Fox News has a “crumbling foundation”: Roger Ailes’ biographer talks to Salon

Salon ^ | January 21, 2014 | Josh Eidelson

[2ndDivisionVet]

Gabriel Sherman’s exhaustive, inflammatory biography of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, released days ago by Random House, has already prompted network pushback. “While we have not read the book,” a Fox News spokesperson told the New York Times, “the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News.” Sherman’s 538-page tome, “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country,” is the product of three years of work and hundreds of interviews. It paints Ailes as a transformative figure in American media and politics – and includes alleged episodes of violence, paranoia, bigotry and sexual harassment.

Sherman, a contributing editor at New York magazine, spoke with Salon Friday about Ailes’ power, his myth-making about his own biography, and Fox’s future. “He is presiding over an empire that has a crumbling foundation,” said Sherman. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.

You write that Ailes has been “essentially running the Republican Party …” Why Ailes and not, say, Mitch McConnell, or Jim DeMint, or Rush Limbaugh, or Rubert Murdoch?

I think Ailes has surpassed the Republican Party. Fox is driving the set of stories and the mission in a way that – it’s not that Ailes is doing it to help the Republican Party, Ailes has his own agenda. He is bigger than the Republican Party. He has a meeting, which I report on in the book, and he expresses disdain for the Republican Party — he jokes at one point that the GOP couldn’t organize a one-car funeral. So you know, to your question, why Ailes and not somebody else....

[2ndDivisionVet]

Gabriel Sherman is a contributing editor at New York Magazine. Currently, Sherman is also a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. In January 2014, Random House will publish his first book about Roger Ailes and the rise of the Fox News Channel.

At New York, Sherman has reported cover stories on media, politics and business. His 2011 cover story "The Elephant in the Green Room," about Roger Ailes's role in shaping the 2012 Republican presidential primary, was a finalist for the Mirror Award for "Best Single Article". His 2010 cover story "Chasing Fox," about the travails at CNN and MSNBC, won the Mirror Award in that category. In 2008, his cover story "Testing Horace Mann," chronicled a Facebook scandal at the prestigious New York City prep school, and was a finalist for the Livingston Award.

At the New Republic, Sherman's 2010 cover story, "Post Apocalypse," chronicled the rise and fall of the Washington Post as the legendary paper struggled to adapt to a new media landscape. In December 2008, he wrote a series of investigative articles that uncovered that Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat's Oprah-hyped memoir was a hoax. His February 2008 article revealed the internal newsroom debate at the New York Times over the paper's decision to publish a controversial article that alleged that the 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain had had an affair with the telecommunications lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

Previously, Sherman was the media reporter at the New York Observer, where he reported extensively on the New York Times, including the paper's flawed coverage of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction and the decision to delay publishing its NSA wiretapping exclusive for more than a year. He reported on Judith Miller's standoff with Times editors and reporters, and ultimately sat down for Miller's first interview on the eve of her resignation from the paper. From 2006-2007, Sherman was a staff writer at Conde Nast Portfolio.

He has served as a guest on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC World News and National Public Radio, and his journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, GQ, the Atlantic, Wired, Outside Magazine and National Geographic Adventure, among other publications.

A competitive runner, he has run six marathons and finished the 2003 New York City Marathon in 2:56:29. He has also run up the stairs of the Empire State Building in 13:26.

Born in Newton, MA, Sherman grew up outside Washington D.C and later in Westport, CT. He attended Middlebury College, and currently lives in New York City with his wife Jennifer Stahl.

[BamaDi]

Even the NYSlimes ripped this guy and his book.....said they’d never seen so many “anonymous” sources in a book.....bwaaaaaa

[Repeal The 17th]

I looked up “metrosexual” in the dictionary and I found Gabriel Sherman’s picture.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Really? I found it under “homosexual with a beard” but maybe my dictionary is different...

[RightOnTheBorder]

The title should be “unapproved, unofficial biographer” but then Salon is a vipers den of liars and sociopaths so what is one more lie when attacking a political enemy.

[Dr. Ursus]

Offline to reset my gaydar!

[Repeal The 17th]

Must be a cross reference...

[Vision]

Gabriel Sherman does not look like someone who should be babysitting children.

[gusopol3]

He doesn’t know anything. The big media divided the country a long time ago by mounting a succession of left-wing counter-cultural crusades against the settled Judeo-Christian morality of the founding + 175 years. Television without a doubt was the vehicle they were able to dominate and use. Even Hollywood itself was not as monolithic as the newsrooms in propagandizing and probably didn’t want to be.

[2banana]

Can we sit down with some hot chocolate in our PJs and talk health care?

[DemforBush]

Here’s his conservapedia entry: http://www.conservapedia.com/Gabriel_Sherman

What a goober-butt.

[colorado tanker]

Random House actually believes somebody will buy this book? Hope the advance was small.

[miserare]

Definitely a case of penis envy.

[gorush]

You can expect people of that age to say things like that. The only thing it proves is that they are unexceptional. He may yet mature someday.

[Navy Patriot]

Salon?

Isn't a salon a gay bath house frequented by Gaybriel Sherman?

[humblegunner]

In 2008, his cover story "Testing Horace Mann," chronicled a Facebook scandal at the prestigious New York City prep school

I hope he learned to make sandwiches.

[AlexW]

“The big media divided the country a long time ago”
______________________________________________________
Good analysis. The keys to the Marxist takeover of the new USSA has been Communist public education and a largely Communist news media. The left has invaded them during the last 20 years, or more.

[~Vor~]

"currently lives in New York City with his wife Jennifer Stahl"

Seems Gabriel Sherman is wed to a Jennifer Stahl, who at the time of their wedding in 2011, worked as a "fact checker" for The New Yorker magazine...

Article

[2ndDivisionVet]

Dayum... Do you live next door to a liquor store?

[2ndDivisionVet]

The happy couple.