An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media

by Joe Muto

  As the year wore on, the drinking situation spiraled out of control. The war in Lebanon had wound down, and Geraldo went back to his syndicated show full-time. We returned to the crime beat—some of us more reluctantly than others—and welcomed a new fill-in for Kimberly.

  Megyn Kelly was, at the time, the Fox News Supreme Court reporter. She was headquartered in DC but was on loan to New York for the occasion. Like the woman she was filling in for, she was a trained lawyer. But that’s where the similarities ended. She was blond and sunny where Kimberly was raven-haired and fiery. And she was refreshingly free of diva-like behavior: She took the subway or hailed a cab to the office instead of demanding the company pay for a car service; she suggested good story ideas and did her own research; and instead of heading straight home after the show, she’d come to the bar with us, sometimes outlasting some of the die-hards.

  There was a sense that Megyn was a rising star at the network—a sense only reinforced when rumors later swept the DC bureau that she was sleeping with Brit Hume, the crusty six P.M. anchor who was almost three decades her senior. It was widely agreed in the New York office that the rumors had been started by someone jealous of the plum assignments she’d been getting. (My personal theory was that Hume himself had started them, but I could never get anyone else to sign on to that viewpoint.) Either way, the chatter was a signal that she had arrived, and a few years after I worked with her, she was imported to New York for good and was given a two-hour daytime block, for which she adopted a highly aggressive archconservative persona. My first thought on seeing her in action was She’s faking it. And my second thought was She’s a genius. Creating a new persona for herself was somewhat cynical but was overall a brilliant career move. She was smart, talented, and beautiful, but that would only get you so far at Fox—Ailes wanted to see a point of view as well. So Megyn started to act a little less smart and a lot more Republican when she was on-air, and suddenly there was chatter in the hallways that she was in the running for Greta Van Susteren’s prime-time slot.

  But in 2006, that later version of Megyn Kelly was just a glimmer in the eye of the cool, laid-back reporter sitting on a stool at Langan’s, drinking a glass of white wine and trading dirty jokes with the staff of the network’s second-rate crime show.

  Megyn was not there, fortunately for her, for an especially memorable bender of a weekend in October that I consider both the apex and the nadir of my post–crime show drinking career.

  First, on Saturday night, Danny, a booker for The Big Story, got bounced after picking a fight with the bartender, an affable, goateed man whose only crime was swearing to an incredulous Danny that the joint was completely out of Jack Daniel’s. Next, Lizzie, exhausted from shouldering the demands of a diva host, a micromanaging phalanx of executives, and an immature staff that needed constant hand-holding (and possibly under the influence of between four and nine margaritas), drifted into unconsciousness mid-conversation, toppling from her barstool all the way to the floor. After determining that she didn’t have a concussion, we called the car service that the network had on retainer for shuttling guests to and from the studio, and piled her into it for the long trip to New Jersey.

  But Saturday turned out to be just the warm-up act for Sunday, when barely an hour into the festivities, two producers probably senior enough to know better, slipped out of the bar with the intent to smoke a joint in a dark alley somewhere. When no dark alleys presented themselves, they settled for a partially dimmed doorway on Forty-Seventh Street, steps from the bar entrance and barely fifty yards from the blazing lights of Times Square. When word filtered back to the bar what they were up to, we laughed at their audacity.36

  Unfortunately for them, the NYPD found it a lot less amusing.

  It was only the intervention of a fast-thinking, sweet-talking, and breathtakingly gorgeous reporter—fortunately, she had accompanied us to the bar that night after appearing in a segment on the show—that spared my two colleagues from getting an uncomfortably close firsthand view of the criminal justice system they’d been covering. She worked her magic on the pair of New York’s Finest who had been driving their cruiser down Forty-Seventh Street and had easily spotted my poorly concealed colleagues toking their faces off, miraculously convincing the cops to give up one of the easiest busts of their careers and let the two producers go with just a warning.

  April 11, 2012—1:03 P.M.

  As a high-powered professional television journalist, I spent many of my workdays deeply immersed in some of the most complex, serious, consequential issues facing the American public.

  As I browsed the surprisingly comprehensive Wikipedia37 entry for The Beverly Hillbillies, I was forced to admit to myself that this was not one of those days.

  I was writing the Great American News Quiz, O’Reilly’s weekly opportunity to channel his inner Merv Griffin and play game show host.

  The division of labor for the quiz segment was simple—O’Reilly would pick a topic, I would write twenty multiple-choice questions based on said topic, the host would pick the five he liked best, and the next day he’d pose them to two Fox News personalities: smirky Fox & Friends cohost Steve Doocy and good-natured blond morning anchor Martha MacCallum.

  It wasn’t exactly Pulitzer fodder, but it was a fun-to-watch, highly rated segment. As an added bonus, writing the questions was an enjoyable task for me, a nice change of pace from my normal duties.

  Some days the writing was painfully slow going, but that day, of all days, the questions were absolutely flowing out of me. Part of that had to do with the week’s topic: sitcom legends. (At one point the News Quiz actually had been a quiz about the week’s news, but under my watch, it had slowly morphed into a quiz about whatever the hell captured O’Reilly’s fancy.) But I think the other explanation for my suddenly prolific quiz-question production is that I was grateful to have an activity, something to take my attention away from the thought that had been growing in the back of my brain all day: I think I’ve really fucked myself here.

  An hour later, I put the finishing touches on my last quiz question and hit PRINT. Wandering over to the laser printer a few feet from my desk, I gathered the still-warm pages and leafed through them. It wasn’t my finest work—but considering that I’d spent much of my morning in a state of sweat-drenched near-panic, it could have been much worse.

  I stapled the sheaf of paper, stuck it in a manila folder on which I had written NEWS QUIZ in fat Sharpie, and walked the twenty feet from my desk to Bill’s office. He hadn’t arrived for the day yet, but his door was wide open. His personal assistant, Margaret, had prepped the room for him: The day’s newspapers, books requiring his autograph, and various other items that needed his attention were arranged in a neat pile on his desk. I put the quiz folder on top of the pile.

  Back at my desk, I dropped heavily into my rolling chair, only to hear a familiar booming Voice, shouting questions at my fellow producers. The Voice was fifty feet down the hallway and coming ever closer.

  He was here.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Calling

  My first meeting with Bill O’Reilly lasted all of thirty seconds.

  I was already technically his employee at that point, having been recruited by one of his lower-level producers, interviewed by his executive producer, and approved by the Fox News human resources department, all in the course of a few months, and all without seeing hide nor hair of the Big Dog himself.

  It was January 2007, just about two and a half years after I began at Fox News. My rise had been disconcertingly meteoric. I had started as an overnight-shifter, unsure I even wanted to be there, and now I was about to join the network’s most popular, highest-profile show.

  The meeting took place in Bill’s office. I was escorted in by Stan Manskoff, one of the executive producers of The O’Reilly Factor. The door was open, but Stan stopped to knock anyway, rapping lightly to get Bill to look up from some papers he was studying at his desk.

  “Bill,” he said when he
had the anchor’s attention, “I’ve got the new radio guy here. Can he come say hello for a second?”

  O’Reilly sighed, as if we were inconveniencing him terribly. “All right,” he said. “Bring him in.”

  We stepped into Bill’s office, a different part of the seventeenth floor from where my soon-to-be-former Lineup colleagues sat. It was a corner office, naturally. In keeping with the Fox News low-budget aesthetic, it wasn’t that large or flashy, maybe about fifteen by twenty feet, with plain-looking institutional furniture. Two other corner offices on the seventeenth floor belonged to Sean Hannity, who barely used his (he preferred to spend most of his time at the offices of his radio show, located at WABC studios above Penn Station, about fifteen blocks away), and Geraldo, who used his plenty. The fourth corner office had been inexplicably claimed by the wardrobe department and was filled with racks and racks of dark, sober men’s suits and brightly colored women’s blouses, skirts, and jackets.

  Bill’s desk was placed so that he faced the door, with his back to the windows, large floor-to-ceiling ones that gave a decent, if partially obstructed, view of Times Square a block to the west, and the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond. The walls were decked with framed memorabilia: a congratulatory magazine ad from the company that syndicated his old tabloid show Inside Edition; a photo montage of Bill reporting from various exotic locations; yellowed copies of famous newspaper front pages (DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, JAPAN SURRENDERS, MAN WALKS ON MOON). Across the room from his desk was a couch, with three flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall above—a large one tuned to Fox News, and two smaller ones underneath tuned to CNN and MSNBC, respectively. All three were muted.

  Bill didn’t rise to greet us. His eyes followed me, sizing me up as I took the four or five steps from the door to his desk. I was suddenly self-conscious about my appearance. After getting off to a strong start with my plan to wear ties, I’d reverted to my old ways. And now, in front of Bill, I was worried that my lightly faded jeans were too unbusinesslike, and that my two-day-old facial scruff pegged me (correctly) as someone who was too lazy to shave every day.

  I stopped front and center and grasped the giant meat hook that he’d stretched across the desk. His shake was firm enough but wasn’t the pulverizing, I’m-more-macho-than-you death grip I’d expected from him. His hand was surprisingly soft.

  “Joe Muto. Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Mmm-hmm.” He nodded, his gaze still not breaking from my face.

  “Joe’s coming to us from The Lineup,” Stan offered.

  Bill glanced over at Stan, his face registering a look of confusion.

  “The weekend crime show,” Stan said. “With Guilfoyle, Mayor Newsom’s ex-wife?”

  A look of recognition from Bill. “Ahh, Guilfoyle.” His eyes snapped back to me suddenly, startling me.

  “Anyway,” I said, hoping I hadn’t flinched visibly, “I’m excited to come aboard. I can’t wait to start next week.”

  Bill nodded again.

  “Work hard,” he said, then looked back down at his paperwork.

  I stood there confused. Was that it? I felt Stan’s touch, light on my shoulder, and looked back at him. He gave a little jerk toward the door with his head. Let’s get out of here.

  “So that’s it?” I asked when we were back in the hall.

  Stan shrugged. “What did you want, a parade?”

  —

  Sam Martinez had been the first O’Reilly-ite to approach me. I knew Sam from my newsroom days. He’d been the PA for DaySide with Linda Vester, cutting video for the infamous news show that had both a live audience and a host who seemed to hate live audiences.

  Sam was unmissable in the newsroom. For starters, he was enormous, built like an NFL lineman, over six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds. But for all his size, he was surprisingly agile and light on his feet. When he did a Death Run from the edit room to playback with a tape that was in danger of missing air, he wove gracefully around obstacles, taking corners and barreling toward playback at a speed you wouldn’t think a man of his mass would be able to attain. Smaller PAs dove out of the way when they saw him coming, flattening themselves against cubicle walls with a look of absolute terror. But he never crashed into any of them, delivering the tape without incident every time, puffing heavily and sweaty-browed from the effort, but triumphant. Sam was also the most gregarious PA in the newsroom, spending his downtime not huddled at his computer surfing websites like everyone else, but roaming from desk to desk, chatting with the other production assistants, slapping backs and bellowing greetings in his loud tenor.

  He was in full yelling and backslapping mode when I bumped into him one night in late 2006, at an after-work happy hour at (where else?) Langan’s, celebrating the birthday of another PA with whom we were both friendly. I was still on The Lineup, and he had left DaySide for a position with Bill O’Reilly’s radio show.

  “Muto!” he yelled as I walked into the bar, raising his beer glass in a salute. “Get over here and take a shot with me!”

  I bellied up next to him. “I’m in. What are we doing? Tequila?”

  He looked at me with mock outrage. “Why do you think I want tequila, huh? Is it because I’m brown?”

  Sam was Mexican American, one of the few minorities in a newsroom that was heavily white, and he didn’t let anyone forget it.

  “A Mexican guy always has to drink tequila, is that it?” he continued, laughing, punching me good-naturedly on the shoulder.

  “Mexican? I thought you were Samoan,” said a woman’s voice behind us. We both turned. It was Camie.

  “Okay, now I’m offended for real,” Sam said. Though with his bulky build and the thick black goatee he was sporting, he did look a little like he was from Samoa.

  “Aww, quit being a baby and let’s take a shot,” Camie said. Then to the bartender, “Three shots of Patrón.”

  The barkeep lined up three shot glasses and filled them from a squat bottle of clear liquid. We picked up the glasses and clinked them together.

  “Viva Mexico,” I said, and we knocked back the smooth, pleasantly burning elixir.

  An hour later, nicely buzzed, Sam and I were nursing beers at a table.

  “How do you like your job, man?” he asked. “I walk past your desk sometimes. It looks like you’re not really doing much.” I almost got indignant but realized he was probably right.

  “I like the people,” I said. “But I have jack shit to do during the week. And I’m pretty bored of the crime beat.”

  “You know . . .”—Sam lowered his voice conspiratorially—“we have an opening coming up on Bill’s radio show. I could put your name in. I think you’d be good for it.”

  And just like that, it was moral dilemma time for me again.

  Working for The Lineup, I could at least pretend I wasn’t involved in promulgating the worst of Fox’s conservative tendencies. I gave myself plausible deniability. After all, I told myself, there was no ideology in the crime stories. There’s no liberal or conservative—just guilty or innocent. But if I started working for O’Reilly, that fig leaf I’d been grasping on to for the sake of my own conscience would disappear entirely. There’d be no pretending anymore that I was somehow separate from the Fox News right-wing outrage-manufacturing complex. Instead, I’d be at the very center of it.

  Then again, was there really that much difference in what I was doing and what Sam was doing? I’d already compromised by taking the job with the company in the first place. Once I was in the building, taking a paycheck, did it really matter what specific show I was affiliated with? Wouldn’t it actually be better to be on a show with some clout instead of stuck on a dead-end weekend show that was slowly bleeding viewers and was on the verge of going down the tubes? And couldn’t I, as I’d originally vowed when I took the job, change the network from the inside a lot more effectively if I was in the belly of the beast? Wouldn’t keeping the famous, feared Bill O’Reilly honest actually be a much higher calling than tracking do
wn missing blond teenagers?

  “Yo, you still with me, man?” Sam snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You drifted off or something.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Fuck, yeah!” Sam yelled, pounding the table. He jumped out of his chair, waving his hands over his head to get the bartender’s attention. “Shots! Now!”

  Two weeks later, I was sitting in Stan Manskoff’s office. He was quizzing me on my duties for The Lineup, feeling out if I was going to be a good fit for the O’Reilly team. It wasn’t an ideological litmus test like the Kool-Aid Conference two years earlier. It felt more like an assessment to see if I was competent enough to handle the pressure of working for a demanding, high-profile host. Stan must have liked whatever it was I said, because another week after that, he called me back into his office.

  “We’d like to offer you the job as the new production assistant on Bill’s radio show,” he said.

  The O’Reilly empire at the time consisted of three distinct teams that worked closely together: TV, radio, and website. TV was the biggest, and in Bill’s eyes the most important, employing about fifteen people. Radio was smaller—only five people at its peak. And the website team was basically just two guys, with some additional support staff on the West Coast. The three staffs were intertwined, all attending the same meetings, all under Stan’s supervision, and all expected to do whatever they could to further the O’Reilly cause. Stan was offering me a chance to join the team. The Dream Team, really. It was the pinnacle of working for Fox. If I was going to go all in, this was my chance.