How Fox News Women Took Down Roger Ailes. It took 1. 5 days to end the mighty 2. Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers. That the place turned out to be rife with grotesque abuses of power has left even its liberal critics stunned. More than two dozen women have come forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment, and what they have exposed is both a culture of misogyny and one of corruption and surveillance, smear campaigns and hush money, with implications reaching far wider than one disturbed man at the top. It began, of course, with a lawsuit. Of all the people who might have brought down Ailes, the former Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson was among the least likely. A 5. 0- year- old former Miss America, she was the archetypal Fox anchor: blonde, right- wing, proudly anti- intellectual. A memorable Daily Showclip showed Carlson saying she needed to Google the words czar and ignoramus. But television is a deceptive medium. Off- camera, Carlson is a Stanford- and Oxford- educated feminist who chafed at the culture of Fox News. When Ailes made harassing comments to her about her legs and suggested she wear tight- fitting outfits after she joined the network in 2. But eventually he pushed her too far. When Carlson complained to her supervisor in 2. Steve Doocy, who she said condescended to her on and off the air, Ailes responded that she was . In September 2. 01. Ailes demoted her from the morning show Fox & Friends to the lower- rated 2 p. The culture of fear at Fox was such that no one would dare come forward. Ailes was notoriously paranoid and secretive . He was known for monitoring employee emails and phone conversations and hiring private investigators. She settled on a simple strategy: She would turn the tables on his surveillance. Beginning in 2. 01. Carlson brought her i. Phone to meetings in Ailes. Sometimes problems are easier to solve. Key Facts About Seasonal Flu Vaccine - CDC. CDC recommends use of injectable influenza vaccines (including inactivated influenza vaccines and recombinant influenza vaccines) during 2016-2017. Evolution’s legacy, according to this theory, is that women are prone to lubricate, if only protectively, to hints of sex in their surroundings. Thinking of her own data, Chivers speculated that bonobo coupling. With the augment of Internet UN News Centre – Official site for daily UN news, press releases, statements, briefings and calendar of events. Includes UN radio, video, webcasts, magazines, documents, publications, conference information, photos and. Thanks for visiting Speaking Tree. You seem to have an Ad Blocker on. Please turn it off in order to continue. Younique's mission is to uplift, empower, validate, and ultimately build self-esteem in women around the world through high-quality products that encourage both inner and outer beauty and spiritual enlightenment. USA Today politics blog. Why Ann Coulter is trending on Election Day 8.1k Shares How to move to Canada 4.8k Shares. Smith had won a sexual- harassment settlement in 2. New Jersey acting governor Donald Di. Franceso. They hoped that with the element of surprise, they would be able to prevent Fox from launching a preemptive suit that forced them into arbitration. The plan was to file in September 2. New Jersey Superior Court (Ailes owns a home in Cresskill, New Jersey). But their timetable was pushed up when, on the afternoon of June 2. Carlson was called into a meeting with Fox general counsel Dianne Brandi and senior executive VP Bill Shine, and fired the day her contract expired.* Smith, bedridden following surgery for a severed hamstring, raced to get the suit ready. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Smith instructed an IT technician to install software on her firm. They filed their lawsuit on July 6. Carlson and Smith were well aware that suing Ailes for sexual harassment would be big news in a post- Cosby media culture that had become more sensitive to women claiming harassment; still, they were anxious about going up against such a powerful adversary. James and Lachlan, who were not fans of Ailes. Within hours, the Murdoch heirs persuaded their 8. Ailes publicly, to release a statement saying, . Making things look worse for Ailes, three days after Carlson. Ailes vehemently denied the allegations. The next morning, Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, turned his . We have to get in front of this. This is about his legacy. As part of his counteroffensive, Ailes rallied Fox News employees to defend him in the press. Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt called Ailes a . According to a high- level source inside the company, Ailes complained to 2. Century Fox general counsel Gerson Zweifach that James, whose wife had worked for the Clinton Foundation, was trying to get rid of him in order to help elect Hillary Clinton. At one point, Ailes threatened to fly to France, where Rupert was vacationing with his wife, Jerry Hall, in an effort to save his job. Perhaps Murdoch told him not to bother, because the trip never happened. According to a person close to the Murdochs, Rupert. The elder Murdoch can be extremely loyal to executives who run his companies, even when they cross the line. And he had begun to worry less about whether Fox could endure without its creator. The most significant of the accusers was Megyn Kelly, who is in contract negotiations with Fox and is considered by the Murdochs to be the future of the network. So important to Fox is Kelly that Lachlan personally approved her reported $6 million book advance from Murdoch- . After news broke on the afternoon of July 1. Kelly had come forward, Ailes. That evening, Murdoch used one of his own press organs to fire back, with the New York Posttweeting the cover of the next day. On the afternoon of July 2. Trump was to accept the Republican nomination in Cleveland, Murdoch summoned Ailes to his New York penthouse to work out a severance deal. James had wanted Ailes to be fired for cause, according to a person close to the Murdochs, but after reviewing his contract, Rupert decided to pay him $4. Murdoch assured Ailes that, as acting CEO of Fox News, he would protect the channel. That night, Rupert and Lachlan discussed the extraordinary turn of events over drinks at Eleven Madison Park. The Murdochs must have hoped that by acting swiftly to remove Ailes, they had averted a bigger crisis. But over the coming days, harassment allegations from more women would make it clear that the problem was not limited to Ailes but included those who enabled him . Ailes had just been forced out as president of CNBC under circumstances that would foreshadow his problems at Fox. While his volcanic temper, paranoia, and ruthlessness were part of what made Ailes among the best television producers and political operatives of his generation, those same attributes prevented him from functioning in a corporate environment. Somehow, I always walk away. But by 1. 99. 5, things had reached a breaking point. In October of that year, NBC hired the law firm Proskauer Rose to conduct an internal investigation after then. I take his threats to do physical harm to me very, very seriously . CNBC executive Andy Friendly also filed complaints. The Proskauer report chronicled Ailes. He hired Ailes to help achieve a goal that had eluded Murdoch for a decade: busting CNN. But Ailes recognized how key wedge issues . By January 2. 00. Fox News had surpassed CNN as the highest- rated cable news channel. And by merging news, politics, and entertainment in such an overt way, Ailes was able to personally shape the national conversation and political fortunes as no one ever had before. It is not a stretch to argue that Ailes is largely responsible for, among other things, the selling of the Iraq War, the Swift- boating of John Kerry, the rise of the tea party, the sticking power of a host of Clinton scandals, and the purported illegitimacy of Barack Obama. At News Corp., he behaved just as he had at NBC, but Murdoch tolerated Ailes. He made his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., a regular guest on Fox shows, despite producers. One, Nikole King, went to the finance department, where she handled Ailes. Another, Brigette Boyle, went to human resources, where she was . According to executives, he instructed Fox. When Ailes spotted James Murdoch on the monitor smoking a cigarette outside the office, he remarked to his deputy Bill Shine, . Fox contributor Jim Pinkerton wrote an anonymous blog called the Cable Game that attacked Ailes- selected targets, two Fox executives confirmed. Fox contributor Bo Dietl did private- investigation work for Ailes, including following former Fox producer Andrea Mackris after she sued Bill O. Ailes turned these same tactics on his enemies outside the company, including journalists. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, Brandi, Fox. Getting phone records doesn. About that scandal, Murdoch said, . I hold responsible the people that I trusted to run it and the people they trusted. Every year, Murdoch approved Ailes. His father, a factory foreman, abused his wife and two sons. His parents divorced in 1. In court papers, Ailes. He suffered from hemophilia and was often homebound from school, so he spent hours on the living- room couch watching variety shows and Westerns. Within four years, he had muscled aside the show. Over the past two months, I interviewed 1. Ailes. In some cases, he threatened to release tapes of the encounters to prevent the women from reporting him. But even back then, Ailes. A former model told me that her parents called the police on Ailes after she told them he assaulted her in a Cincinnati hotel room in 1. During this time Ailes divorced, remarried, and divorced again. A former television producer described an interview with Ailes in 1. Two years later, when Ailes was 5. But neither a new marriage nor parenthood changed his predatory behavior toward the women who worked for him. According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. What are my familial ties? Megyn Kelly told lawyers at Paul, Weiss that Ailes made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2. A lawyer for former anchor Laurie Dhue told me that Ailes harassed her around 2. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, . If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster. The woman, then 2. Ailes that her ambition was to do commercials.
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