Free Republic

My first meeting in Roger Ailes’ boardroom of doom was on Election Day 2010. At the time, I was the network’s new political editor. Republicans were poised to deliver a serious walloping to President Barack Obama and roll back the Democrats’ doughty majorities in both houses of Congress. The GOP was in a position to score major wins in governors’ mansions and statehouses from coast to coast. The second floor of the News Corp headquarters on Sixth Avenue in New York was a hive of excited optimism. With Republicans looking forward to big wins, we knew viewership would be enormous...

For some inexplicable reason, conservatives rush towards fratricide with the same kind of urgency that drives lemmings over the cliff. It’s what they do, even when it’s counterproductive and costly. Conservatism wasn’t made better off by the four-year campaign waged against Speaker Newt Gingrich by some House conservatives who considered him ideologically unreliable. It wasn’t helped by John Boehner’s premature departure from Congress, brought about by political headaches caused by House Republicans on his right flank. A small group of so-called purists on the right even crossed swords with President Ronald Reagan, without whom modern conservatism would have emerged stillborn...

Just saw Fox News coverage of White House presser and was amazed to see they cut away from it because Kayliegh was showing a video of rioting anarchist destroying American cities and trying to kill police officers. Fox said the video was "too disturbing.' So now they will decide what we can see. Murdochs hate America

When Gretchen Carlson heard that NBC News was considering letting people out of their non-disclosure agreements involving alleged sexual misconduct at the network, she couldn’t help but think of the NDA she signed with Fox News before her departure three years ago. “It would be nice to be able to be able to tell my full story,” Carlson said. She’s hoping one day she can. The newswoman says she’s asked to be let out of her NDA and talked to other Fox News employees who left with similar settlements about pressing the network to be let out of the agreements....

Very quietly this morning, Lionsgate dropped the trailer and revealed the title for their Jay Roach-directed, Charles Randolph scripted movie about the women who take on Fox News Channel boss Roger Ailes: Bombshell. While we don’t get a glance at John Lithgow’s Roger Ailes in the current trailer, we see Margot Robbie’s Kayla Pospisil (a fictitious news producer) getting on the elevator with Charlize Theron’s Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman’s Gretchen Carlson as they head to the second floor — the executive suite at Fox News Channel’s 1211 Ave. of the Americas. Everyone is just calm and cool here. Earlier...

How "brave" of Showtime to produce a series based on the man whose Fox News beat the company that owns them consistently in the ratings, CBS. The series in question is the Showtime version of Roger Ailes as portrayed by Russell Crowe.  Showtime, obviously proud of their character assassination portrayal of Ailes in The Loudest Voice, put up a billboard plugging the series on Sunset Boulevard. Can you guess what happened next? If you guessed hilarious sabotage yet again by Los Angeles street artists you would be right. The Hollywood Reporter wrote up the details in "Showtime's Roger Ailes Show Billboard...

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is reportedly considering launching a conservative news outlet backed by the powerful Mercer family, along with a “cast of Fox News celebrities,” according to Michael Wolff book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” and a report from BuzzFeed news. According to Wolff, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and Peter Thiel were set to discuss the idea of a conservative news outlet last May – however Ailes slipped and fell two days before the meeting, hitting his head and dying before the discussion could occur. Word of Thiel’s potential new venture with the Mercers is...

Talk-radio host and friend Chris Plante recently made an excellent point about Hollywood. As horrible new revelations of sexual misbehavior surface about former Les Moonves, it's highly unlikely anyone's going to make a movie about him, or about Matt Lauer, or Charlie Rose and so on. But there are two fictional projects (and a new documentary) supposedly based on the late Fox News boss Roger Ailes. Early pictures have emerged of actress Nicole Kidman dressed up to look like former Fox News morning host Gretchen Carlson, who played a major role in exposing a culture of sexual harassment of women...

Rupert Murdoch didn’t want Donald Trump to win the presidential election. According to a longtime friend of the former Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes, Murdoch wanted to tilt the election to any other candidate than Trump, even if it was Hillary! Ailes passed away in May at the age of 76. Via The Washington Examiner: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch wanted to tilt the U.S. presidential election to any candidate but President Trump, according to a longtime friend of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. “Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was...

Fox News is “Fair and Balanced” no more. In the latest sign of change at the cable news network, the “Fair and Balanced” motto that has long been a rallying cry for Fox News fans — and a finger in the eye of critics — is gone. The channel confirmed on Wednesday that slogan and network have parted ways. “The shift has nothing to do with programming or editorial decisions,” the network said in a statement. Instead, the slogan was dropped in part because of its close association with Roger Ailes, network’s co-founder, former chairman and the originator of the...

I don’t know if Roger Ailes did all the stuff he was accused of doing. I do know that he didn’t make Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky carry on a sexual relationship under the roof of the White House and then lie about it.But admitting that wouldn’t help Lewinsky get an editorial published in the New York Times. This did: This is not another obituary for Roger Ailes, who died last week 10 months after being ousted at Fox News. It is, I hope, instead an obituary for the culture he purveyed — a culture that affected me profoundly and...

It was big news when Roger Ailes died. Everyone in his industry acknowledged that a serious, even transcendent force in American media and politics had passed away. Without Fox News over these last 20 years, the shape of American politics would be far different. The heretofore unanimously liberal media suddenly had a counterweight, and, much to their horror, this uppity network soon had surpassed all of its rivals in cable news -- combined. The era of unchallenged liberal enlightenment was over. Ailes was accused of making American dumber, angrier and more bigoted. One notable Ailes critic really stretched reality beyond...

Monica Lewinsky: Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare By MONICA LEWINSKYMAY 22, 2017 This is not another obituary for Roger Ailes, who died last week a year after being ousted at Fox News. It is, I hope, instead an obituary for the culture he purveyed — a culture that affected me profoundly and personally. Just two years after Rupert Murdoch appointed Mr. Ailes to head the new cable news network, my relationship with President Bill Clinton became public. Mr. Ailes, a former Republican political operative, took the story of the affair and the trial that followed and made certain his...

On the heels of major shakeups at the Fox News Network, an alternative conservative network is being actively discussed amongst conservative fat cats. A well-placed source close to the proposal tells Mediaite that serious discussions are underway to create an alternative conservative cable network on the belief that the Fox News Network is moving too far to the left. The source, who is engaged in the talks, says a meeting is planned for today with two prominent high-powered television executives, some underperforming conservative networks and people who have an interest and the ability to fund a new network. The potential...

As Rupert Murdoch's sons allegedly try to reform Fox News in a more liberal light, both Milo Yiannopoulos and Roger Ailes are exploring new entertainment opportunities to appeal to the conservative and 'new right' demographics. Yiannopoulos, who was not affiliated with Fox News, has a $12m investment deal to start a touring company for speakers such as himself, according to Vanity Fair. [snip] Separately, a source told Mediaite that 'high-powered television executives' are plotting a new conservative news network because Fox is allegedly becoming too left of center... The channel could be ready for airwaves in 10 months, the source...

As Fox News continues to reel from the summary dismissal of its top star Bill O'Reilly this week and its creator, Roger Ailes earlier this year, a lot of attention has been given to women who worked there and whether they experienced any sort of harassment. There was a very interesting exchange between Jake Tapper and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during his interview with her on The Lead Thursday. Tapper asked, directly, what she experienced during her time working there as a commentator. Palin, who left the network in June of 2015, didn't elaborate about her personal experiences, but...

"I told him then, I said, ‘She’s the devil, and she will turn on you,'" the Trump strategist reportedly said of Kelly. President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has opened up about the rift between his political website Breitbart and Fox News — and he blames Megyn Kelly. In a recent interview with Politico, Bannon said, "The big rift between Breitbart and Fox was all over Megyn Kelly. She was all over Trump nonstop.” Kelly, who has since departed Fox News despite an enormous offer from the network, made headlines when she accused then-CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment...

The original definition of tragedy, dating from the classical Greeks, depends upon a fatal flaw. That is why Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News qualifies as “tragic,” even though there are many collateral victims as well, starting with conservatives who are losing a gutsy interrogator unafraid of the stature or political correctness of his interview subjects. As I read the complaints against O’Reilly, it sounds as if he was alleged to have been behaving like a character out Mad Men, the soap opera about a Madison Avenue ad agency in the 1960s. Bill seems to have been old school in...

Julie Roginsky filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of the State of New York in the County of New York on Monday claiming that she was sexually harassed by former CEO Roger Ailes during her time at the network and refused a promised promotion when she turned down his sexual advances. She began working as a contributor for the network back in 2011, and things went fine until in 2015 Ailes began asking her to meet in private where he would ask her personal questions about her love and sex life according to the complaint. The court filing claims...

Shepard Smith has come out as a gay man in a new interview. The popular Fox News anchor, who has been with the network since it first launched 20 years ago, spoke about his sexuality in an interview with Huffington Post. Smith, 52, confirmed the long-circulating rumor when he was asked if it was former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes who prevented him from coming out of the closet. 'That's not true. He was as nice as he could be to me. I loved him like a father,' Smith said of Ailes. The 'love' Smith had for his old boss...