The False Mythology of Roger Ailes

Many of you may have started watching the Showtime series, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM, about Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The problem with it is, that with respect to what Ailes did, what he is credited with accomplishing at Fox, very little of it is true.

Sure Ailes understood television and politics. But at core what he did was to take the world of talk radio, combined it with a bit of “blondification” and transferred it to television. When Fox new went on the air in 1996, Limbaugh had already been on the air for almost ten years.

Ailes simply exploited the rise and power of conservative talk radio. The Economist said many months ago that, “to understand the Republican politics, get in a car, turn on the radio and drive.”

Talk radio, is far more than the viewers that watch even the top rated Fox News shows each night. It's the lens through which millions and millions of its hard core listeners view the world.

No one understands this better than the go-to-guy for talk radio, the founder, editor and publisher of Talkers and Talkers.com, Michael Harrison.

Back in July of 2017, upon the death of Ailes, Harrison and I spoke about this mythology.

My conversation with Michael Harrison:

The Loudest Voice in the Room

Sometimes we just go on with politics as usual and then something comes along that changes everything.  In our lifetime, the political landscape has shifted on its axis several times. The Nixon- Kennedy debate for one. It changed the perception of television and what it takes to win an election.

Certainly advocacy journalism, or “yellow journalism” as some have called it, has been with us since Gutenberg cleaned the ink off of the first printing press. Pamphleteers once ruled the ballot box. Years later, Hearst was quoted as saying to one of his reporters, “you provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.”

Long before talk radio, the likes of Father Coughlin, Walter Winchell, and Lowell Thomas would use radio news to shape and shade the public's perception of the events of the day.

But before 1996, this kind of journalism had not been able to manipulate the power of television. The barriers to entry had been too high and the public perhaps too wise. But all of that would change in the hands of a former Nixon ad man and NBC executive named Roger Ailes. With money from Rupert Murdoch, he would bring to television news a product that was neither fair or balanced.

How Ailes did it and why, is at the heart of a Gabriel Sherman's book The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country.

My conversation with Gabriel Sherman: