While we wait for more shoes to drop in the Roger Ailes sexual harassment scandal and wonder if and how far it will spread to other executives, some very alarming and unsavory details have surfaced about the lengths to which Ailes has been willing to go to silence his critics.
From Politico’s Morning Media column:
Ailes’ black ops tactics against New York magazine reporter and Ailes biographer Gabe Sherman were apparently more menacing than just online smears and negative Google ads. A source close to high-level Fox News executives told Morning Media that during a private conversation with Ailes at an event in the period when Sherman was reporting his 2014 book, “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Ailes said to this source, “I know where he lives, and I’m gonna send people to beat the shit out of him.” (A second source within the Fox News orbit confirmed hearing the same account and a third said Ailes has said some version of this before.)
The first source also relayed a separate conversation in which the source was told, “If it ever came out,” meaning the lengths Ailes went to in his campaign against Sherman, “multiple people at Fox would go to jail.” There’s suspicion, sources said, that phone records were obtained illegally. At one point, Sherman and his wife explored the possibility of having their apartment swept for bugs, according to a source familiar with the matter. Ailes’ attorney, Susan Estrich, did not respond to requests for comment. Sherman declined to comment.
Sources also said that Peter J. Boyer, erstwhile New Yorker staff writer turned Fox News editor-at-large who was let go from the network two weeks ago (under circumstances reportedly unrelated to the Ailes matter) is finalizing an exit package. Boyer was present for a series of “war room” meetings in which Ailes and several consiglieres orchestrated a plan of attack against Sherman—in other words, Boyer is said to know where bodies are buried. A source familiar with the matter said there’s “no doubt” Boyer has information that could be damaging to Ailes, but that he won’t be getting anything more than a “typical” severance package. Boyer didn’t return an email and a woman who answered the phone at his residence took a message. Fox News declined to comment.
What’s especially revealing about this is that Ailes was willing to employ such thuggish tactics against a reporter. Not that it would have been any better had he targeted anyone else. But it goes to show just how little regard he has for journalism and how little tolerance for the kind of free press he has pretended to champion.
I can just imagine the 24/7 feeding frenzy that would have gone on at Fox had the head of MSNBC been accused of sexually harassing multiple employees, paying hush money to cover it up and running some kind of personal black ops out of the corporate headquarters.
But all this happened at Fox, under Rupert Murdoch’s nose. Coming as it does, not so far on the heels of the phone hacking scandal, in which widespread hacking by Murdoch's British tabloids into the phones of celebrities, soccer players and politicians was discovered, this also raises big questions about just what kind of corporate culture he fosters.
Roger Ailes caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.
And now it sounds like laws and morality are nothing more than technicalities or loopholes to be gotten around for Faux News. I’ve long figured that the denizens of Faux have a lot in common with criminals behind bars. Except for the incarceration part.
Now — that is different than sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is wrong and should be punishable by law.
Threatening competition? That’s just capitalism. You want unfettered capitalism? This is what you get.