In the corporate thicket of News Corporation, according to a new book, Mr. Ailes dared to battle with Lachlan Murdoch, a son of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman, openly gloating when the younger Mr. Murdoch eventually left his post at the company and even commandeering his chair.
At Fox News, the book says, Mr. Ailes was disdainful of even his most bankable on-air talent, privately calling Bill O’Reilly “a book salesman with a TV show” and Brian Kilmeade, a peppy Fox host, “a soccer coach from Long Island.”
Those episodes are described in “The Loudest Voice in the Room” by Gabriel Sherman, a 560-page biography of Mr. Ailes being published on Jan. 21 by Random House.
The book aims to be an exhaustive look at Mr. Ailes’s life and his monumental career, particularly as chairman of Fox News Channel. Under his stewardship, the network, known best for its conservative opinion shows in prime time, dominates the cable news competition, frequently posting ratings better than those for its main rivals, MSNBC and CNN, combined. It has also become the most profitable division of News Corporation, its parent, with annual earnings that have been estimated at $1 billion.
The book describes in detail Mr. Ailes’s professional ambition, his desire to influence American politics through a conservative prism, and his status as a visionary who possessed an intuitive understanding of the power of television to shape public opinion. Before entering the corporate world, Mr. Ailes was a political consultant, and Mr. Sherman’s book credits him with being a pioneer in using television during election campaigns.
In the months before publication, the book has drawn sharp criticism from a chorus of people connected to Fox News, including employees and contributors who have taken to Twitter to attack Mr. Sherman.
Mr. Ailes, in what some viewed as an attempt to pre-empt Mr. Sherman’s book, cooperated with another biography, “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets, which was published last year by Sentinel, a conservative imprint at Penguin.
In his book, Mr. Sherman, a contributing editor at New York magazine, follows Mr. Ailes from his boyhood in Ohio to his perch as one of the most powerful figures in the history of television.
Despite being unsatisfied with many of the Republican candidates for president in 2012, Mr. Ailes endeavored to promote Mitt Romney on Fox News programs, the book says. Before the Wisconsin congressman Paul D. Ryan was chosen as Mr. Romney’s running mate, Mr. Ailes advised Mr. Ryan that his television skills needed work and recommended a speech coach.
At the beginning of the general election, a four-minute video criticizing President Obama’s policies was broadcast on “Fox and Friends,” provoking outrage from the left and prompting the network to say publicly that Mr. Ailes had no involvement in its creation. In “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Mr. Sherman writes that the video “was Ailes’s brainchild.”
The New York Times obtained a copy of the book in advance of its publication.
Mr. Sherman said in the source notes that he interviewed 614 people who knew or worked with Mr. Ailes for the book, which took more than three years to report and write. More than 100 pages are devoted to source notes and bibliography..
Former employees cited in the book talked of Mr. Ailes’s volatile temper and domineering behavior. In one anecdote, a television producer, Randi Harrison, told Mr. Sherman that while negotiating her salary with Mr. Ailes at CNBC in the 1980s, he offered her an additional $100 each week “if you agree to have sex with me whenever I want.”
A Fox News spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday: “These charges are false. While we have not read the book, the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News.”
The book also describes an explosive episode dating back to 1995, when Mr. Ailes was a high-ranking executive at NBC and locked in a power struggle with another executive, David Zaslav.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/biography-casts-critical-light-on-fox-news-chief.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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