Roger Ailes, who built Fox News into a powerhouse, dies at 77

“With Ailes, you have this rare convergence of someone who is equally savvy in media style as they are in understanding the narratives and themes of American politics”, says Reece Peck, an assistant professor at College of Staten Island who is writing a book about Fox News.

Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox and Fox News Channel, in a statement called Ailes “a brilliant broadcaster [who] played a huge role in shaping America’s media over the last thirty years”. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

If nothing else, it’s worth noting the rather matter-of-fact statement (and its lack of superlatives) emailed from Ohio University regarding Ailes, a graduate and substantial financial donor to the school: “Today, we learned of the passing of alumnus Roger Ailes”. It was a preview of his Fox News credo that political correctness was to be shunned in favor of blunt, sometimes insensitive coverage of touchy issues.

Sherman: Without question. I mean, this was again one of Ailes’ unique insights.

Fox News, which Ailes started in 1996 with the backing of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, raised the temperature of on-air debate on US television, generally taking a hardline conservative view. Jayson Blair’s fictitious stories in the New York Times, Janet Cooke’s non-existent young heroin addict in the Washington Post, CBS’s suspect documents about George W. Bush’s military service, CNN’s “Tailwind” story about the of nerve gas, Brian Williams’ war stories on NBC-all resulted in exhaustive investigations, mea culpas and the loss of jobs by anchors and top executives. But he basically shed all the actual functions of journalism, which are bureaus, reporters out in the fields, expensive things like that. They can not get enough of it – new scandals give rise to the hope that they’ll be rid of Trump in less than four years. So that was one of his unique business insights. It was ironic, then, that Ailes was ousted only hours before Trump accepted the GOP nomination for which Fox had helped pave the way. Smith represents two other women with lawsuits pending against Fox News. Go out and enjoy yourself, you’ve worked hard all your life.

Ailes’s death was announced on Thursday, less than a year after his ouster from Fox News during a wave of accusations of sexual harassment from more than 20 women, thereby ensuring that Ailes will be remembered primarily as an alleged sexual predator.

Ailes resigned from Fox in 2016 after allegations by 25 women, including anchors Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, that he had sexually harassed them at some point during his 50-year career in television. He leaves a wife and son who knew him best and adored him. Abrams said that lawsuits targeting or involving Ailes might now end up being settled out of court, but they don’t have to be. “And so even as we mourn his death, we celebrate his life”.

Mr Ailes ran Fox News for two decades and is credited with transforming it into arguably the most powerful voice in conservative media, BBC reports. The Left would command a monopoly control of the so-called “news” media but for the Fox News Channel, and FNC would not exist but for him. Getting Fox News to admit that sexual harassment is wrong was a small step, but a pretty big symbolic victory. Through a career spanning a half-century, Ailes mastered the art of media messaging and applied it, interchangeably, to politics and broadcasting.

Roger Ailes didn’t make this new world alone. He put Glenn Beck on the air, basically coinciding with Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, and Glenn Beck’s audience exploded because that was where the country was at the moment. “Didn’t you see my recent appearance on ‘Dancing with the Stars?'”