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MAN 1: Hello?
-ROGER: Son. -MAN 1: Yes, sir?
WOMAN 1: Dad?
ROGER: You and I...
have to have a serious talk.
WOMAN 1: Oh, sure thing, Roger.
WOMAN 2: The great man, Roger Ailes.
WOMAN 3: Why don't you wear that tomorrow?
ROGER: This is something I want you to always remember.
Hello?
-WOMAN 4: Roger... -ROGER: Who would give somebody
the audacity to stand for something
when there are seven billion people?
PRESIDENT NIXON: And this certainly has to be
the most historic telephone call.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: Youth and inexperience.
-MAN 2: Roger Ailes. -GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Only in America.
MAN 3: He bucked the tide.
To Roger Ailes.
ROGER: They pushed their own abilities...
MAN 4: The most powerful man in media.
ROGER: ...further than others expected.
If it weren't for Roger Ailes...
MAN 5: You did more than your detractors
ever thought you could.
ROGER: You've been called every name of the book, right?
Wingnut, partisan hack, fat, ugly, crazy,
dark prince, Darth Vader, paranoid.
And those were the nice things.
MALE ANNOUNCER: This is an ABC News Special Report.
ROBIN ROBERTS: And we do have breaking news here
because we have learned this morning
that FOX News founder and former CEO
Roger Ailes has died.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Roger Ailes has died.
SHEPARD SMITH: The founder of our network,
our former CEO and Chairman, husband to Beth.
SEAN HANNITY: Second father to me.
-SHEP SMITH: Father of Zach. -PRESIDENT TRUMP: Genius.
-SHEP SMITH: Media genius. -MAN 6: Patriotic.
SHEP SMITH: Shaper of American history.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Transformed American politics.
SHEP SMITH: Well documented flaws,
fell at his home and did not survive.
WOMAN 5: He will be missed.
I loved him.
MAN 7: He was very tough and a lot of people hated him.
WOMAN 6: Complicated legacy.
WOMAN 7: You can look at Roger Ailes in,
in two very different lights--
what he did for the media world,
and then, the way he went out of the media world.
JOY REID: Ailes resigned from FOX last summer amid
multiple sexual harassment allegations, which he denied.
WOMAN 8: He won, he lost, he did good,
he did bad, he was a sinner.
A lot of negative things to say about Roger Aisles
and I won't hesitate.
There's this whole nonsense about,
"Oh, once someone has passed away,
all of a sudden they're a good guy." No.
But when someone passes,
you have to take the full measure of the man or woman.
Roger Ailes is a genius.
Evil genius.
Roger always rooted for the underdog.
He was tortured by not being part of the elite.
MAN 8: Extremely connected to his roots.
MAN 9: I think he feels that he's trying to save the country.
WOMAN 9: This divided country, Roger Ailes divided it.
Many people out there would say that he saved this country.
MAN 10: Playing into their fears.
MAN 11: Fusing racism, xenophobia,
populism, and fear of terrorism.
The evil dictator, Roger Ailes.
A great man in every regard.
WOMAN 10: Roger Ailes was a loser.
Roger Ailes was a winner.
...is an ugly pathetically sick character.
Generous, hilarious.
-WOMAN: Racist. -MAN: Racist.
Loyal, loyal, loyal.
-Sociopath. -The legend.
-The legendary. -A hero, arch villain.
-Roger Ailes. -Roger Ailes.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: What they called me...
is opinion.
What I've done is on the record.
I tend to think of it as something I've done,
which my critics would not have done,
because they didn't have the guts.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: So I'm gonna talk
about the scenarios
and moments in my life, which were interesting,
and try to leave out all the boring stuff.
The scenes and moments I recall
that were significant,
things that might be useful to you.
The first quarter century of my life was in Ohio.
Born in Ohio.
Just a small factory town
about 50 miles south of Cleveland.
I love Warren deeply.
It was a tough or gritty little industrial town
back from the '40s and '50s,
and I was born on the wrong side of the tracks.
[TRAIN HORN BLOWING]
MALE NARRATOR: Northern Ohio, and the home
of Packard Electric Division.
JON VOIGHT: The men of Warren worked at the steel mills.
Or at Packard Electric.
Packard built parts for American cars,
as well as for tanks, and the B-29 bombers.
My family had no money.
My father was just a high school graduate,
as well as my mother, and they did labor,
whatever they could do.
But Roger and I had to-- If we wanted to go to college,
we'd have to have jobs.
ROGER: I started when I was about 10,
I worked as a-- I had a paper route,
and I worked as a stock boy in a grocery store.
And then, by the time I was 16,
I was on a road gang.
ROBERT: Roger got assigned to the toughest crew.
They dug ditches and put in guardrails.
That was pretty hard work.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: The pressures of that time,
trying to make enough money,
were just a tremendous amount of pressure
on my mother and father. My mother worked also,
and she was probably the driving force
for excellence in the family.
But it was a, it was a pretty tough time.
Well, my dad was an unlucky guy.
He had a very ill mother and sister.
He was deserted by his father,
so he ended up going to work in a factory,
and worked all his life in a factory.
And he would work and get up at 5:00,
and get home at 10:00.
Did it day after day after day.
It was a hell of a trapped life.
He supported us until we all got off into college,
and he never got to fulfill his dreams,
but he did make sure everybody else did.
ROBERT: And so my dad, although not firmly educated,
really provided a lot of Roger's education.
And Roger, because of his handicap, a hemophilia,
my father had to put more time into Roger,
and when we were kids,
there was no good treatment for hemophilia.
That's a major, major disadvantage
when you're a kid growing up.
You can't do other things the other kids can do,
like, sports and whatnot,
because you sustain serious injuries
with minor accidents.
My dad decided that
I would lead a normal life,
and so, he put me into every difficult situation
he possibly could.
ROBERT: Roger, he did not want to be hamstrung,
or thought of as a weakling,
who you could kick the sand
in the face off at the beach.
ROGER: Something, even at a young age,
made me wanna break out of that.
Part of it was the illness.
ROBERT: Because he wanted to be so physically active,
he injured himself many times.
ROGER: The first real crisis came
when I was seven or eight when I was bleeding to death.
ROBERT: And he was running.
We were just playing outside and running around,
and playing cowboys and Indians or some damn thing.
BOY: Bang, bang, I got you. You're dead.
ROBERT: Roger tripped and fell,
and bit his tongue.
The doctors in Warren, Ohio,
and the hospital there could not stop his bleeding.
ROGER: I heard the doctor tell my dad,
"I don't think he's gonna make it."
My dad wouldn't take that so he ran down,
threw me in the back seat of the car,
wrapped in sheets, and took off for Cleveland.
ROBERT: He got to Chagrin Falls,
which is about halfway to Cleveland,
and my dad got arrested in that city for speeding.
So, he just showed them Roger in the backseat.
ROGER: It was that instant,
it was in that episode
that I knew my dad really loved me.
He was not big on hugging or kissing or saying it,
but the way he handled me in the backseat of that car,
I could tell he was scared and he loved me.
That's important to a kid.
ROBERT: And my dad had a number
of his friends at Packard in Warren
who drove to Cleveland, to donate blood.
ROGER: Guys with names like Dirty Nick Watson,
grimy from hard industrial work,
strapping their arms,
putting their blood into me.
My dad said, "Son, you've got a lot
of blue collar blood in your veins.
Don't ever forget that."
JON: And Roger never forgot.
MAN ANNOUNCER [ON RADIO]: We interrupt this program
to bring you a special news bulletin.
ROGER: My little life had its share of trauma and drama.
ANNOUNCER: The Japanese have attacked
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air.
ROGER: But I was always more interested
in the greater struggles of America.
When I came into the world,
the world was facing war.
During World War II, we used to go down the basement
for air raid drills because they were absolutely confident
that if the German bombers got over Canada,
that they would get Warren, Ohio first
because all the steel mills and factories were there.
War was closing in on America,
and that thought of how fragile life is,
personally, and for our nation,
has probably been a big part of why I do what I do.
ROBERT: When Roger was a kid,
he wanted to be an army general--
that was his desire in life--
and he hung onto that for years and years.
ROGER: Very young, I had a lot of times
that I had to overcome things.
A lot of lonely days in the hospital,
but I did spend a lot of time reading,
and I read about heroes.
ROBERT: He read a lot,
but he read what he wanted to read.
He read every book there ever was about the Civil War,
and the Second World War, and so on.
ROGER: I always believed myself to be a lion,
that I would do something important someday.
ROBERT: Roger always wanted to be a general.
He didn't wanna be just a soldier.
"I'm gonna be a general." Heh.
Because of his hemophilia, there was no chance
that he would ever be accepted into the army,
let alone become a general.
But he never gave up that dream.
ROGER: When I was 18, my dad said,
"Where are you going?" I said,
"What do you mean where am I going?"
He said, "Well, you can't live here."
I said, "Well, what do you mean?"
He said, "You're 18.
You're gonna join the service,
you go to college.
What are you gonna do?"
JON: Roger did both.
He enrolled at Ohio University
and joined the Air Force ROTC.
ROGER: I purposely didn't join the Army ROTC.
I was afraid if I trip on a hike
and I get a hematoma, they're gonna figure it out.
And I figured if I'm in the Air Force,
they're never gonna figure it out.
So I devised a plan.
I went in and changed my file before I applied to ROTC.
I got myself checked into the OU Health Clinic
because I knew where the files were,
they were right in the lobby.
So, you know, I just sneaked down to the files,
and got my file out.
I went down, sat on the floor,
I whited out hemophilia behind the desk on the floor,
put it back in the file and left.
And they had a surprise inspection,
including a medical exam.
They pulled me back in, and did it again,
and they said, "You've got a bleeding problem."
Told me I would just have to drop out of ROTC.
And they said maybe they could engineer me
into a general officer category,
which meant a desk job, but I said,
"I have no interest in a desk job."
You know, I was very sad during that time.
My parents got divorced,
and so, when I went home for Christmas,
I got out a few days early, I just took off,
and the house was sold.
Somebody else was living there,
and my dad had moved to his mother's house,
my mother had left for California,
and none of my stuff was there.
My stamp collection. I don't know where-- you know,
I still don't know where all that stuff went.
The house was fucking gone.
My parents were gone, my father was locked
in grandma's house, he was depressed.
My brother was away from and out of it,
and he'd gone on to medical school.
I was at OU, and I was lost.
But it was a very big disappointment
because it was the--
My quest to be a lion was suddenly stopped.
You don't run away from people in trouble.
This goes back to my grandfather,
my religious training.
Because I used to go to prayer meetings with him
every Wednesday night,
and Sunday school in the church.
I've always run toward trouble.
People in trouble tend to come me,
and I don't run away from them.
John Alexander would often be somebody
that people who would say to me,
"What are you hanging around with that guy for?"
And my answer was very simple.
I said, "I like him."
When I was 13, 14, I went
to the Canadian North Woods with the YMCA.
One day we're in camp and it was raining.
And it was very rough water.
We saw a couple
who appeared to be drowning
a couple hundred yards offshore,
and my friend, Doug Webster,
we jumped in our canoes,
and paddled through the storm out to the people,
and got 'em out of the lake.
And so, we literally saved two lives.
Webster and I grew up together.
He was a year younger than me, a year behind me.
We bonded in such a way,
that we knew that if either guy ever had
to give up his life for the other one, he would.
And he got to be a navy pilot.
Webster was killed in an airplane accident
over Vietnam.
And it has always haunted me
from the night I heard that he died on that ship.
I guarantee, one of his last thoughts was,
"Ailes, where the hell are you?"
Because I was always there to save him.
I always had this feeling that it would be me
because of the bleeding episode.
I never thought it would be Doug.
I should have died when he died,
and because I didn't, I could risk bigger things.
So why not take some chances.
[CLICKS]
MALE INTERVIEWER: Uh, basically how did you go
from being a prop boy to where you are now?
ROGER: That's a long and complicated story. Um...
I got into radio and television,
pretty much by accident,
because I had a problem with some athletics,
although I did play intramural sports.
I went toward the theatre, drama department,
and got the lead in school plays.
And it gave me an early appreciation for audiences,
and what makes them respond.
I got my first job on the college radio station.
And I realized that people on campus
actually listen to it and, uh,
would call in, we had radio early,
radio college show, this is by the time I graduated,
I had been student station manager for two years.
By fluke, I had a job offer
as a radio sports announcer in Columbus,
and I had a job offer
as a television prop boy in Cleveland.
Um, the radio announcer was much more glamorous
and paid more money, almost--
more than twice as much, actually.
They tell me that a great many of you
may be interested in jobs in television production.
ROGER: Program manager of a major television station
in the number one city, he said,
"Bob, the only thing we would have
would be an entry level, a 'gofer' job."
A gofer means you go for this, go for that.
And so you're really a production assistant.
Your job to do whatever anybody tells you to do.
And I said, "Well, how much does it pay?"
And it was $68 a week.
INTERVIEWER: Sixty-eight dollars a week?
-ROGER: Right. -INTERVIEWER: Oh, geez.
[BEEPING]
ROGER: I decided that the real future was television.
Everything will happen on television.
And there's a great deal of, uh, ability to use
and misuse the medium, if you're not careful.
So, I became fascinated with the medium itself.
And so, I took the prop boy job in television.
That was probably one of the key decision points of my life.
I happened to be in the station
whereThe Mike Douglas Show was starting.
It was a local television show at that time.
MALE ANNOUNCER: And now, here's the star of the show,
Mike Douglas!
ROGER: I wrote the cue cards for the songs,
and I ran for coffee for the stars,
and I picked up stars at the airport
and brought 'em to the station.
And did whatever anybody asked me to do.
But through a series of working myself to death,
and coming up with creative solutions to problems,
I got assigned to that show as the assistant director.
I learned about television.
And we had to put together an eclectic rundown,
from comedy to music to serious issue--
all in 90 minutes.
You had to make the audience full
from segment to segment.
You had to not offend anybody.
And then I learned--
I think about communications even then.
I was watching stars.
I was watching people who were effective communicators.
MIKE DOUGLAS: Uh, England's newest hitmakers.
♪ I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be♪
ROGER: And then you had to present stars.
We're waiting for the arrival of a very big star.
We've been looking for his limousine.
-Have you seen his limo? -ROGER: And live with their egos.
-"Hi, Captain Jerk." You know. -[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
ROGER: You handled every one of those problems in real time.
WOMAN: And Bill's gonna catch him, I hope.
ROGER: When a son of a bitch has to work,
and you have to get a rating with it.
Now, that's how you live or die every day.
And so, I have learned my craft,
and you had to engage the audience,
you had to entertain them, you had to inform them,
you know, all those things just started
to become a part of who I was.
I ended up getting, I don't know,
several promotions within a four, five year period,
and ended up executive producer of the show.
My mentor was a guy named Chet Collier.
And so one day, I said, "Chet, how did you end up
putting me in charge ofMike Douglas?
How did that all happen?"
He said, "Every time there was a problem
at that station, somebody said, 'Get Ailes.'"
Then he said, "Even guys who didn't like you,
"if there was a crisis, they'd say,
'Get Ailes in here.'"
And he said, "If you wanna know
how you got to be who you are today,
it's those two words."
MARVIN KALB: At age 25, he was already
the executive producer ofThe Mike Douglas Show,
which was successfully syndicated,
and won several Emmy Awards.
ROGER: Actually, we had more viewers
forThe Mike Douglas show
in the '60s at its peak.
We're in a 182 cities, we had more viewers
thanThe Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
That might have been the last pure television show,
in the sense that there was never
a political discussion about who should we book.
I did four television shows with Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King was for peace.
We were too.
You know, the '60s.
Women's Lib.
The Vietnam War.
Then Civil Rights.
People are tearing their jeans and painting their ass.
So that all took place in a decade.
Some of it good, some of it bad,
but it was chaotic for America.
MALE REPORTER: Made of violence and senseless
stoning of cars and shops.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I have to take a stand against the riots
because with my deep commitment,
uh, to nonviolence.
ROGER: So I've been interested in civil rights
since the early '60s.
We worked very hard for integration.
Many of us who were pro-civil rights
thought this was a good idea.
The African-Americans had been held down so long,
they had every right to be pissed off about it.
But it formed the anti-American movement.
BOBBY SEALE: But you, revolutionaries,
how many white folks you killed today?
So when Roger Ailes entered politics, uh,
the country was torn apart by the Vietnam War,
there's this new radical movement
that didn't like the American government.
I'm not committed to nonviolence in any way.
Not to say that he was accepting of a bad war
or he was judgmental about people who are smoking pot.
ROGER: We got 26,000 guys getting shot at
for no fucking reason, and we can't--
we have nothing to win over there.
BILL: That's not what it was.
It was, "America is noble."
Don't-- You--
Dissent is fine, but don't tear the whole fabric of the country down.
So he aligned himself with those kinds of politicians.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I pledge to you,
we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
ROGER: It was late 1967, and the war was going.
Johnson was pouring troops into Vietnam,
and Richard Nixon decided to run in 1968.
And he was a guest onThe Mike Douglas Show.
RICHARD NIXON: Politics, more and more,
is becoming show business, I find.
ROGER: And I saw an opportunity there.
I was 28 years old. I came back one day,
from rehearsal, he says,
"That's too bad a guy has to rely on a gimmick
to get elected." I said, "If you think
television is a gimmick, you're gonna lose again."
I think it was the "again" that got him.
I didn't care what I said to him, I didn't know him.
He was not rude. But he speaks his mind.
I mean, he doesn't think that, uh,
anybody is gonna be offended by blunt talk.
And Ailes just had the nuts to turn around and say,
"You'll never win another election in your life."
I love that story. I mean, this guy Ailes had balls.
Not everybody liked Roger's style,
which was funny, profane, conversational, blunt.
ROGER: You have to be able to speak up at a certain time,
and change the flow, uh, and that means taking risks.
A lot of people don't wanna do that.
Nobody's gonna package me,
uh, nobody is going to make me put on an act for television.
The answer is, I never have, and I'm not gonna start now.
You know, Nixon was probably still absorbing
the lessons of the 1960 presidential debate,
when he really didn't look very good on camera,
and John F. Kennedy looked fabulous.
KENNEDY: ...as a Democrat, I can say I don't know what we'd do without television.
Roger would tell me years later
that Nixon had not learned the lessons of 1960
or the lesson of 1962.
And Roger convinced Nixon
that television was not a gimmick.
And because of that, he later became a consultant
to the 1968 presidential campaign for Nixon.
ROGER: He called me and asked me to come
and brief his people, and would I be interested
in producing some television.
And I thought, that's interesting.
I'm a 28-year-old former ditch digger from Ohio,
and they're asking me to produce television
for a presidential campaign.
BILL: Everybody said there was no way
Richard Nixon could use television to get elected.
That he was the worst media candidate
in the history of the country, that he was basically finished.
Gentlemen, this is my last press conference,
just think how much you're gonna be missing me.
You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Good day.
ROGER: No, they hated Nixon because he wasn't cool,
didn't go to an Ivy League school.
They hated him.
There is a thread in me
that goes to the least popular person.
Part of it is my Christian roots,
part of it is, you know, you show me somebody
who's getting the shit kicked out of them by everybody,
and my instincts immediately
are to get into that fight on the other side.
I saw Nixon as an underdog.
That picture probably pissed me off.
And I was getting pissed and pissed
because I was basically feeling I was being threatened
that if I work for Nixon,
I'd never work in television again.
And I just said, "I haven't decided
whether I'm gonna work for Richard Nixon or not.
But if I do, he'll win."
I thought, "Hmm, that's the biggest media problem of our time."
Maybe I'll solve it.
Everybody thought that the way to do it
was to make him warm and cuddly,
and try to get him across on television
as a warm human being.
Well, that's very, uh--
What's the population in the town?
-MAN: About 2100. -Twenty-one hundred?
That is-- That's the-- Mm-hmm.
ROGER: I watched a bunch of tape they shot
of Richard Nixon in New Hampshire,
and they asked me to evaluate it.
RICHARD NIXON: Uh, what is your bigger season,
winter or summer? Summer?
ROGER: And the tape was him going into people's homes,
balancing a teacup on his knee,
and trying to have little chatty conversations
with these people from New England.
Tell me, uh, where are you from?
SHIRLEY: Shirley Meryl, Lebanon.
From Lebanon? Yes. Yes.
Nice to see you here.
ROGER: It was horrible.
And I think this is the time,
and this is the place to take off the gloves
and sock it to 'em!
Sock it to me?
ROGER: Just horrible.
And I basically went against the group,
and said the objective is to show him for what he is,
very knowledgeable and tough.
Well, you're either comfortable on TV or not.
What I realized was, I had to do something
that would make Nixon comfortable,
so the audience would be comfortable.
If the person--if the performer is uncomfortable on the screen,
the viewer gets uncomfortable.
So I knew I had to find a format
where he could appear comfortable.
I went to see a play in London in The Round.
I wanted to see The Roundabout Theater
because I was thinking, I was staging Nixon
in The Round, and it was never heard of
in terms of politics, but I was trying to come up
with a new way to do things.
And then, I was researching Nixon,
and I saw that he liked Teddy Roosevelt.
I began to read Teddy Roosevelt,
and I found "In the Arena", the speech he gave.
"It's not the critic who counts.
It's the man who is actually in the arena."
That sounded like Nixon.
So I realized, if I can build this
out of something he believes,
if I can get a person organically closer
to the material because he actually believes the material,
and believes the setting, he won't feel
as if this is any phony staging.
Dangerous as it was, I wanted everything live,
including Nixon.
And they all said, "Well, that's--
could be dangerous." And I said,
"The guy got his ass kicked in California."
And he got beat by J.F. Kennedy.
I need to put him in a comfortable setting.
This guy, under fire, if you study his life,
under fire, he's a pretty cool customer.
If I convince him that it's him against the world here,
and frankly, your whole damn life
has been you against the world,
so this will be the challenge of your life.
And he said, "Well, what if a goddamn
microphone goes off?" Then I said,
"Mr. Vice President, I am so good at what I do,
that nothing is gonna go
technically wrong with this show.
So if there is a problem,
it will be your fault."
And he kind of stared at me.
And then he grinned, and he'd said,
"A lot of balls."
I had some sketches made
of what the studio would look like.
And then we were--I'd finally laid it out on the floor,
of his suite in The Blackstone Hotel.
BUD WILKINSON: Tonight, Richard Nixon, in person,
is going to face a panel of citizens
asking the questions they want answered.
ROGER: Then I wanted to put Nixon on his feet, live,
with no podium and nothing, naked,
standing right out there.
Okay. Got him the center. Then over here,
I put somebody that was comfortable for him,
Bud Wilkinson.
Richard Nixon, in a live telecast...
ROGER: So Bud would open and close the show
from this thing, and if trouble came up,
he could clarify a question or get in.
Then, I need support for Nixon,
so I took another circle out here,
then I put an audience.
And so for Philadelphia, we'd fill these seats.
They were not part of the show.
They were shoot off from my cameras.
And at the end of his questions, from time to time,
if he gave a really great one,
they would probably in pause,
I decided that he needs a panel of questioners
in front of him, which is two independents,
two liberals, or two democrats,
and two republicans.
The press frequently writes that we coach them,
we gave him questions, we did things.
I never gave one.
What, what is your view, in general,
on the role of dissent in society?
The writing off the black vote in America,
how do you respond to that kind of a charge?
How do you feel about the use of nuclear weapons
in Vietnam or elsewhere?
I do not believe that nuclear bombs
or nuclear weapons should be used in Vietnam.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.: Oh, Mr. Joe McGinniss
is the author of a best-selling book
calledThe Selling of the President 1968,
which is touted by the publishers
as "the inside story of how Nixon was really elected."
JOE McGINNISS: There were 350 people brought into the studio.
And their role, according to Roger Ailes,
was simply to serve as an applause machine.
ROGER: I mean, the media focused on--
"Well, he built a cheering section for the guy,
and that's how he did it."
Fine. Fuck you. That's my right.
He gets to be cheered.
One man snuck in, or was allowed in,
who had the professional ability in questioning
to actually contend with Mr. Nixon
and his responses.
Why don't you face professionals
and answer their questions?
And the reaction of the Nixon staff
after that program was, "My God, this was awful.
We must make sure this never happens again."
Now, Roger Ailes, who was the producer,
said, "This was terrific.
This was the best show he's done,
because he stood up to that guy."
And in the free-swinging exchange,
Ailes believed, and I believed, and I said so in the book,
that Mr. Nixon came off the better.
ROGER: Well, I never had a fear that he was gonna be asked
too tough a question, I was afraid
they were gonna ask him, "What did you do
on Saturday morning with Tricia and Julie?"
That would have been a tough question for him.
CHET HUNTLEY: An almost midday Eastern Time,
NBC News projected Richard Nixon,
the 37th President of the United States.
There aren't many precedents for a man coming back like this,
and winning the presidency after losing it,
and spending eight years in hibernation, are there?
I, Richard Milhous Nixon, do solemnly swear...
JOE: Well, I think almost all campaigns today,
when there is money and talent available,
are constructed the same way.
And I think more campaigns in the future will be.
My qualm is with the whole approach itself.
All we ever get to see now is the televised image,
the finished product of all these mechanics.
WILLIAM: I don't find it particularly appealing
incidentally, but I don't know
that the free enterprise system,
which is called democracy,
in this case, is going to admit
of anything less than an attempt to maximize
your vote by whatever means.
JON: Roger Ailes invented the televised town hall.
Nobody had done it before Roger Ailes did it.
Ailes did that.
MAN: Three, two, one, zero.
[EXPLOSION]
MALE REPORTER: All engine running.
Lift-off. We have a lift-off.
Thirty-two minutes past the hour.
Lift-off on Apollo 11.
JON: In July 1969,
America was about to land its astronauts on the moon.
The mission was high-risk.
Its success or failure
would determine the winner of the space race,
an important public face of the Cold War
between the West and Communist Soviet Bloc.
Roger Ailes was to play a role.
He was cleared by a national security background check.
NEIL ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
JON: Roger designed a televised live call to the moon
between President Nixon and the Apollo 11 astronauts.
NIXON: Hello, Neil and Buzz.
I'm talking to you by telephone
from the Oval Room at The White House.
And this certainly has to be
the most historic telephone call ever made.
ROGER: There was a feed coming back from the moon,
so I suggested we split screen,
a live shot from the moon and a live shot from Earth.
NEIL: Thank you, Mr. President.
It's a great honor and privilege
for us to be here.
ROGER: I think that the experience for all of them
puts it into some kind of perspective,
that we who never will see the Earth from another planet
and recognize that we're all together
on this big blue marble,
and have to get along, and I think it changes people.
I think it really does.
Roger Ailes was always interested in space.
It started off with Nixon making that famous phone call
to the astronauts.
That was a creation of Roger Ailes.
-MAN 1: Booster, how do you look? -MAN 2: We look good.
JON: America's third moon landing mission,
Apollo 13, was ill-fated.
JIM LOVELL: Houston, we've had a problem.
JON: The rescue plan was to slingshot
the failing capsule around the moon,
and back to Earth.
Disaster loomed,
as an anxious world watched on television.
The White House sent Roger Ailes to Hawaii
to stage either the television celebration
or a funeral.
Caskets were readied in a hangar.
Almost miraculously, tragedy was averted.
[CHEERING]
MAN: Odyssey, Houston. We show you on the mains.
It really looks great.
JON: Roger staged the televised ceremony
that reassured a traumatized nation.
Roger played his small part
in the historic drama of Apollo 13,
and returned home on Air Force One.
It was to be his last work for the Nixon White House.
ROGER: So the Apollo 13, the moon shot,
and so, they would call me in, but they didn't wanna go
into the next campaign with me.
And I felt that vibe.
I later heard that there was a meeting
about who would do TV for the second campaign,
and there's an assumption they'll win it,
and they don't need a crazy guy.
The very outside-the-parameters
thinking that it required doing the man in the arena
and doing those--the very things that got you there,
they abandoned once they're in there
because they're trying to run it as a corporate campaign
from inside the White House.
I didn't have, by then, a good, great relationship
with Haldeman.
I think the Joe McGinniss book pissed off Haldeman.
It is the fruit of a great deception,
that is to say, one cannot suppose
that competent people would have confided
to Mr. McGinniss or permitted him to observe their efforts,
if they had known that he intended to write
such a book as he has written...
ROGER: They were also up to no good.
And then I'm told, it may have been Mitchell
and it may have been Ehrlichman, but one of the two.
Said, "Well, you don't want Ailes, you're not gonna get him
to do the things we're doing.
Ailes is a boy scout.
He's not necessarily going to follow orders."
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
Good evening. The biggest White House scandal in a century,
the Watergate scandal broke wide open today.
ROGER: Then I watched Nixon do Watergate,
which was stupid.
The news has caused a storm in Washington,
and some of Mr. Nixon's most loyal supporters
are calling for his resignation.
ROGER: But he at least was called to account,
forced to resign.
I shall resign the presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.
ROGER: But, you know, he gets no credit
in the history books, or anywhere else.
Nixon, he got us out of the war.
We, today, have concluded in agreement to end the war,
and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.
ROGER: Jack never gets credit for starting it.
Johnson never gets credit for escalating it.
But Nixon gets no credit for any of it.
That's the way the history in America is taught.
And that's why I am who I am today,
because I lived through that period.
My best friend was killed,
and I watched where the credit went.
So I was essentially 28 years old,
presidential campaign behind me,
and out of work.
The only thing that is irreversible is death.
Everything else, you got a chance.
Most people get a fairly minor setback,
and see it as a much larger disaster.
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
JON: Roger Ailes spent the post White House years rebuilding.
ROGER: Anyway, I started my own company
in a small apartment on 8th Avenue in New York.
Just started making calls,
anybody need any film or anything produced.
It was rough in there for a while,
didn't have much income.
So I began to call some of the people I worked with
who, of course, kissed my ass
when I was executive producer for Mike Douglas
because I could put 'em on the air.
They wouldn't take my calls.
I didn't have that power anymore.
And that's the first time I realized, they don't love me.
They're talking to me because of the power I had.
WOMAN [ON RECORDING]: I'm sorry, the number you have reached
is not in service at this time.
ROGER: And what you have to realize is... that it's a wheel.
Sometimes you're on the top. Sometimes you're on the bottom.
It keeps going around. But you can't get off when you're
on the bottom... and think, 'Well my life is over.'
ROGER: Well, I began producing theatrical shows,
television shows and winning awards.
MALE TV HOST: He's produced award-winning television,
his name is Roger Ailes.
Roger has something this coming on here
on Channel 5 called Wizards, Clowns, and Honest Liars,
which he produced, as well as directed, and it's about Fellini.
-ROGER: Yes. -Why Fellini?
Something very artistic, like, how much are you gonna pay me?
MALE TV HOST: He's quick to point out that in 1972,
he was in Africa with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
when Nixon was running, but he did...
Well, that's when all the Nixon guys were going to jail.
MALE TV HOST: I know. And you were in Africa.
ROGER: If you have any doubts about his interest
in the environment, you're gonna see a clip
from a film we did together 20 years ago.
Roger and I spent six weeks in a tent together.
ROGER: That's right. We spent six weeks,
-and people don't realize... -ROBERT: I've been trying
to live that down for the last 30 years.
You took a lot of heat for that, I think.
What people couldn't see right out of that scene
is that you almost killed me that day,
because I was with the film crew right behind you,
trying to get that shot,
and when that rhinoceros caught up
and started running, you turned around,
and ran right over the top of about four guys,
-including me. Yeah. -ROBERT: It's the thing about--
You can't outrun a rhinoceros, but I could run faster than you.
Well, I don't know. In those days,
it would have been close, but it's changed a little.
My daughter is worried about my lapel, Jesus.
Anyway, when you look like me,
it doesn't matter much, you know what I mean?
When I mentioned my daughter...
You know, I can talk about marriages.
I had one, the college sweetheart,
and we just drifted apart, and I--
my career took over my life,
and there was never a fight or never a problem.
My second wife, I met her in Florida
when I was working on a documentary on Fellini.
She had a daughter.
GRETCHEN WHITE: It was 1977
when Roger came into my life.
And my mom and I were a package deal,
and right from the start, he was there for me.
He could have just been nice, but instead,
he really went above and beyond.
I always knew that there was nothing
he wouldn't do for me.
He loved taking me to work events,
and always introduced me as his daughter,
and he would get the biggest smile on his face
when people told us that we looked alike.
And that love, kindness, and support for me,
and all my dreams and goals continued until his death.
ROGER: If I raised her in that marriage
and stayed in the marriage until she get into college,
and out of college.
GRETCHEN: But the two of us remained close.
He told me that he was my dad,
and nothing would ever change that,
and nothing did.
ROGER: Why do these things break up?
Again, probably work, probably my overwork.
I didn't have a real career path.
So, I start pulling myself together.
You know, I did mostly corporate work,
occasionally, I did political work,
but I got well-known.
LARRY McCARTHY: Roger was like nothing else I'd ever seen.
Part Don Rickles, part psychiatrist,
part motivational football coach.
You got to say it louder. You got to say it quicker.
You got to say it shorter. You got to say it better.
MALE TV HOST: Controversial media consultant
who has been described as the dark prince of advertising.
MIKE WALLACE: So, is he the pit bull of American politics?
ROGER: And it was Charles Manson, and I was staring
right into his eyes.
MALE REPORTER: Roger Ailes came here to New York City
back in 1969, where he founded
a small communications consulting firm.
-Ailes Communications. -LARRY: Those skills,
he took it to corporate CEOs in the '70s,
and he took it through Republican candidates
for senate, governor,
and president in the '80s and beyond.
I traveled around the country.
I've probably worked in 35 different states.
-WOMAN 1: Senator Humphrey-- -MAN 1: Malcolm Wallop.
-MAN 2: Mitch McConnell-- -MAN 1: A strong believer
-in traditional family values.-MAN 3: Simple values.
MAN 4: New Hampshire values and philosophy--
MAN 5: Minnesota's unique rural values.
WOMAN 2: Bob and I share a lot of values.
MAN 5: And the people who share this special place with me.
Cut. Goddamn it.
MAN: Lew, walk a little bit slower.
-I'm Lew Lehrman. -I'm Lew Lehrman.
ROGER: The hardest thing for people to do
is to treat the cameras as if it's just
another person in the room.
I always saw the camera as my grandmother.
My grandmother is just a sweet little old lady.
WOMAN: And all of us older people
just don't feel safe on the streets anymore.
LARRY: Roger came up with a commercial
called Mama D'Amato.
I hope you'll vote for him so he can do something better.
His name is Al D'Amato.
LARRY: Nobody thought Al D'Amato could win
because he was not very smooth,
he was not very Manhattan,
he was classic Long Island Italian.
I'm very optimistic, Roger.
LARRY: But she was so real and so genuine
and so effective, that commercial helped
get Al D'Amato elected against very long odds.
JON: Roger Ailes's reputation caught Hollywood's attention.
Prominent actor Richard Gere shadowed Ailes
to prepare for his 1986 film,Power.
You will pay me to make you a new life.
Politics.
Well, I'll tell you, Roger, I just left you,
actually, and this was the top secret note
that I was given while we were having our top secret meeting.
MAN: Rudy Giuliani is fighting
for his still adolescent political life.
ROGER: It's the thing I teach politicians about--
there are heart issues and head issues.
Whatever your point of view,
if there's no emotion in the communication,
people will get this very cold feeling about you.
During that era,
he gave me the single best lesson in communication.
The biggest problem I had when I ran for mayor
was I talked like a lawyer.
But he says to me,
"What's your program for education?"
And I said, "My program for education is
a five-point program.
First, I would support choice in schools.
Number two, charter students. Accountability.
I would set up charter schools, public schools, seniority."
So he just stopped. He stopped the camera.
A-plus in Education 101.
F in Politics 101.
He said, "Every time you hear the word education,
from now until the end of the campaign,
here's what you say."
And he sat in the chair and he said,
"I'm glad you mentioned education."
I have two young children, Andrew and Caroline,
and I want them to grow up in a New York City
that is better than the New York City in 1989.
So, when I'm mayor, the education of your children
will be as important to me.
He said, "Then I don't give a damn what you say.
You can have the greatest program on education,
and if they don't trust you to take care of their children,
they're not going to vote for you, Rudy.
Use it as an opportunity to explain yourself emotionally."
Because when I see children, I see my own children.
Then, if you got time, the rational stuff will fall in.
[RUDY LAUGHS]
And then he would always tell me to smile.
And he actually showed me how to smile.
In 1984, Mitch McConnell
was running for Senator in Kentucky.
Before, we were 44 points behind with 90 days to go.
And I tell you, any other consultant
looking at those poll numbers
in July of 1984 would've said "It's over,
drop the campaign, and go on to something else."
That's how bad the situation was.
And we did a commercial of hound dogs
trying to get this guy back to work,
search for him in Kentucky.
MAN: My job was to find Dee Huddleston
and get him back to work.
MITCH: What happened as a result of the bloodhound ads
is that people started paying attention to the race.
It woke it up. As long as it stayed asleep,
Huddleston was gonna win. And the humor is what did it.
And it was funny.
It was funny.
LARRY: Bloodhounds moved us 17 points in 10 days.
One of the big reasons why Mitch McConnell
is a U.S. senator and the senate majority leader today.
MITCH: Reagan's poor performance
in one of his debates happened to be in Louisville,
which was the debate where he looked old and out of it.
With regard to, um,
the, uh...
With regard to the, uh--
MITCH: Roger and his camera crew were there.
Our campaign had been begging for some kind of interaction.
Well, this is my big night.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
So, the president pulled out his cue cards,
and he said, "I'm so happy to be here tonight
with my good friend Mitch O'Donnell."
To the man we need in the Senate,
please send him there, Mitch O'Donnell.
Ha!
I said O'Connell. McConnell.
That footage was wasted,
and as luck would have it,
I had my one debate with my opponent the next night.
And, uh, you know, I said, "Roger, he's gonna--
He's gonna ridicule me
that Reagan doesn't even know who I am."
And Roger snapped back, he said, "Well, just say,
'Yeah, he doesn't know me very well,
but he knows you and that's why he's for me.'"
So Roger was also really good at debate prep.
You already are the oldest president in history
and some of your staff say you were tired
after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.
So, after that very bad Reagan debate performance in '84,
Roger was asked to be the debate coach
for the second debate.
BILL: Roger Ailes knew that Ronald Reagan
could not absorb
all the information that his 15 advisors
were giving him every hour on the hour,
that it had to be funneled through one,
him, Ailes.
Or Reagan's gonna look discombobulated.
Remember, he was shot.
MALE REPORTER: I don't know whether we can hear this or not...
-[GUNSHOTS] -REPORTER: There-- There's...shots.
BILL: He was almost killed,
so you had to make it simple, all right?
You had to say, "This is it, Mr. President.
This is the message for tonight."
Not 15 other things.
The man, Reagan, was a brilliant performer,
but he needed a script.
MAN: That's the problem with you actors, Ronnie,
no appreciation for what we directors do
to make you look good.
LARRY: President Reagan's inner circle,
I think they were leery of Roger
being disrespectful to President Reagan
or being too much in his face.
They put some real restrictions on.
They said, "We don't want any interruptions
and don't upset the president."
So, of course, Roger broke all those rules.
ROGER: And they said, "Do not bring up the age issue
in the rehearsal today."
I was violating flagrantly
in front of the people giving them to me
and I knew that I'd be a dead man.
And I stopped and I said,
"Mr. President, what are you gonna say
if somebody says you're too old for this job?"
And there was an intake of breath around.
And Reagan looks at me, he said, "What? Why would--?"
I said, "Well, uh, it's all over television.
And they thought you kinda lost your way, sir.
And so, I think it's gonna come up in the debate,
one way or the other, about your age
and whether you got everything under control."
And he looked at me, he said,
"I did an act in Vegas once,
and there was a line in it about, uh,
youth and inexperience."
And I said, "I got it. What if you said..."
I will not make age an issue of this campaign.
I am not going to exploit,
for political purposes,
my opponent's youth and inexperience.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
ROGER: And I said, "That's perfect.
Don't move on your punch line."
I said, "You can reach down,
get a drink of water,
look totally confident."
The champagne corks start
popping here in Washington.
I was watching and I go, "Campaign's over.
Get out the champagne.
Reagan's gonna get re-elected."
MALE ANCHOR: CBS News now estimates that Ronald Reagan
has been re-elected President of our United States.
ROGER: And if there were ever a case for optimistic leadership...
America missed me.
ROGER: you would have to say it was the Ronald Reagan years.
Democrats are furious over Mr. Reagan's claims.
ROGER: The newscasters appeared to be near suicidal every night.
But he never let the power of the media dampen his optimism.
Seven or eight years later, when George Bush ran for office,
they were still hunting for the negative.
MIKE WALLACE: "George Bush: Fighting the 'Wimp Factor'", said Newsweek.
Problem for his handlers?
H ow to make the wimp into the winner.
They basically did the wimp factor
because George Bush was a very loyal vice president.
And they thought being loyal to Ronald Reagan,
who they didn't practically care for
because Ronald Reagan was conservative, was wrong.
And therefore, if you're loyal to Ronald Reagan,
you have to be weak.
I think, I think loyalty is...
As I said a while back,
I've never considered it a character flaw.
DAN: This was out there, that George Bush, you know,
he didn't think for himself, that he wasn't strong,
that he didn't have courage.
Therefore, Roger Aisles very smartly said,
"Okay, let's go back and put a little history in context."
We went into the convention
down 15 points, something like that.
And you start with the movie that Roger Aisles produced
at that convention.
DAN RATHER: This is the new thing in,
of course, at national political conventions.
This is a film prepared by the Bush campaign
to introduce him.
DAN: And they start with him
being one of the youngest naval aviators of all time,
not going to college, joining the Navy,
going over there being a fighter pilot,
getting shot down, getting saved.
He just focused on that and I said, "You know how everyone talked
about the Wimp Factor and not being strong?
Here's George--here's the real George Bush,"
and it did a lot to move the needle.
MIKE WALLACE: Now his own man, out from under Reagan's shadow,
Bush began to erase the Dukakis 17-point lead.
Suddenly, in New Orleans,
he sounded virtually presidential.
- ROGER: We didn't do a thing. -Aw...
And Mike, let me tell you,
when the time came for him to be himself
and do his own thing as leader,
he stepped up to the plate and hit the ball.
And who should sit at that desk?
My friends, I am that man.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
[NETWORK NEWS SHOW ORCHESTRAL FLOURISH]
DAN RATHER: This is the CBS Evening News.
Dan Rather reporting.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: I'm sure people remember
George H. W. Bush's interview with Dan Rather.
Now, let's set that up because this is classic,
because this is an instrumental factor
in why they had such...
I don't think I'm being too descriptive
when I say hatred for Ailes--
dislike, anger, what have you.
DAN RATHER: In July 1986, we were trading arms
for hostages with the most radical elements in Iran.
RUSH: The media is trying to destroy Reagan
and trying to destroy the administration.
Fast forward to Bush
as a presidential candidate.
And Dan Rather is going to interview him.
Please check this out.
You have been warning Bush this guy is gonna get tough.
Uh, I said--I warned Bush
because I got tipped off from somebody at CBS
that they were planning to take Bush
out of the race that night.
ROGER: When Bush went on to Dan Rather,
they spent the weekend ahead of time
hiring a political operative,
Tom Donlan, to coach Dan Rather
on how to get George Bush.
This is not a normal press interview.
This is a political operation between the network
and the democrats to get Bush.
And that's when I got a hold of Bush,
and I said, "Let's go over this Rather interview.
These guys are going for blood here tonight." Bush said...
GEORGE: I have never ever had a discussion with him
about the Contras and Contra support of any kind.
The question about arms for hostages
has been answered over and over again.
As far as I'm concerned that all questions
have been answered.
JON: Two decades after using live television
for candidate Richard Nixon,
Roger Ailes again realized that live television
might level the playing field against a hostile press.
But could it work against an ambush?
ROGER: They wanted to do this on tape
so they could chop it up.
I refused. I threatened to quit the campaign.
I said, "We want you on live so you can fight back."
Bush said, "Now, we don't wanna do anything ugly."
And I said, "I didn't pick this fight
and I didn't pick this alley.
If you get into an alley fight it's gonna get ugly."
DAN RATHER: He agreed to respond this evening
on the condition that he speak live and unedited.
RUSH: Prior to this, Dan Rather had been very miffed
because CBS tennis coverage went long
and Rather walked off the set.
He walks off the set.
MAN: And one thing you know in broadcasting is that
the most, the most unprofessional thing you can do
is leave dead air or black air or walk off the air,
or anything else, but we knew that incident.
And the vice president was somewhat reluctant to use that.
BUSH: Well, Dan, let's be careful here
because you're saying a political profile--
DAN RATHER: I want you to be careful, Mr. Vice President...
I will be careful, but I wanna get...
-...my side of this out. -The problem here is...
ROGER: I walked over and grabbed the clipboard and I scribbled,
"Walked off air," and held it up for him to see.
And I pointed to it, to Bush, and I went, "Do this."
So he uses the line.
It's not fair to judge my whole career
by a rehash on Iran.
How would you like it if I judge your career
by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?
ROGER: Rather, looks like he's been punched.
He goes-- If you slow it down in slow motion, he goes down.
He looks like a fighter in a fight.
He comes back up and he's obviously
completely off his game now.
BUSH: For what you're doing here tonight.
RUSH: And it discombobulated Rather.
It sent him into orbit.
MALE ANCHOR: Sixty-four percent of Iowa Republicans
think Rather was out of line during the interview.
And I don't think, honestly, he ever recovered from it
in terms of never forgetting what Roger Ailes did,
because he didn't think George H. W. Bush did that.
He knew Roger Ailes was behind that.
And quite frankly, you know, it was actually
Bush's son, where Rather got in trouble
with making up the story about the National Guard.
So, that cost him his job.
So it started with Bush Sr. and it ended with Bush Jr.,
but Roger Ailes was right in the middle of 1988.
MIKE WALLACE: Hardball: Ailes is proud of it
and his ads make it stick.
MALE NARRATOR: His revolving door prison policy
gave weekend furloughs
to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole.
MIKE WALLACE: And it was the same Roger Ailes
who painted these kinder, gentler,
more presidential Bush commercials.
ROGER: And people who complained about George Bush
wrapping himself in a flag forgot that Michael Dukakis
wrapped himself in a tank.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
RUDY: Roger Ailes and President Bush, 41,
were in a motel somewhere, put the news on.
He sees Dukakis in the tank.
He puts his shirt on. He goes next door.
He knocks on Vice President Bush's door,
not yet President Bush, and says, "We got it!"
He said, "I got the commercial.
I got the commercial."
MALE NARRATOR: Michael Dukakis has opposed virtually
every defense system we developed.
RUDY: If you remember, Dukakis is in the tank
looking totally silly.
ROGER: Not only does it look silly, it's phony.
And then they had-- He never met
a defense program that he liked.
And these are the defense programs he's against.
ROGER: So all politicians wrapped themselves in symbols.
The question is, is it a symbol that people like
and believe fits you? That hurt him.
BUSH: But tonight, I really came to over to thank you
for one thing you did not ask me to do.
You never asked me to make a video riding in a tank.
ROGER: Whoever put Mike Dukakis in a tank,
that's the first pacifist to be on a piece of military
equipment since Jane Fonda sat on an anti-aircraft gun
in Hanoi.
What has this got to do with becoming president
-of the United States? -ROGER: Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. But Mike, you know what
-the problem is in America? -What?
The problem is the media is interested in four things--
pictures, polls,
mistakes, and attacks.
And if I give you one of those four things,
you'll put it on the air in a minute.
And if I do anything else,
I gotta fight for air time.
LARRY KING: Who was out-dirtying who?
You two both represented candidates that squared off
against each other, both of whom bemoan
the negative campaign, while both were deep--
-knee-deep in the mud. -ROGER: The only people
who are terribly disappointed if there's no mud,
uh, are reporters.
They're not interested in substance
and if you give them substance they won't air it.
We stopped mentioning the opponent for about four days
during the Bush campaign and we went off the radar screen.
We couldn't get the newspapers.
We couldn't get on the television.
And so, consequently, we on our side
tried to give the media what they want,
so we can get headlines and air time.
JAMES: Roger, you are-- Face it, I mean, to Democrats,
you're a good villain.
You know, one of the great ironies, uh,
about Roger's career in America
is that the left was so angry at him
after Bush beat Dukakis.
They went-- There was a very methodical,
very systematic effort to drive Roger out
of being a consultant.
And everywhere he went they attacked him.
MALE NARRATOR: Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty,
he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend
passes from prison.
One was Willie Horton.
ROGER: Willie Horton, there was an ad produced
by an independent expenditure group
that was not part of the Bush campaign.
No, I had nothing to do with that ad.
The Democrats, of course, smeared the Republicans
by saying it was part of the Bush campaign.
It aired a few times on cable,
but every night on the news the media aired it
and aired it and aired it and said,
"Isn't this horrible?"
Hugh Hill erroneous reported
that the Roger Ailes production company
created the controversial Willie Horton ad,
and we regret the error.
JON: The full smear of racism against Roger Ailes
coincided with the rise of borking.
ROGER: Success as a media person is defined as who you can get.
Not how you can inform the public.
It is a momentous day in Washington DC.
MALE REPORTER: Judge Robert Bork began his battle
for confirmation to the Supreme Court.
TED KENNEDY: Roberts Bork's America
is a land in which women
would be forced into back alley abortions,
blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters,
rogue police could break down citizens' doors...
NEWT GINGRICH: I mean borking is a good example.
Character assassination, smearing people
making up lies, uh, would be a much more accurate way
to describe it.
If you're a conservative,
any smear that they can get away with,
any lie that they can tell,
is designed to eliminate the chance for a debate.
DAN QUAYLE: It was a vicious attack on Robert Bork
which, you know, started the borking,
and then you saw it with Clarence Thomas.
As senators scrutinize the sexual harassment charges
against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
CLARENCE THOMAS: This is a circus. It's a national disgrace.
As far as I'm concerned,
it is a high-tech lynching.
CAMILLE PAGLIA: Oh, that Anita Hill- Clarence Thomas thing was a...
-ROGER: Tell me. -...fiasco, a fiasco.
That case was a crock. And this was--it was absurd.
The whole thing was absurd from beginning to end--
NEWT: Their goal's not to win the argument,
it's to destroy the arguer.
And the credulity, the credulity of the East Coast media,
okay, to the claims of Anita Hill that would--
which seem to be increasingly fraudulent, outrageous.
I think that they spent so much time
trying to destroy or discredit.
You know, they don't wanna debate us.
They don't wanna get in the arena by ideas
and actually talk about what we believe.
They really try to discredit us,
not only with our own audiences
but with people who haven't begun to listen or watch yet.
They try to take you out.
It's not that they want a level playing field.
They don't even want us on it.
DAN QUAYLE: I think what Roger saw,
and he would tell me periodically, and some other Republicans,
he says, "You know, the press is just so bad
and so biased on these things
that there might be a little bit of room
for another TV news channel."
In 1988, Roger Ailes was very involved
in the campaign.
At 1992, he was not involved.
We won a decisive victory in 1988.
We lost in 1992.
And part of the reason we lost
was because Roger Ailes was not around.
ROGER: I quit politics because I hated it.
-Hated it? -Hated.
What did you hate about?
I thought it was getting mean-spirited
and wasn't about strategy and tactics.
I just thought that there was something wrong
with the whole media piece of the business
and didn't want to do it.
I could feel the drift away
from a time when people could talk.
And I also just was very tired of running
my own company, because I had to sell
every piece of business from 1969 to 1989,
that I had to produce the business,
and I decided I'd be, you know,
I'd be a better corporate employee.
So I was looking for an opportunity to get out.
JON: After leaving political campaign work,
Roger published the best-selling
communications book
and continued producing television talk shows.
ROGER: It was the head of NBC-- wanted me to go out
and help on the Jay Leno Show,
which was struggling at the time.
Let's see how you all feel in 30 years.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
ROGER: He said, "But I can't get you in out there
because of the producer doesn't want you."
He said, "Listen, I have one other thing that's troubling me.
I've got this channel CNBC over at Fort Lee, New Jersey."
I thought, "Oh, fuck." But, you know,
when you, when you need money you do whatever you do.
He had been told by the corporate people
at NBC that they didn't have much hope for CNBC,
that it was really tanking in the ratings,
the night time was a mishmash.
ROGER: My job was to go fix CNBC, so that's what I did.
And when Roger came in, he decided to define
its programming as business by day
and talk at night.
And he created theTalk All Stars.
LARRY: He learned what middle America is watching,
the silent majority.
And Roger was programming to them
every day of the week.
ELIZABETH: I had started out
as the first producer hired,
and he asked me if I would help him
turn the ship around.
I believe that there's going to be a major surge,
a breakthrough, of women
in very senior executive positions.
ELIZABETH: Maria Bartiromo wanted to have
an on-air opportunity.
And she came and met with Roger.
But he saw a talent in her
and he decided to give her that slot
on the floor of the Exchange.
I think I see you down there, Maria.
MARIA: Hi, there. I am down here
amongst everyone else. Anyway, we are...
Maria, you are a path breaker.
You are a role model to so many people,
men and women.
And in her own way, she broke through
the glass ceiling.
And I did know Roger because Roger put me on the air at CNBC.
And the truth is, I really do trust Roger.
We are 90 minutes into the trading session, take a look...
ROGER: Because of the instinctive communications
ability of women, uh, I just personally think
the floodgates are gonna open for women
if they're given the opportunity.
At the time, I didn't know that he was going
to be charged with launching a second network.
MALE HOST: America's Talking. It's a new form of news.
ELIZABETH: He asked me if I would help him
launch this new network.
Roger made launching networks look easy.
And Roger had so many ideas,
and we decided, I think a few months in,
to give him his own shows.
Biggest lesson learned from Vietnam?
Well, there isn't a single lesson,
excepting only that I think
we made a mistake and we should learn from our mistakes.
ROGER: You've put 16,000 guys in a combat zone,
-you're gonna have a problem. -You're damn right.
Absolutely. I-- As a dissident feminist,
okay, have been harassed and dogged by the feminazis--
all kinds of weird psychological things
under the surface that current feminist rhetoric
cannot explain.
You need to study a fellow,
you just study the art style, the great literature,
okay, is the key to understanding the human soul.
Wow. Okay. I'd like to take that course.
And I think it was a reflection
of Roger's endless curiosity.
I have so much to talk with you about,
so I'm gonna skip around like a guy
who's had a brain operation on a credit card.
-ELIZABETH: The arts... -ROGER: Tell me, what was going
through your mind as you were watching those clips.
I wonder what his mouth is doing under the mask.
-ELIZABETH: ...politics... -ROGER: Are we under
any nuclear threat in America today?
ELIZABETH: Music. He would ask questions
-like no one else. -No, I don't mind talking about it.
-Really? -It's fun, yeah.
And I've never said this before,
and I may live to regret it.
ELIZABETH: And he always listened very carefully.
You're absolutely right, Roger.
But that's exactly it, Roger.
That's very perceptive of you.
Although we had some significant political differences,
he never was condescending.
-Well, it's-- -Well, I grant you that
we have a problem with the underclass.
But money doesn't seem to be the issue.
The war on poverty was working.
He recognized and respected intelligence
and advocacy, even if it opposed him.
And I think the longer we talk, we might find
a great deal of unity, we'd find.
Actually, the longer people talk in this country,
the better chance they have on finding some things.
And that's how bridges are built, that's how progress is forged.
And whenever I sat across
the table from Roger Ailes, we knew that someone could hear
what we were saying and progress could grow out of that.
There was a time in America when people
could disagree about policy
but they were able to be civilized
and engage in lively conversation.
ROGER: How deep are you? You strike me
as there's a lot more going on underneath.
I think the thing I enjoy most is conversation.
You know, I like to talk with intelligent people.
ROGER: Would you overthrow the government if you could?
I would, in a flash, absolutely.
I can shoot my mouth off as irresponsibly as I choose to.
Those kinds of conversations could be uncomfortable
for some people, but for Roger it wasn't.
ROGER: I'm a standup kind of person.
-CYNDI: Straightforward. -Straightforward person.
I'm glad you're out of politics.
You have metamorphosized yourself from--
-ROGER: Several times. -Several times.
Right. A lot of people say, "Is that the same Roger Ailes?"
Would you ever run for politics?
I'm not sure that somebody that really calls it
like it is and says this is what you have to do.
I'm not sure that kind of a guy gets elected,
maybe so, maybe not.
ELIZABETH: And we launched it and it was very successful.
And I don't think we realized that that experience
at the time was the perfect preparation
for the future of Fox News.
America's talking will transition
into a 24-hour news and information channel
called MSNBC.
ROGER: Jack Welch later described it as Roger was upset
because they took America's talking away.
And I was, there's no question about that.
MAN: He liked it. Yay.
ELIZABETH: The last meeting was very emotional.
And there were a lot of tears,
because he had created
a very dynamic family feeling to the workplace.
I've resigned from the company.
I'm sure I'm gonna see a lot of you people,
uh, in the future.
I intend to stay in television someplace.
I know how to do it, but I have to do it my way.
So, thank you all.
I'll stay informed.
ROGER: And now I'm on my own terms leaving.
So I had a meeting with Rupert.
JON: Global media baron Rupert Murdoch
had bought the 20th Century Fox
film and television studios in the mid-1980s.
He had been trying, without success,
to launch an American cable news channel.
During the first half of the 1990s,
the news corporation hired a number
of executives to head Fox News.
None of those guys succeeded in doing
what you were about to do.
JON: Media mogul Ted Turner had a dominant 17-year
monopoly with his cable news channel, CNN.
LARRY KING: Okay, you had competition for a while.
We, uh, launched Headline News
and got it on the air before they did,
and we beat them and they folded their tent.
JON: Public rivalry between Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch
was nasty and personal.
Rupert Murdoch trusted Roger Ailes
to launch a network from scratch.
-MALE HOST: What was going on? -Well, I think part of it
is the meeting of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.
Rupert, uh, gives you the budget, gives you the time
and says get it done. And if you don't,
uh, then of course you fail.
But, uh, I operate better
in that kind of a climate.
Roger has a combination of qualities not often found.
First of all, Roger can manage.
That talent alone will take you into the top
of a corporate hierarchy.
But to find that talent plus the ability to produce,
plus the ability to build, plus the ability to inspire,
plus the ability to create shows, in one person,
is a very rare thing indeed
and I've never seen it all in one person
except for Roger Ailes.
JON: Ted Turner's battle with Rupert Murdoch
entered a new phase.
Turner would now have to fight Roger Ailes.
ROGER: Look, I'm gonna get criticism
for not being a so-called cap--
what they call "capital J journalist"
because I've been in the entertainment business.
So I decided I'd just do it better
than anybody else ever did it
and make sure people find it compelling.
So we just expect to do fine, balanced journalism.
ROGER: Rupert, at that time, was looking for somebody
who could create a cable news channel from scratch,
take on a 17-year leader, CNN,
crush MSNBC,
and appeal to the majority
of news viewers in America.
It was, uh, not a small task.
JON: Rupert Murdoch agreed to fund the startup Fox News.
Ailes insisted upon complete autonomy
in running the channel.
The Fox News concept was deceptively simple.
There was a growing market for 24-hour cable news,
and the market had only one monopoly player
in 17 years-- CNN.
ROGER: I was so bored, watch-- I watched CNN for a week
and I kept having to wake myself up.
JON: The growing demand for 24-hour news
plus the audience dissatisfaction
with the perceived bias of CNN
left a vast commercial opportunity.
Fox News would service the middle American viewers
who were taken for granted.
It would cost a billion dollars to launch.
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
ROGER: So I always saw a pattern.
I've been training to do this all my life.
I could see what Fox would look like.
This was, of course, because the majority of people
in the United States thought the media tipped to the left.
The reason they thought that
is because the media tipped to the left.
MALE INTERVIEWER: Because it did.
JACQUES: And what was America like before Roger Ailes
and the mass media before Fox News?
And, uh, if you look at, uh,
old clips of the news
and compare channel to channel to channel,
it's the same news.
The idea of Fox News is that there were some folks
whose views are not being represented.
ROGER: This was proven time after time
in poll after poll.
And I thought if I created a more centrist news channel
that we would have open ground.
The tilt was pretty obvious
and 50% of the American people
knew the tilt was there and Roger had the genius
to think that there was another 50% out there
who kind of felt like they were being hoodwinked
and would recognize something different.
Most of the people thought the news was either biased
or boring or both.
And they generally thought
it was biased in one direction.
But what my view was,
if the American people truly believe this,
then it's very important for us to be fair
and trying not to be boring.
And that's the promise of Fox News.
-Do you believe that the others do... -ROGER: Yes, absolutely.
-...eliminate points of view? -ROGER: Yes.
And do you believe it's primarily the conservative point of view
-that they're eliminating? -ROGER: Yes.
TIM GROSECLOSE: By and large,
the conservatives were right on this issue,
that we found, of all the media outlets we looked at,
the vast majority,
almost of the mainstream media outlets
at least leaned left.
Well, in 2011, I published a book
calledLeft Turn,
and the objective ofLeft Turn
was to study media bias
quantitatively and objectively.
I wanted to give an actual number
that would you say how left or right
various news outlets are.
So if you wanna use a football field analogy
and you say the 50-yard line is perfectly is centrist,
here's basically what we found,
is that Fox News was not completely centrist,
but Fox News was a little bit to the right.
The rest of the media,
especially, like, the network news shows,
they were something like on the 35-yard line
on the left side of the field.
But if anything, Fox News was a little more centrist
than the mainstream media was.
But when you were laying out in your mission statement
to be fair and balanced,
you were obviously setting yourself up
against other elements in the media
that in your judgment would be unfair and unbalanced.
When Roger brought to me the idea
that Rupert Murdoch was gonna support a cable station
that would be fair to the conservative viewpoint,
I said, "My God, Roger, I wish I thought of that.
That's ingenious.
America's dying for that."
And I remember Roger coming to me
when they first got started and saying,
"We're gonna launch, but they're not gonna put us on
in Los Angeles and they're not putting us on in New York."
And I said, "What is it, a monopoly?"
He said, "Yeah, that's what it is.
It's an illegal monopoly."
He said, "But, you know,
you have four cable stations for New York City."
For the first four months of Fox,
the owner of the station it was on,
was the city of New York and I was their landlord,
and Turner sued us.
And then they finally settled the lawsuit.
But, uh, Time Warner put them on--
we had 'em like on channel 73,
from like 90 something,
so nobody could find them.
ROGER: When we started and Rupert had to make the gamble
to go with Fox News, we had no studios,
no offices, no equipment,
no programs, no distribution,
no stars, and no staff.
-It didn't look good. -[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
BRIT HUME: He had a non-existent news division.
There was nothing.
And he had to make it
come into being in less than a year.
I remember he said to me in March of 1996,
"We're gonna go on air on October."
And I thought to myself, "No, you're not,
but I'm sure you'll come close."
Boy, was I wrong.
ROGER: About two or three weeks before the launch,
our engineers came to us and said,
"We think we can launch with one control room,
one studio, no graphics,
or we'll have to push the launch back."
And I remember calling a 4:00 a.m. meeting
and explaining to them that we were going to launch
with all the studios, all the control rooms,
and all the graphics.
And everybody started sleeping on the floors
in their offices and we went in to a crash mode
for the last two to three weeks,
but I wasn't doubting we could do it.
MALE HOST: Good morning. Welcome to Fox News Channel.
...held a one-man debate of his own...
ROGER: So far so good. They're on.
MALE HOST: Was anyone watching
-in October of 1996? -BILL HEMMER: No. No.
It was like doing television in a vacuum.
LARA LOGAN: When Fox are started, it was like, "What is this?"
Are these people nuts, a conservative network?
Like, nobody took it seriously.
ROGER: I'll bet they're watching over at NBC this morning.
I'll bet they're sitting there saying,
they're probably saying "Look at that, it looks terrible."
[LAUGHTER]
It was, it was definitely a kind of joke.
-BILL: Hello? -WOMAN: ...Fox adman Greg Stevenson...
We've got some incorrect audio coming across.
Due to, uh, technical difficulties,
we did not hear Stan--
SHEPARD: We weren't very good at television yet.
Everything didn't work.
There's literally something on fire.
All right. Well, we'll get a commercial break
and we'll be right back.
Literally they were just this idiotic startup, right?
Nobody cared,
nobody thought they were gonna be:
"This is CNN."
The secret is to get number one people
who will pick number one people.
So 80 people decided to come to work for him
at Fox News and he hired them
because they knew how to launch a network.
I know when I left NBC, five vice presidents,
nine managers, eighty-two employees in all
from the NBC system joined me.
And Bob Wright, he was running NBC at that time,
Wright had a lawyer call me and tell me,
"Roger, there are consequences to recruiting our people."
And I said, "Your problem is you don't know the difference
between recruiting and a freaking jailbreak."
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
He knew he needed recognizable names.
ROGER: So we hired 14 conservative contributors,
14 liberal contributors.
CNN has 4,000 people and Bob Novak.
They think that's balanced and...
MALE HOST: Roger Ailes told me
that it was a big deal to get you.
Well, it was a big deal for me to get here.
You know, I was excited about it.
And in the meantime, more news is on the way,
fair, balanced, and unafraid.
Well, we're going to try to be different,
stimulating, and a bit daring.
He wanted good people who could drive a program.
But you would see great potential.
ROGER: Somebody asked me how I pick talent.
So I sat down and wrote a list and I had 26 items.
Well, first, I was the only man who put a woman in primetime.
GRETA: Welcome, I'm Greta Van Susteren, tonight--
ROGER: Seventeen-year head start on CNN,
they never had a woman host a show on primetime.
At least I tried and I broke the glass ceiling
primetime host for women
and, of course, there was never--
has never been mentioned in the press.
MALE HOST: That was a pretty big deal when you went to Fox.
Yeah. They told me at CNN I was gonna ruin my career.
Did you know that? That's what they told me,
they said "I'll ruin my career."
You owe me an apology, your readers an apology,
it was a dishonest column.
But I think that I interested him
because he likes provocative people on television.
And that's the way it is.
ROGER: In the old days, it used to be,
"I'm the anchorman, I know the news,
you don't, and please be quiet."
"This is CNN Breaking News."
ROGER: The idea that you are both interesting, attractive,
and have pacing, and understand what you're doing
doesn't detract one bit from whatever the story is.
It enhances the story.
I'm just observing it because that's what we do.
We're journalists, we observe,
I observe that Mitt Romney's wearing mom jeans.
ROGER: So I don't get it
when people say, "Oh, well, you guys
are more entertaining than most."
Well, fuck you. Yes, of course.
And the problem is what exactly?
We keep kicking their ass every day in the ratings.
ROGER: The news is really about ratings and money.
Everything's about results, not activity.
The only thing anybody pays you for is results.
Journalists don't like to admit that-- they pretend
they're the piano player in the whorehouse.
They don't know what's going on upstairs.
And we're in a business today, when you went into journalism
and the great journalism of Murrow, and you,
and many others, Marvin,
it was a public service, it was a lost leader.
But today, it is a business. I didn't create that.
I didn't start it, but you--
if you don't run it as a business,
you will go belly up
and nobody will work.
Roger wanted ratings. He wanted high ratings.
ROGER: I had to beat 'em. I was to beat them.
And you have to create ratings.
I mean, in the end, it's about ratings,
and if you can't get ratings, you don't survive.
He had this tremendous fierce competitiveness.
JON: Roger put a Fox News billboard
across from CNN's headquarters.
ROGER: It was a cheesy trick that worked.
JON: When a Fox show beat a CNN show,
Roger posted updated ratings on the billboard.
-ROGER: And the--and the-- -MAN: Just a psywar? I mean, just--
ROGER: Yeah, it was just to fuck with them.
And let 'em know that we weren't going away.
That's the kind of thing Roger did.
He loved to sort of be the agitator,
and that's what he was,
that's why he called it fair and balanced.
He knew he's never gonna be accepted
supposedly in his mind in the mainstream press,
but he felt, "I love it,
I like having a rogue group of people
that are probably smarter, funnier, more engaging."
Fox were kind of like me, they were a little bit rogue.
I ended up living
on the frontline of the war in Afghanistan
right after 9/11 and the only--
there was only one other journalist
on that frontline,
and it was Steve Harrigan
and his cameraman Joel from Fox News,
that was just the best journalism,
in some respects, of that war.
People started coming to Fox News
and they have to say,
"They're not the same
as all the others,"
and we weren't.
I mean, it was Roger Ailes's game plan.
"Don't be the same."
What I told people when Fox News started is,
"Don't watch the competitors,
make them watch us
because your job is to create something
on that screen that makes them wanna copy it."
We put a "Live" bug up in the corner
and MSNBC put a "Live" bug up in the corner,
and so I called the control room and I said,
"Make ours a little bigger, I wanna watch."
About 20 minutes later,
-theirs got a little bigger. -[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
ROGER: Ours was red.
So I said, "Put a gold rim around ours,"
and they put a blue rim around theirs.
And then I said, "Make that son of a bitch
as big on the screen as you can make it
without people laughing, so no matter what they do,
-they can't get bigger." -[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
We did and they stopped,
and I later talked to a friend of mine
who worked there and he said, "Geez, Ailes,
we're all in this control room, saying, 'Ailes is nuts.
Look at this, the guy's got it half the screen.'"
[LAUGHTER]
So we knew we were forcing 'em to watch us.
You know, we get attacked and we get copied,
usually at the same time by the same people,
and basically, it's fear
that we're doing something they're not doing.
I knew a competition-- 24-hour competition
would come at some point.
So in the beginning, we didn't get a lot of viewers
because nobody knew what the Fox News Channel was
and it wasn't on in a lot--
a lot of parts of the United States,
so there was a gradual roll out.
JON: The 2000 election and the 9/11 attacks
caused viewers to swarm to cable news.
Fox News audience doubled, and then doubled again.
When those viewers found Fox,
they stayed with Fox.
That's the last time. December 2001
was the last time CNN was number one.
JON: Roger Ailes not only launched Fox News,
he managed it so successfully
that it was profitable after just five years.
Rupert Murdoch recouped his entire investment
in Fox News
and was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars
of annual profit.
ROGER: We're doing very well
and we're north of-- probably this year,
north of 200 and some million dollars
in terms of EBIT, uh, profit.
-MALE HOST: Of profit? -Profit.
Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN,
MSNBC,
and the evening newscasts of NBC,
ABC, and CBS combined.
JON: And the Fox News cash gusher continued.
Profits rose
to one billion dollars per year.
ROGER: Something that's probably asset value,
twenty to twenty-five billion,
turning out a million-- billion and a half
to two billion a year?
But you think that they would
imitate that success, right?
But Roger would famously say,
it wasn't in their DNA to do that.
ROGER: The real reason is, they're liberals,
and they don't think anyone else
has a legitimate point of view.
It's mind-boggling when I still think
about the obstacles he overcame,
the culture that he established,
the fact that it's a dominant
number one in its arena.
Never gonna be anything like it again.
Many people who praise diversity, of course,
really mean diversity in everything but thought.
Some people say they regret the fact
that the old journalistic oligopoly has been broken.
But the third recipient of a 2013 Bradley Prize
is not among those who regret the end of the oligopoly.
Roger Ailes, more than anyone else, ended it.
ROGER: Bias is not necessarily what you believe in
but it can be leaving out
other people's valid beliefs.
There are smart,
reasonable people
on both sides of these debates,
and what I try to instruct my journalist to do
is to reach out to a point of view
that you don't necessarily agree with
and make sure that gets in the story
so that people have the sense
of where the conflict lies.
NEWT: Roger Ailes understood in a depth
that very few people do.
Freedom of speech requires that you speak.
Unless you did that, the First Amendment's dead.
ROGER: Freedom of the press did not invent democracy,
democracy invented freedom of the press.
LARA: Imagine if Roger Ailes
hadn't made that happen.
Fox has made an extraordinary difference
to the national discourse.
The different points of view I use today
is a symbol of how divided we are,
but maybe the different points of view
are a symbol of how free we are.
You can't change the fact that in a free society,
it's better to get more than one point of view.
Roger has saved, I think,
the First Amendment in America
in terms of its real meaning, which is,
"No one viewpoint can predominate."
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
I think a main reason that people follow Roger
is really that they sense that he's--
that losing with Roger is simply not an option.
The other thing is, he shoots straight,
you know, he tells you the truth,
you know, and you put the combination of somebody
who won't lose, and shoots straight,
and is a very kind man,
you'd follow that guy anywhere.
When Roger Ailes is on your team, you win,
and there's nothing like that kind of confidence.
It sort of like having that coach
that you just trust and believe in
and then you had a winning season,
and then it's like, "Yes,"
and then you had another winning season,
and it's fun to win, and he won.
He said it, "I know it's fun to win, guys,
but it could just end tomorrow."
We work not for Fox News
but for Roger Ailes.
And he was with us in the bunker,
fighting for respect, and fighting for viewers,
fighting to win, and as we fought,
he would protect us from all comers.
BRIT: You don't wanna-- you don't want to get Roger
in the same room with somebody who's down on his luck,
because the next thing you know, Roger will have moved out
of his house to make room for the person
or give them the clothes off his back.
RUSH: A lot of people use charitable giving
and publicity to try to dull
a negative public image.
Uh, that wasn't Roger.
Ailes said that "The greatest test
of a person or a man's character
is to watch how they treat people
who can't do anything for them,"
and boy, is that right.
And I would see him clipping articles
out of the Daily News and the New York Post,
and invariably, they were hard luck stories,
and I later realized that Roger was clipping them out,
so he'd anonymously send them hundred dollar bills
in the mail because he saw that was a very powerful
and moving story of a real life person who needed help.
There's that old expression that you don't really know
who your friends are until you're in a crisis
and I think that's really true.
I found that out last year when my son
needed a liver transplant.
It's only when you're really down in the depths like that
that you find out what people are made of,
and what I found out in those moments
is that Roger is like the real stuff.
And he fought with us.
Our enemies were MSNBC and CNN.
We would conquer them
and become the most powerful name in news.
RUDY: Roger, will you have Elizabeth to be your wife?
JON: While building Fox News, Roger also built a family.
He married Elizabeth Tilson in 1998,
and they had a son, Zachary,
a few years later.
ZACHARY: My dad was the kindest person I ever met.
He was my hero
and I knew that he always had my back.
His father loved him
more than life itself
and would take him everywhere.
Not every kid has met
every living president.
But they had a very close relationship.
Roger taught him how to swim,
Roger taught him how to throw a baseball,
they were inseparable.
He was an older dad,
he couldn't get out there and play football
on Sunday afternoon,
but they did a lot of fun things together.
He would take a phone call from me or my mom
no matter who he had in the office.
If it was his family, his family came first.
Well, Roger, uh, took diversity seriously
and had already been doing internally, within Fox News,
his domain,
he had been opening doors and creating opportunities
that really, the story was not known.
FEMALE HOST: We all know the story, we all know--
she was emptying his trash, she said,
"This is my dream job. I want to be a makeup artist."
Now she's one of our makeup artists.
And from that little exchange they had,
he created the Ailes Apprentice Program.
ROGER: I set up an apprentice program at Fox
for minorities because I found
they didn't have access to the system.
WOMAN: You decided to make diversity
more than just a trend.
You decided to make it the standard.
JACQUES: There's an unknown connection
between Roger Ailes and the black community.
Uh, on 125th Street, uptown,
we say that Roger Ailes was the real deal.
This apprenticeship program was the gold standard
of the industry because it was unsolicited,
it was at his initiative, and it created
real and lasting opportunities within Fox.
ROGER: Many of them have become executives
in the company and we guarantee 'em a job
if they get through the year.
The American Dream is there.
But we have to reclaim it generation after generation.
The door that may have been shut for so long
now becomes open.
I'm like, "Wow. Someone has faith in me."
About that time, then you saw the George Soros
money start to come in.
It was in mid-2000s.
Media Matters, Move On,
Bonner Group,
and they exist today.
Surge of money coming in
and they were in business
to put Fox News out of business.
They tried to destroy him.
They tried to destroy it.
They discredited it or tried to.
They say it's not news.
It's--whatever it is.
It's like some disease over here
that's outside the mainstream.
You shouldn't trust it.
So, what do you do?
You kill the messenger, right?
You go after Roger Ailes
because maybe if you can destroy Roger Ailes,
maybe Fox doesn't survive beyond him.
NEWSCASTER: Roger Ailes, why do some people
in the news business hate you and hate Fox News?
ROGER: Well, I think they teach people to divide
and dislike each other.
Hate is something that you have to get over
in your life and some people haven't gotten over it.
MAN: I've got your current address, I'm gonna come over there soon.
ELIZABETH: "The first time I remember there being a threat
against my dad is when he was running
George Bush's campaign,
but it wasn't until Fox News
that they became extremely serious and scary."
MAN: I'm at your door and I found you.
ELIZABETH: "But he wasn't afraid.
His only concern was for his family, not himself."
MAN: Do you wanna put me on the news?
ROGER: I'll put you on the news, cause we always report dead bodies.
ELIZABETH: I think growing up as a hemophiliac,
he just had a very practical view of death
and never seemed worried about it.
ROGER: What happened to you when you were a kid that caused you to...
ROGER: You're a coward.
ELIZABETH: We had many threats against the family.
We had a swatting incident
and I arrived to find 20 armed police
coming out of my house.
Dealing with personal attacks yourself,
uh, watching your friends be attacked--
I mean, the frustrating thing is, how do you deal with this?
Rush Limbaugh's politics are quite different from mine,
but I respect him as a principal thinker
who has had enormous impact on this culture.
They kind of push their political point of view, uh,
to try to shut it down.
They've demonized him.
This is how the media deals with conservatives
who are effective.
It's part of the discrediting
that they engage in.
So, I would ask,
Roger, what's the way to deal with this?
Do you--do you respond to this criticism
or do you just let it go?"
He said, "Well, it's gonna be
a psychological challenge, which you have got to learn
to accept that 20% or 30%
of the country hating you
is a sign you are succeeding.
And recognize that people saying it
don't know what they're talking about
and don't know you.
The people who do know you, know who you are.
That's all you can do and that's all that matters."
JON: Fox News profits helped support Rupert Murdoch's
vast media empire.
When Roger Ailes launched Fox News,
Murdoch's children were in their 20s.
Ailes' complete management control over Fox News
did not present any immediate issues
within the Murdoch family.
But that family dynamic shifted
with Murdoch's bitter divorce
from the children's mother.
As Fox News became a powerful platform,
the Murdoch heirs wanted to be involved in management,
and as Rupert Murdoch aged,
a succession battle loomed large.
You control your own destiny.
You have to be able to have control
as much as possible of the company.
Therefore, it is very important that the family
maintain their position in the company.
JON: But Rupert needed Roger Ailes,
because without him,
the Fox News cash juggernaut might end.
MAN: And the reflection and example of Ailes' power
is that, through the years, Ailes has feuded
with Murdoch's children,
and each time, Ailes has gone to Murdoch
to speak up to basically say,
"You got to choose your children or me."
Murdoch blinked and chose Ailes.
So that tells you a lot, if you're willing to put
Roger Ailes, your corporate executive,
ahead of your own blood.
JON: In 2011, Roger Ailes quietly explored
leaving Fox News.
-ROGER [ON RECORDING]: I would retire today.
-INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh. -ROGER: I'm-- You know,
since my brother had the stroke,
I have a slightly different view of it.
I got to keep Fox going, so regardless of how I do it,
it'll take a year or two to keep that going.
JON: Now over 70 years old,
he had a family to think of.
ROGER: I did become fearful again when Zach was born.
I could run into the center of the situation
and do what I've always done, but that kid needs a father,
so I'm gonna shut my mouth.
JON: In 2012, Rupert Murdoch offered Roger Ailes
the first of several lucrative extensions
to stay at the helm of Fox News.
Murdoch enticed Ailes to stay through
the upcoming 2016 election cycle,
a critical ratings and financial event.
Both men knew it would be Ailes' final term
with Fox News.
And Murdoch took the opportunity
to install both his sons as senior Fox executives.
Technically, the Murdoch children
as well as Rupert Murdoch were now Roger Ailes' bosses,
on paper anyway.
MICHAEL WOLFF: The other mission that Murdoch has always been
devoted to is making his children
the people who will run this company
for the foreseeable future.
So, this is all part of a plan
for nobody to get in the way
of his children's destiny.
-He always felt... -MAN: Yeah.
...if he died and somebody else
was the CEO of the company,
that would be a problem
and a problem for his children to take over.
So, this is all part of a concerted long-term
and I might say masterful plan on Murdoch's part.
To keep the Murdoch name?
JON: The Murdoch sons began preparing for the day
when Roger was no longer running Fox.
They jockeyed for media coverage,
a magazine focused on Roger Ailes
was quickly matched by a magazine
featuring the Murdoch heirs' plans
for their inherited company.
ROGER: Each of you has a personal ego pit
out there in the dark waiting for you, someplace, sometime.
If you fall in it, the sides are steep,
they are slippery, and you may never get out.
A media and political bombshell.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Those sexual harassment allegations,
against one of the most powerful men in television news.
MALE NEWSCASTER: New York magazine,
citing unnamed sources,
reported today that Fox Anchor Megyn Kelly
told the outside law firm conducting a review
that Ailes had sexually harassed her
when she was a Fox reporter about a decade ago.
He called me up to New York,
sat me down, gave me a bunch of great advice,
and the untold part of that meeting,
and others like it, was it would be coupled
with highly inappropriate sexual references.
Ailes' lawyer, Susan Estrich, responded with this statement,
and I will quote,
"Roger Ailes has never sexually harassed Megyn Kelly.
In fact, he has spent much of the last decade promoting
and helping her to achieve the stardom she earned
for what she has repeatedly and publicly thanked him."
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: I'm not gonna inveigh anybody by name,
but I believe somebody talked to Megyn...
outside of the investigation group...
and made a deal with her...
and said, 'You got anything on Ailes?'
And she says,
'For 10 years he's done nothing but help me. I dunno. Let me see....'
'Y'know, when I first walked in one day, he inappropriately hugged me.'
Nobody believes that because I awkwardly, as she put it, hugged her 10 years ago...
...that I'm guilty of sexual harassment.
Well, you may have said something that made her uncomfortable.' Ten years ago?
Ten years after the fact,
a woman can haul you up in front of a public committee
and make you reconstruct lunchtime conversations you had.
What is this? You know, Stalinism?
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: I've never done anything that would rise to this level.
I am not guilty of the charges.
GEORGE: As you know, Roger Ailes put out a statement, quote,
"I categorically deny the allegations Megyn Kelly
makes about me, as Megyn herself admitted to Charlie Rose.
Watch that interview and decide for yourself."
MEGYN: I really care about Roger.
And he's been nothing but good to me.
And he's been very loyal and he's had my back.
ELIZABETH: Roger went to bat for Megyn Kelly
when she and Donald Trump got into a tweet war.
Donald, as you might recall, was not happy
with her questions at the debate,
and Roger said famously,
"The United States is at war with various countries
but Donald Trump is at war with Megyn Kelly."
He stood up for her.
So, how do you square that with what you're writing now?
He said, "Look, the viewers can smell a phony
from a mile away."
ELIZABETH: Megyn Kelly was on the cover of a magazine,
and in the story,
she negotiated her contract in the press.
JON: Network contracts limit
when talent can solicit competing offers,
violations are cause for termination.
ELIZABETH: Roger called her into his office
and he told me that night what happened.
He said to her,
"You shouldn't negotiate your contract in the press,
and you're forgetting, Megyn,
you're not the only one who gets to decide
if you stay at Fox."
When he told her that, Roger said,
"Her face changed."
She turned on him in that very moment.
And he suspected that she was leapfrogging him
and going directly to the Murdochs
to talk about her contract.
Let's be honest, in the media world,
be it acting or journalism, radio or TV,
the central dominating factor
is the ego, and I think it's at that point
that all considerations of loyalty and gratitude vanish.
They end up being replaced by anger
and a need for revenge.
What I wanted was for it
to be an open and honest investigation into him.
That's all I really wanted.
This investigation, such as it was,
was over in the blink of an eye.
Nobody ever came to us and said,
"We want to interview Roger and hear his side of the story."
No one ever came to Roger and asked him
for his side of the story.
He steadfastly denied
any accusations that were made,
but his exit contract prohibited him
from responding to anything that was said.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: I've had no opportunity to present my side on this,
I never sexually abused anybody.
It was almost a perfect storm for Roger.
People thought Hillary Clinton
was gonna be the next president.
I don't think it's any coincidence
that Roger's departure
from Fox News
was announced on the evening
of the Republican National Convention opening.
JON: A law firm with strong ties
to candidate Hillary Clinton
conducted a brief investigation.
MAN: I think there was something more
that led to the demise of Roger
than simply the allegations that were made.
JON: The inquiry was criticized as being a rubber stamp.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: The other thing is that nine years ago,
I had radical prostatectomy.
ELIZABETH: He had a hip replacement,
he had prostate cancer.
He was getting...
progressively more frail.
He was physically incapable
of the things that he was accused of.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: One of the people being interviewed, after they said,
'Look, I love Ailes. I've been with him a lot privately.'
'He's never done anything. The guy's like a father to me.'
And they said, 'Aw, c'mon, you've got something on Ailes.'
I was in Roger's office,
I will say easily more than two dozen times,
never once, once,
did he ever either hit on me,
make me feel like he was trying to,
never, never, never, and never.
There was a lot of support for Roger,
but it got nipped in the bud.
Many women offered to write letters
or even speak on camera
about their interactions with Roger.
These women were all treated professionally
and they all wanted to say so publicly.
But the powers that be did not want anyone
who had a positive experience to speak out,
they were told never to say anything positive.
In fact, some were told, "Don't even go to the funeral."
ROGER: So this has looked like, from the beginning,
a march to a reputational destruction.
JON: With his two sons now inserted at Fox News,
Rupert Murdoch decided
he no longer needed Roger Ailes.
Roger Ailes resigned
as CEO of Fox News.
CEO Roger Ailes has handed in his resignation.
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
ELIZABETH: All the people that had stood so close
through the 20-year rise,
we quickly found out within two weeks of his stepping down
how many false friends he had.
That was a real shock.
I don't--I don't understand some people
who so apparently were able
to throw Roger Ailes overboard.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: They don't love me, they're talking to me
because of the power I had.
ELIZABETH: When Roger Ailes left Fox News,
the attacks were stepped up.
He was not allowed to defend himself.
That was an impossible situation
for a guy who had done the impossible.
And it seemed to come to a crescendo
in November of 2016.
Roger was married twice before he married me.
In fact, I think at the end of his second marriage
in the late '80s, early '90s,
he had a girlfriend,
someone that I did not know about,
and I learned...
just after he stepped down
that he had taken up with this girlfriend
again during our marriage.
I was blindsided, I was very angry,
I was hurt, it was painful, um...
He was sorrowful
and sought forgiveness.
Those were dark days,
very dark days.
And then, as I do when I'm upset,
I try to rearrange the sock drawer
or something like that.
And so I went out into the garage
and I was going through some papers
and I came across the Robert Frost poem,
"The Road Less Traveled."
And so I took the road less traveled by,
and for me, that made the difference
because I kept my marriage together,
I believe in forgiveness.
And I think that the world has forgotten
how to be compassionate,
and loving, and forgive.
I was with him the day that he fell.
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
ROBERT AILES: What killed him was, he fell in the bathroom,
hit his head on the tile,
created an intracranial hemorrhage
and, um, we couldn't get the bleeding stopped.
ELIZABETH: The paramedics were here...
-...and they got him on the gurney... -[AMBULANCE SIREN BLARING]
...and they said, "Do you know your name?"
And he said, "Roger Ailes."
And then they said, "Do you know who the president is?"
And he said, "No, I don't know."
And I started to cry because I realized
that was a very bad sign.
A man who had elected three presidents
wasn't remembering who was currently the president.
But he took a turn for the worse one afternoon,
and they said, "You can go in and speak to him
before he's wheeled into surgery."
When I went into the room, they said,
"Remember, he can hear everything you're saying."
And I-- So I--
They said, "Try to sound positive,"
which is not easy to do under those circumstances.
But I held his hand and I remember I placed my hands
on his chest and I said,
"Roger, we need you.
Please come back to us.
Please come back.
I forgive you."[SOBS]
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
ELIZABETH: And a big tear rolled right down his cheek,
so I know he heard me.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: I didn't have a perfect life,
but I've had a good life like everybody.
I veered off course from time to time.
And to anybody I hurt, I apologize.
As for anybody who hurt me, I'm still looking for you.
I've done it all.
I entertained, I've attacked,
defended, offended,
defined, informed.
Sometimes I was right, sometimes wrong,
I lived, I learned,
and most of all, I succeeded.
I think that if he had lived
through that last fall,
he probably would've had more wonderful time with Zachary.
He toyed with the idea of doing something
to compete with Fox News.
He had that street fire mentality.
He was not one to give up.
So he was gonna come back.
ROGER [ON RECORDING]: It's the uncompleted mission of my life.
DONALD TRUMP: What Roger Ailes did was create
somewhat of a miracle.
Roger really opened up a world
that nobody else was able to capture.
He understood the people that weren't able to,
not only express their views,
but hear the views of other people
that they wanted to hear.
So I'm not sure that I ever would have been
standing at this very powerful,
important, even sacred spot,
the Rose Garden, in front of the Oval Office,
at the White House, if it weren't for Roger.
Roger Ailes was a true American patriot.
People should remember Roger Ailes
as a champion of America,
and part of being a champion of America
was creating a First Amendment platform
for people really from all sides of the aisle to be heard.
I think that he deserves to be remembered
a little bit more than salacious gossip.
But he was literally a pioneer
and made broadcasting in television better
because of his sheer will.
If I were to pick the three most consequential conservatives
of the modern era,
it would be Ronald Reagan,
Charles Krauthammer,
and Roger Ailes.
It changed the landscape.
Roger Ailes changed the game,
and that does live on, that lives past all of us.
In his generation, he was one of the most
creative people anywhere in America in the news business
and his legacy is unique and institutional
and I know of no rival
in that time period during his lifetime,
in terms of total impact.
Roger Ailes was special because he did what he said
he was gonna do and he shined a light in dark places,
unabashedly, and then held the spotlight there.
In journalism and in politics, nobody else,
no other single person contributed
anywhere near what he contributed.
It's like the Renaissance. Well, he's a Michelangelo.
And so he engineers presidencies
and then he engineers
the most successful news network ever.
You got to remember Roger Ailes as the guy
who made it possible for you to win.
He was...
American exceptionalism.
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]
ROGER:
[DRAMATIC THEME PLAYING]