The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine

by David Brock

  Time magazine media critic James Poniewozik wrote, “Fox assumed, rightly, that its audience tuned in to watch a 2012 Presidential debate in August 2011, and thus was interested enough not to need things jazzed up for them.”41

  What little criticism there was of the debate moderators came from the right. During the debate, Newt Gingrich went on the attack against Baier after he used quotes from several of the candidates’ appearances on Fox with regard to Libya. At first, Gingrich had called for a no-fly zone over the country, but then criticized President Obama for taking that very action. In response, Gingrich said, “This is an example of a gotcha question. The fact that I was commenting on Fox about a president who changes his opinion every other day ought to be covered by a Fox News commentator using all the things I said and not picking and choosing the ones that fit your premise.”42

  Keach Hagey of Politico summed up the feelings of many who covered the event, writing, “Instead of providing a platform from which candidates could complain about the bias of the mainstream media—a role the channel often played during the 2010 election cycle—Fox News came across as a robust part of that mainstream media.”43

  Was this the sign of a new, more objective Fox News, one that would hold Republican candidates up to the same level of scrutiny it traditionally reserved for Democrats? It seems unlikely. In the case of the debate, the network simply did not have to choose sides. Asking robust questions of all candidates in a Republican primary was to its advantage. Fox would gain nothing by outwardly taking sides in a primary when its real goal was to challenge the president. The network was the go-to place for Republican voters to hear from their candidates.

  In fact, while garnering positive coverage for its handling of the debate, Fox continued its outlandish attacks on progressives, the president, and his policies, with the clear goal of victory in 2012. When news in late July turned to the frantic negotiations between Democrats and Republicans over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, Fox inflamed the issue with a series of false claims. Additionally some Fox figures cheered for no deal and some even welcomed a default by the United States on its debt obligations. After the deal was struck, Fox turned overwhelmingly to Republican figures for analysis of what happened. Of its guests following the compromise, twenty-five were Republicans and only eight were Democrats. This imbalance persisted across its straight news and opinion programing.44

  Additionally, while receiving praise for its debate performance, Fox’s donation of airtime to Republican candidates continued at a record pace. In the ten and a half weeks from June 1 to August 14, the week of the Ames Straw Poll, Fox hosted Republican candidates and potential candidates for president 239 times, totaling more than twenty-eight hours of exposure.45

  Michele Bachmann alone appeared on the network twenty-one times during that period, averaging two appearances a week. Ron Paul appeared on the network twenty-six times; Herman Cain twenty-three times; Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum each appeared sixteen times. Trailing all these candidates was Mitt Romney, who appeared only five times on the network. As the front-runner and the leader of the pack in terms of fund-raising, Romney could stay above the fray for the moment. Rick Perry appeared four times, but he was not yet a candidate for president.

  Sarah Palin, while not a candidate, appeared ten times as a paid contributor. She used this platform to continue to feed anticipation about a potential campaign, telling Sean Hannity on August 8,

  “I am still considering a run, Sean.” Palin was interrupted with cheers from the live audience before continuing, “You know, I think the good folks here in Iowa—you can do a man-on-the-street here, you can ask anybody here and I think that they would tell you: it’s time that this country is put back on the right track, that the economy is strengthened, that jobs are created via the private sector. And they are ready for some positive change to allow that from Washington, D.C.”46

  And this is perhaps one of the most powerful things Fox can give the conservative politicians it favors: a platform from which to run for president. Without the support of the establishment, which Mitt Romney had, or an elected office to run from, Fox gives political exiles and marginal political figures the opportunity to compete without the party machinery.

  Michele Bachmann is a third-term representative, with no record of legislative accomplishment and a history of outlandish and radical statements. And yet there she was: a much-discussed voice in Republican politics. Fox gave her the ability to gain supporters and a platform that afforded her the option of running for the nation’s highest office.

  Rick Santorum was a two-term senator who had been defeated in a landslide in 2006. Now, five years later, he was running for president. Without Fox and his contributor contract, he would never have remained in the spotlight and have been long forgotten by the Republican Party’s base. Additionally, the network provided the former senator with nearly $239,00047 in income in 2010 and 2011 as he planned his run—a hefty sum for what amounted to a few hours a week of work.

  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, while a more prominent figure than Santorum, had resigned his position more than a decade before this presidential election cycle. He also would not have maintained a platform to run for president without his contributor contract.

  The Republican Party was still not pleased with the field. The day of the straw poll, sensing an opportunity, Texas governor Rick Perry entered the race and immediately became a front-runner. After a series of poor debate performances, and a surge by Herman Cain, Perry fell from his elevated status.

  Yet Sarah Palin remained mum on whether she would run. Most assumed that if she were to enter the race, she would have launched her campaign by August to participate in the straw poll.

  Karl Rove attacked Palin for her indecisiveness. After he suggested she would need to enter the race at a September 3 rally in Iowa, her PAC issued a release criticizing the Republican strategist. Rove shot back on Greta Van Susteren’s show, telling the host and friend of Palin, “I would just recommend she might get a slightly thicker skin because if she’s got this thin a skin now, when people are saying, Well, I think she might be a candidate, what kind of—how’s she going to react if she does get into the campaign and gets the scrutiny that every presidential candidate does get?” Rove continued, “I mean, that’s not going to be a pretty sight if she’s as thin-skinned in the fray as she is on the edges of it.”48

  Sarah Palin’s status in the Republican party began to diminish after she reportedly disobeyed Ailes’s directive to “lie low”49 following the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords. Ultimately, Palin recognized that giving up a lucrative Fox News contract and paid speeches was not worth it for a quixotic campaign. If she were to lose, it would ultimately diminish her power within the Republican Party and her ability to continue her position as a political celebrity.

  Palin’s announcement demonstrated the fracture in her relationship with Roger Ailes. On the morning of October 5, the Associated Press released a profile of the Fox News boss in which he claimed, “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”50 The comment clearly could be interpreted as a sexist insult directed at the network contributor.

  Sarah Palin got her revenge late that afternoon, when conservative radio host Mark Levin read an exclusive statement from the former Alaska governor announcing that she would not be running for president. Levin was then granted the first interview with Palin. She would appear on Fox News only several hours later, in the friendly confines of Greta Van Susteren’s show in the 10 p.m. hour.

  Gabriel Sherman reported Roger Ailes was “livid” with Palin and considered “pulling her off the air entirely.” He reportedly told Fox vice president Bill Shine, “I paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network.” Palin, according to Sherman, decided to broadcast her decision on Levin’s show because she was “upset that Fox News has given a platform to Karl Rove, one of her principal critics.”51

  When Fox host Mike Huckabee electe
d not to run for president, he used the moment to promote his show. The executive producer of his program released a statement the day before his announcement stating, “Governor Huckabee will announce tomorrow night on his program whether or not he intends to explore a presidential bid.”52 Palin’s decision could have been an even larger affair, driving ratings and influence. By making her announcement to Mark Levin, who was syndicated by Citadel, she denied Fox that opportunity.

  Palin, however, was not critical to Ailes’s place at the center of the GOP primary. For months Republican candidates sought out the Fox News boss for advice as they launched their campaigns. “Perry stopped by [Ailes’s] midtown Manhattan office a few months back,” Howard Kurtz reported. Perry “was still weighing whether to make a run, and confided that he was worried about being able to raise the big bucks. ‘Money will find you if people believe in your message,’ Ailes assured him.”53

  Perry was not the only Republican candidate who was given guidance by Ailes. Kurtz reported that Mitt Romney also met with the network boss. After a pasta dinner, “the Fox chief was struck by a sense of humor rarely displayed in public. ‘You ought to be looser on the air,’ he said while dropping off the former Massachusetts governor at his hotel.”54

  No other network head was so actively sought out by candidates for advice on their campaigns. Still, many in the press expressed surprise that Fox hadn’t actively taken sides in the Republican primary, crediting the network for its newfound neutrality. They quickly forgot that Ailes failed to recruit his preferred candidate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, into the race.

  However, his previous denials of any plan to run for president did not stop Fox, or in fact the entire political media establishment, from continually musing about a Christie run. The speculation reached fever pitch by the start of October. In response, the New Jersey governor held a press conference in Trenton on October 4, making it clear he would not be running for president in 2012.

  By early October Herman Cain shot to the head of the Republican pack in several national polls. It’s no surprise during that period he also took the lead in terms of appearances and airtime on Fox News. Between June 1 and October 16, Cain was a guest on the network fifty-four times. In comparison, Ron Paul, who followed Cain in appearances, had been a guest forty-four times. Herman Cain’s more than seven hours of airtime eclipsed all other candidates. His closest rival, Newt Gingrich, had been granted little more than four and a half hours on air.55

  A few weeks later Cain’s polling began to fade and Newt Gingrich climbed to the top of the primary field. During the week of November 14–20, the same week Gingrich took the lead in national polls, the former House speaker also led other candidates in terms of airtime on Fox, appearing for 34 minutes on the network, 9 and 10 minutes longer than Rick Perry and Mitt Romney respectively.56

  Without Christie in the race, Ailes knows his power is based

  on Fox’s perceived neutrality between Republican candidates, ensuring the network remains the venue of choice for the GOP hopefuls.

  Each of the top Republican contenders made a pilgrimage to kiss their Svengali’s ring. The Fox boss now sits in the middle, with each member of the primary field knowing that Fox’s audience will ultimately pick the Republican who will face off against President Obama.

  Roger Ailes, granted unprecedented freedom by Rupert Murdoch and utilizing his unique production talent, has built Fox News into cable news’s Goliath, dominating the ratings with an audience that is both large and dedicated to the network’s brand. Fox is loved by the conservative base and feared by politicians of both parties.

  Ailes could have used his production genius to build a constructive force. Instead, he has built one that has fundamentally damaged our political and media landscape, leaving a legacy of cynicism and destruction. Joe McGinniss, the author of several books, including the classic The Selling of the President and The Rogue, a 2011 book on Sarah Palin, has been a friend of Ailes’s for forty-four years, yet still believes that “from Richard Nixon to Rupert Murdoch, I think everyone he’s ever worked for has harmed this country in some way. I also think Fox News is an excrescence.”57

  At Fox, Ailes has ushered in the era of post-truth politics. The facts no longer matter, only what is politically expedient, sensationalistic, and designed to confirm the preexisting opinions of a large audience. It’s a world where a news organization encourages people to believe that Barack Obama attended a madrassa, even though he did not; and encourages its viewers to believe the Earth is not warming, in spite of the fact that virtually every scientific authority says it is. It is an organization that consciously reports that the Democrats’ health care bill contains death panels, despite the fact that it does not.

  In each of these cases, Fox broadcasted and laundered these lies and others like them until they became gospel for a segment of the population. Once, this role was reserved for talk radio or small-circulation ideological publications. Now the highest-rated cable news network in America broadcasts them. Most problematic, once these lies take hold, no amount of fact-checking by Media Matters or websites such as PolitiFact or

  Factcheck.org will ever convince the segment of the population that is predisposed to believe them.

  There is simply nothing comparable on the left. No mainstream left-of-center media organization—however broadly you define that category—departs so willingly and extensively from journalism’s fundamental mission to report facts as fairly and objectively as possible. No outright lie is accepted as widely on the left as distortions like the “death panels” have been on the right.

  Beyond the lies, Roger Ailes has been at the forefront of a political culture that seeks to divide our country. On the Nixon and Bush campaigns, he worked to fragment America along racial lines. Now at Fox, he has continued that effort, in addition to dividing us by party and ideology. Balkanizing our nation makes it practically impossible for our leaders to work together. There could be no compromise on the health care bill because Republicans feared an attack from Fox. There can be no working together to solve the climate crisis because Fox has convinced its audience that global warming does not exist. Republicans felt compelled to push our nation to the edge of default because they feared the reaction of their Fox News–watching base.

  Ironically, Ailes’s quest to divide has also damaged the Republican Party. Mike Castle would likely be the senator from Delaware had Fox not whipped the Tea Party into a frenzy. This pattern holds true for the Republican Party in Colorado as well. Twenty years ago, Orrin Hatch was considered one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate. Today, it is speculated he might face a primary challenge because he is not ideologically pure enough for the Tea Party. These are the results of Roger Ailes and Fox News pushing the Republican Party far to the right and, in many cases, well outside the mainstream of American politics.

  Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs that the narrative is changing. Consider the fact that in the fall of 2009, White House communications director Anita Dunn caused a stir by simply observing, “It’s opinion journalism masquerading as news … They are boosting their audience. But that doesn’t mean we are going to sit back.”58 Her comments caused an uproar, not only on Fox, but among members of the White House press corps and media critics. Fox had been on the offensive against her boss for nearly three years, yet a light slap back was enough to cause a case of vapors among the chattering class. Less than a year later, Politico reporter Ben Smith observed on his blog, “That’s a campaign [the 2012 Republican Primary] in which Fox News is just undoubtedly the single most important player—it pays the candidates, and reaches the electorate.” Smith continued, “Its executives’ and hosts’ specific decisions will be crucial to deciding the nominee. Coverage that treats Fox as an observer, not a player, will miss much of the point.”59

  Now, two years later, Dunn’s comments would be uncontroversial among many of those who were up in arms. It is a widely accepted fact that Fox’s product is far
from fair and balanced.

  By mid-2009 it became clear from our daily monitoring that Fox was changing. No longer was it simply a conservative news network. It had morphed into a political campaign. We witnessed the promotion of the Tea Party in April that year and the heated rhetoric at town halls over the summer. In the spring of 2010, as the idea behind The Fox Effect germinated, we witnessed the network take an unprecedented role in fund-raising for Republican candidates.

  In a confessional interview with Howard Kurtz, Ailes himself acknowledges the network overstepped its boundaries during the 2010 election cycle. According to Kurtz, “[Ailes] calls it a ‘course correction,’ quietly adopted at Fox over the last year. Glenn Beck’s inflammatory rhetoric—his ranting about Obama being a racist—‘became a bit of a branding issue for us’ before the hot-button host left in July, Ailes says. So too did Sarah Palin’s being widely promoted as the GOP’s potential savior—in large measure through her lucrative platform at Fox.”60

  Vindicating Anita Dunn, Ailes even went so far as to acknowledge Fox’s strategy, telling Kurtz, “Every other network has given all their shows to liberals. We are the balance.”61

  The metamorphosis from “Fair and Balanced” to “we are the balance” is a significant admission. Fox’s version of “balance”—according to its president—isn’t to provide its viewers with an equal hearing of all sides. Rather, its purpose is to supply right-wing bias to correct what it wrongly perceives to be an error in the media cosmos.

  Now, as the 2012 election draws near, it is clear Fox will attempt to repeat its performance from 2010. Karl Rove, still a network employee, has promised to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Barack Obama. Its prime-time lineup is as committed to the Republican Party as ever, and its “news” hosts continue to echo GOP talking points. We can anticipate lies about the president’s policies and smears of his advisers.

  However, Fox News will no longer be able to conduct its campaign under the false pretense that the network is a journalistic institution. There is heightened awareness in the progressive community and the general public of the damage Fox causes. In early 2011, protests erupted at the Wisconsin State Capitol Building over Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their right to collective bargaining. Media outlets rushed to cover the protests. On multiple occasions, as Fox reporters began their live feeds, the crowd around them shifted its focus to the network, chanting, “Fox lies,” “Fox News lies,” and “Tell the truth.”62 Ultimately, while the network’s audience believes Fox’s lies, the vast majority of Americans want their media to tell the truth. And that, in the end, is why Roger Ailes will fail.