dont really know his views on race, do you . Guest im addressing the notion that he said obamas presidency means we dont have to have a Civil Rights Movement anymore. This is not an issue of black versus right. Its a view about the politics. The idea that as a country we should
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