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The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News-and Divided a Country
The astonishing inside story of Fox News, the most powerful media and political business in the world, from one of the hottest young investigative journalists today. The story of Fox News' ascent is an epic story of political power, business success, brass-knuckle tactics, and old-school showmanship.
578 pages, Hardcover
First published May 2, 2013
464 people are currently reading
3630 people want to read
About the author
Gabriel Sherman
5 books40 followersGABRIEL SHERMAN is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of the New York Times Best Selling biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, which is currently being adapted into a limited series for Showtime. Previously, Sherman served as national affairs editor at New York magazine and is a regular contributor to NBC News and MSNBC. He lives in New York City with his family.
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May 18, 2017Wondering aloud the other day whether anyone could be more sexist, dishonest, frightening or just plain unpleasant than Lyin' Crooked Donald Trump, I was told to read this book. But now that the two of them have joined forces, the question has perhaps become academic.
______________________
[Update, May 18 2017]
Another old joke, slightly adapted:
They say only speak good of the dead.
Roger Ailes is dead? Good.
______________________
[Update, May 18 2017]
Another old joke, slightly adapted:
They say only speak good of the dead.
Roger Ailes is dead? Good.
November 18, 2016
The Loudest Voice in the Room: Roger Ailes, Fox News and the Remaking of American Politics by Gabriel Sherman is not only a book about Ailes as an adult but about how his father raised him and his childhood to adulthood. His father was a douche bag also and taught Ailes to be the douche bag Ailes is today. Ailes has perfected it. This book is good in showing Ailes personality though out his life and how people catered to him, I am not sure why at times, and this gave him even more power. This was before he was fired from Fox. This must be Trump's soulmate and why Trump took him to his bosom. I wanted to knock the stars down just for the subject but that wouldn't be fair, lol. I did however decrease the rating for all the extra things I thought were just too much that didn't seem to lead anywhere that I could see, but there were sooooo many people in his life it was difficult to track. Too many and it gets confusing. Good book on a bad character. Thanks for showing us that he was a dick his whole life and how he got that way.
April 6, 2017
As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Lima, Ohio, (population 50,000), I learned that our local daily, The Lima News, had been purchased by a man named R. C. Hoiles. Hoiles lived in Orange County, California, and was a member of the John Birch Society. He owned a chain of small-town newspapers which he called (surprise!) Freedom Newspapers. I didn’t know any of that at the time, though. What I knew was just what I read in the News: editorials denouncing the “socialistic” concept of free public schools and paeans to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the drunken liar and bully who claimed to see Communists under every desk.
By now you’ve guessed, of course, that I grew up in a Democratic household and learned very early to disregard the ravings of Hoiles’ mouthpiece at the local paper. Although we Democrats were a small minority in a conservative Republican town, where the News frequently represented local opinion, Hoiles and his ilk were almost as widely disregarded in the larger society as my painting teacher, Mrs. Elmer McClain, a Communist who was warmly received in Moscow by Nikita Khrushchev (I kid you not).
Oh, those were the good old days, when there was a Left and a Right, and nobody paid much attention to either! Now, in the 21st Century, we have Roger Ailes, who is just as loopy and far to the Right as R. C. Hoiles, if not more so, and not only is he widely regarded as brilliant — but he’s also running the most successful television news network in the country, a billion-dollar venture that is widely understood to be an extension of the Republican Party’s Right Wing.
Ailes, it turns out, was raised in a similar Ohio town, Warren, and at about the same time as I was. (He’s almost exactly one year older than me.) Surprisingly, though, Ailes showed little interest in politics until 1967, when he managed to trap then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon in an hour-long private meeting at the Ohio television station where he was a producer. Ailes talked himself into a job as “media advisor” to Nixon, even though, to all appearances, he was then a liberal and disdained many of Nixon’s policies. He played a relatively small role in Nixon’s campaign, but in subsequent elections (Reagan in 1984, Bush I in 1992, Bush II in 2000, McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012) his influence was considerably greater, allowing him to claim that he had “elected presidents.” By then, politics had hooked him thoroughly, and with every successive campaign in which Ailes became involved, his political views seemed to shift further to the Right. Along the way, he:
** Helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush
** Became Rush Limbaugh’s executive producer and a personal friend
** Put Glenn Beck on national television
** Championed the rise of the Tea Party
** Promoted partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill and throughout the country
** Made billions of dollars for his boss, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch
Roger Ailes built the Fox News Network beginning in 1996 based on his conviction that news should be presented as entertainment, emphasizing maximum drama and conflict. It’s a little hard to tell whether this belief helped propel Ailes Rightward or it served as rationalization for his and Fox’s steady drift toward Right-Wing extremism.
Clearly, the outwardly visible benchmarks of Ailes’ career identify him now as about as extreme as you can get in contemporary America. What’s not so easily visible is Ailes’ behavior at the office and at home in Garrison, New York, where he maintains a 9,000-square-foot mountaintop fortress with a “panic room” underground to protect Ailes and his wife for six months in the event of a terrorist assault on the site. In The Loudest Voice in the Room, you can read all about Ailes’ outrageous behavior toward his colleagues, his subordinates, his neighbors, and even his friends.
Of course, you’ll find a bare-bones outline of Ailes’ life on Wikipedia. However, if you want the real story, read this book. It’s carefully researched and written with restraint, although the full spectrum of Ailes’ lunacy does come through clearly.
A century ago, men who behaved like Ailes would have been tagged as “eccentric.” Nowadays we know better. The man is simply nuts. Brilliant, but nuts.
By now you’ve guessed, of course, that I grew up in a Democratic household and learned very early to disregard the ravings of Hoiles’ mouthpiece at the local paper. Although we Democrats were a small minority in a conservative Republican town, where the News frequently represented local opinion, Hoiles and his ilk were almost as widely disregarded in the larger society as my painting teacher, Mrs. Elmer McClain, a Communist who was warmly received in Moscow by Nikita Khrushchev (I kid you not).
Oh, those were the good old days, when there was a Left and a Right, and nobody paid much attention to either! Now, in the 21st Century, we have Roger Ailes, who is just as loopy and far to the Right as R. C. Hoiles, if not more so, and not only is he widely regarded as brilliant — but he’s also running the most successful television news network in the country, a billion-dollar venture that is widely understood to be an extension of the Republican Party’s Right Wing.
Ailes, it turns out, was raised in a similar Ohio town, Warren, and at about the same time as I was. (He’s almost exactly one year older than me.) Surprisingly, though, Ailes showed little interest in politics until 1967, when he managed to trap then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon in an hour-long private meeting at the Ohio television station where he was a producer. Ailes talked himself into a job as “media advisor” to Nixon, even though, to all appearances, he was then a liberal and disdained many of Nixon’s policies. He played a relatively small role in Nixon’s campaign, but in subsequent elections (Reagan in 1984, Bush I in 1992, Bush II in 2000, McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012) his influence was considerably greater, allowing him to claim that he had “elected presidents.” By then, politics had hooked him thoroughly, and with every successive campaign in which Ailes became involved, his political views seemed to shift further to the Right. Along the way, he:
** Helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush
** Became Rush Limbaugh’s executive producer and a personal friend
** Put Glenn Beck on national television
** Championed the rise of the Tea Party
** Promoted partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill and throughout the country
** Made billions of dollars for his boss, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch
Roger Ailes built the Fox News Network beginning in 1996 based on his conviction that news should be presented as entertainment, emphasizing maximum drama and conflict. It’s a little hard to tell whether this belief helped propel Ailes Rightward or it served as rationalization for his and Fox’s steady drift toward Right-Wing extremism.
Clearly, the outwardly visible benchmarks of Ailes’ career identify him now as about as extreme as you can get in contemporary America. What’s not so easily visible is Ailes’ behavior at the office and at home in Garrison, New York, where he maintains a 9,000-square-foot mountaintop fortress with a “panic room” underground to protect Ailes and his wife for six months in the event of a terrorist assault on the site. In The Loudest Voice in the Room, you can read all about Ailes’ outrageous behavior toward his colleagues, his subordinates, his neighbors, and even his friends.
Of course, you’ll find a bare-bones outline of Ailes’ life on Wikipedia. However, if you want the real story, read this book. It’s carefully researched and written with restraint, although the full spectrum of Ailes’ lunacy does come through clearly.
A century ago, men who behaved like Ailes would have been tagged as “eccentric.” Nowadays we know better. The man is simply nuts. Brilliant, but nuts.
April 8, 2017
His father taught him not to trust anyone. While away at college, his divorced mother remarried, sold the Ohio home and moved to California without telling him about the move or what became of his things. Roger Ailes learned to fend for himself.
There are a lot of surprises about Ailes' early life. For instance: He is a hemophiliac, he produced Broadway plays including a counter-cultural ecology themed musical called "Mother Earth", and he allowed himself to be followed around by Richard Gere, who was studying for a role as a campaign guru.
Sherman follows Ailes through his successes and failures as a TV and theatrical producer. In the beginning his "media advice" on political campaigns was a side-line. His work with Nixon and the resulting best seller about his role in it (The Selling of the President) both hindered and launched him. As his life and career progressed so did Ailes' anger and paranoia.
There is background on the most curious of Ailes' relationships such as Joe McGuinness (author of The Selling of the President) Rudloph Guiliani (the NY elite his networks bashes) and the Murdoch family (his employer, whom he manipulates). There is good back story on how Ailes got on with Nixon's staff, how he built Fox, Fox's hyping of Clinton's "scandals" and its presentation of the the 2000 Election returns, how Glen Beck came to leave Fox, the facts surrounding the O'Reilly harassment and libel (Al Franken) lawsuits and much more.
The chapter on the Ailes's move to the Philipstown and purchase of its local newspaper is the story of Fox News in a microcosm. There was the unnecessary stirring up and empowerment of angry people and the spouting of talking points/half-truths like those heard daily on the network. Total control was demanded of the small newspaper staff. This and a smothering paternalism (you can stay at our place, for vacation, we'll take you to your family in our jet) begat its own kind of indentured servitude. Leaving was an act of disloyalty to be punished as many who left Fox News found out.
The early years are well sourced. For later years the author has to rely on public records, the broadcasts themselves and those who would speak out. When Ailes leaves public life we, the public, will learn a lot more since there will be a spate of tell-all memoirs by Fox News staff. (I hope someone does an "Ailes on the Couch".) As this book ends, Fox while still the cable news leader, is declining in viewership. Its technology is getting outdated. It has lost two elections and in the interest of helping its party, has had to back away from the Tea Party it championed. Rupert Murdoch is less enamored of his producer. It looks like there will be another battle ahead when Ailes' contract expires.
There are no photographs. I'd like to have seen the early Ailes, looking like Bobby Darin. It is hard to imagine. While his brother is quoted and his mother is referenced as present at one point, the family essentially is left after childhood. Similarly, his health is dropped, as though his hemophilia has been outgrown. The transition from a more normal type A person to a full blown paranoiac control freak is not clearly shown, which may be due to finding sources to speak to this period.
This is an excellent and courageous job. I hope this author is not being followed or harassed like the staff of the PCN&R and other "enemies".
There are a lot of surprises about Ailes' early life. For instance: He is a hemophiliac, he produced Broadway plays including a counter-cultural ecology themed musical called "Mother Earth", and he allowed himself to be followed around by Richard Gere, who was studying for a role as a campaign guru.
Sherman follows Ailes through his successes and failures as a TV and theatrical producer. In the beginning his "media advice" on political campaigns was a side-line. His work with Nixon and the resulting best seller about his role in it (The Selling of the President) both hindered and launched him. As his life and career progressed so did Ailes' anger and paranoia.
There is background on the most curious of Ailes' relationships such as Joe McGuinness (author of The Selling of the President) Rudloph Guiliani (the NY elite his networks bashes) and the Murdoch family (his employer, whom he manipulates). There is good back story on how Ailes got on with Nixon's staff, how he built Fox, Fox's hyping of Clinton's "scandals" and its presentation of the the 2000 Election returns, how Glen Beck came to leave Fox, the facts surrounding the O'Reilly harassment and libel (Al Franken) lawsuits and much more.
The chapter on the Ailes's move to the Philipstown and purchase of its local newspaper is the story of Fox News in a microcosm. There was the unnecessary stirring up and empowerment of angry people and the spouting of talking points/half-truths like those heard daily on the network. Total control was demanded of the small newspaper staff. This and a smothering paternalism (you can stay at our place, for vacation, we'll take you to your family in our jet) begat its own kind of indentured servitude. Leaving was an act of disloyalty to be punished as many who left Fox News found out.
The early years are well sourced. For later years the author has to rely on public records, the broadcasts themselves and those who would speak out. When Ailes leaves public life we, the public, will learn a lot more since there will be a spate of tell-all memoirs by Fox News staff. (I hope someone does an "Ailes on the Couch".) As this book ends, Fox while still the cable news leader, is declining in viewership. Its technology is getting outdated. It has lost two elections and in the interest of helping its party, has had to back away from the Tea Party it championed. Rupert Murdoch is less enamored of his producer. It looks like there will be another battle ahead when Ailes' contract expires.
There are no photographs. I'd like to have seen the early Ailes, looking like Bobby Darin. It is hard to imagine. While his brother is quoted and his mother is referenced as present at one point, the family essentially is left after childhood. Similarly, his health is dropped, as though his hemophilia has been outgrown. The transition from a more normal type A person to a full blown paranoiac control freak is not clearly shown, which may be due to finding sources to speak to this period.
This is an excellent and courageous job. I hope this author is not being followed or harassed like the staff of the PCN&R and other "enemies".
August 20, 2019
This is a very important book for understanding America (and it's place in the world) over the past twenty years.
It can certainly be argued that Roger Ailes has been one of the most important historical figures shaping the world that we live in right now. And it that sense, I mean, shaping it for the worse.
The Loudest Voice is a fascinating portrait of a political genius of the right and his long career in television. In his youth, from working as a talk show producer to a stint on Broadway believe it or not, Ailes certainly comes across as an interesting guy even if it's all just foreshadowing for the powerful force he will become later.
As we get into politics, campaigns, and ultimately Fox News, the scope of the book widens. It isn't only about Ailes, we also get to read up about the backstories of such iconic characters as Richard Nixon, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner; and eventually those terrible talking heads Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck. As well as of course Fox, there's much to be said about behind-the-scenes action in the cable news wars between CNN and MSNBC as the networks are founded and evolve--or rather, devolve--over the years.
Roger Ailes, ultimately, is a villain. There's no question of that. Fox was problematic from the start. From the Clinton years, to war-mongering in the Bush years, and in the end Fox completely goes off the rails in the Obama years. With much juicy gossip as the ruthless Murdoch family fights along the way...
Although it's several years old now, the book is an excellent companion for fans of the underrated Showtime series The Loudest Voice. However, for anyone who had been following Ailes' true story, the book disppitates around the 2012 election in which Obama was reelected. It doesn't get to the shocking more recent history of when Ailes is fired for the sexual harassment of Gretchen Carlson, followed by the insane shakeup of 2016 as the right's anti-intellectual monster became fully out of control, and then he died.
Roger Ailes was a man who helped make America a worse place. He was a sexist, a liar, and utilized every racist dirty trick he could come up with to win and reshape the information wars in his own image. Now we are in a post-truth world that he was arguably personally responsible for.
Despite the pessimism this all leaves with the reader, it is important to learn these things. Often times in the story, Ailes and his extreme rightist cronies were underestimated by the "establishment" again and again. Let us take these dangers seriously, and never again underestimate the power of cynical pandering to the worst of America. Let us learn from them, and then fight harder.
It can certainly be argued that Roger Ailes has been one of the most important historical figures shaping the world that we live in right now. And it that sense, I mean, shaping it for the worse.
The Loudest Voice is a fascinating portrait of a political genius of the right and his long career in television. In his youth, from working as a talk show producer to a stint on Broadway believe it or not, Ailes certainly comes across as an interesting guy even if it's all just foreshadowing for the powerful force he will become later.
As we get into politics, campaigns, and ultimately Fox News, the scope of the book widens. It isn't only about Ailes, we also get to read up about the backstories of such iconic characters as Richard Nixon, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner; and eventually those terrible talking heads Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck. As well as of course Fox, there's much to be said about behind-the-scenes action in the cable news wars between CNN and MSNBC as the networks are founded and evolve--or rather, devolve--over the years.
Roger Ailes, ultimately, is a villain. There's no question of that. Fox was problematic from the start. From the Clinton years, to war-mongering in the Bush years, and in the end Fox completely goes off the rails in the Obama years. With much juicy gossip as the ruthless Murdoch family fights along the way...
Although it's several years old now, the book is an excellent companion for fans of the underrated Showtime series The Loudest Voice. However, for anyone who had been following Ailes' true story, the book disppitates around the 2012 election in which Obama was reelected. It doesn't get to the shocking more recent history of when Ailes is fired for the sexual harassment of Gretchen Carlson, followed by the insane shakeup of 2016 as the right's anti-intellectual monster became fully out of control, and then he died.
Roger Ailes was a man who helped make America a worse place. He was a sexist, a liar, and utilized every racist dirty trick he could come up with to win and reshape the information wars in his own image. Now we are in a post-truth world that he was arguably personally responsible for.
Despite the pessimism this all leaves with the reader, it is important to learn these things. Often times in the story, Ailes and his extreme rightist cronies were underestimated by the "establishment" again and again. Let us take these dangers seriously, and never again underestimate the power of cynical pandering to the worst of America. Let us learn from them, and then fight harder.
February 20, 2014
OK, so I couldn’t wait to read this book because I thought it would reinforce my belief that Roger Ailes was possibly the biggest scumbag on the face of the earth. So when it was delivered by Amazon on January 16, 2014 I read it straight through.
Guess what I was right - it did completely reinforce what I already knew and believed - Roger Ailes IS one of the biggest scumbags on the face of the earth.
That said, I also have to admit that I learned a lot about this man that adds to his otherwise one dimensional characterization as king of the right wing. He is clearly an extremely talented person having succeeded in multiple mediums (politics, theater, television). He did accomplish much and that cannot be taken from him, yet at the end of the day the author’s conclusion - and mine - is that he has made a major contribution to the overall deterioration of politics and political discourse in America today. Truth and Roger Ailes are not usually words to be found in the same sentence. Suffice it to say I am not a viewer/fan of Fox, nor a fan of Roger Ailes, but one does have to respect the success of his network and the talent and drive of its creator; in spite of everything else that he has done.
Mr. Sherman has done a remarkable job researching and documenting every aspect of the book and I’m sure he has caused Mr. AIles many sleepless nights worrying about his public perception and ultimately his legacy. Hopefully this book will be widely read and Mr. Ailes legacy will be perceived as it should and we will forever be in debt to Gabriel Sherman for his work in exposing “the man behind the curtain”. I highly recommend this book and congratulate Gabriel Sherman on a job well done.
Guess what I was right - it did completely reinforce what I already knew and believed - Roger Ailes IS one of the biggest scumbags on the face of the earth.
That said, I also have to admit that I learned a lot about this man that adds to his otherwise one dimensional characterization as king of the right wing. He is clearly an extremely talented person having succeeded in multiple mediums (politics, theater, television). He did accomplish much and that cannot be taken from him, yet at the end of the day the author’s conclusion - and mine - is that he has made a major contribution to the overall deterioration of politics and political discourse in America today. Truth and Roger Ailes are not usually words to be found in the same sentence. Suffice it to say I am not a viewer/fan of Fox, nor a fan of Roger Ailes, but one does have to respect the success of his network and the talent and drive of its creator; in spite of everything else that he has done.
Mr. Sherman has done a remarkable job researching and documenting every aspect of the book and I’m sure he has caused Mr. AIles many sleepless nights worrying about his public perception and ultimately his legacy. Hopefully this book will be widely read and Mr. Ailes legacy will be perceived as it should and we will forever be in debt to Gabriel Sherman for his work in exposing “the man behind the curtain”. I highly recommend this book and congratulate Gabriel Sherman on a job well done.
March 14, 2016
The tragicomic anti-hero at the heart of Gabriel Sherman’s book “The Loudest Voice in the Room” is considered a hero by those on the Right and an enemy of the state by those on the Left.
He has capitalized upon fear and paranoia.
He has almost single-handedly contributed to the irreparable divisiveness in this country.
He is undoubtedly brilliant. He is also undoubtedly terrifying in the power that he wields.
His name is Roger Ailes.
The man behind the creation and promulgation of FOX News is, in some ways, an enigma. Ailes, himself, has fashioned himself that way. He does not offer himself for interviews very often.
Indeed, Sherman admits that his numerous attempts to sit down with Ailes resulted in failure. Ailes accused Sherman of harassment and that his “basic premise” of the book he was going to write was “flat wrong”. He also accused Sherman of being paid by George Soros to write a smear piece. (Sherman admits that he received a fellowship at the New America Foundation in 2012, a self-described “nonpartisan think tank” that received only .5 percent of its funding from Soros. That was his only connection to Soros.)
Sherman’s “basic premise” was shaped by a May 2011 New York magazine article he wrote that described how Ailes was attempting to “shape the 2012 GOP field” in that year’s upcoming election.
Ailes’s reaction was odd in that his attempts to shape the political landscape for the past two decades via FOX News---a blatant Republican propaganda tool since its inception in 1996---was no secret, at least to anyone who knew, respected, and/or feared Ailes.
It is perhaps not that ironic that Ailes would refuse to give his side of the narrative to Sherman, an enemy liberal who would skew or decontextualize his words in some way to make him look awful, because this is the same “journalistic” tactics that Ailes encouraged at FOX News.
In truth, Sherman’s book is as close to objective journalism as one can expect to get nowadays, given how muddled and partisan-biased mainstream media seems to be today.
Aside: I personally don’t understand the “liberal” and “conservative” bias in news. News should be news: a straight reportage of facts. If anything is biased, it is news commentary. Unfortunately, news commentary has become interchangeable with journalism today, making it difficult to separate or distinguish the two. In my opinion, “liberal” bias in news is simply news that attempts to involve all sides of an issue or simply covering an issue, especially issues that conservatives don’t like to hear---gay rights, global climate change, religious fundamentalism, wealth inequality, just to name a few. “Conservative” media does not cover those issues for fear of lending credence to them. “Conservative” media also does not like criticism of conservatism in any way. If it is not news that paints conservatives or conservatism in a positive light, then it’s not news.
Sherman’s portrayal of Ailes is less demonic than it is simply pathetic. I use the word “pathetic” in the sense of its primary definition: evoking pity or sadness.
Ailes is not an evil man. Misguided, irrational, paranoid, hateful, and overzealous: yes. But he’s not evil. He is, if anything, the embodiment of a Baby Boomer knee-jerk reaction to 21st-century realities such as globalization, the Internet, an ever-changing diversification of the American populace, and the perceived pro-intellectual threat to religious fundamentalism. Ailes simply grew up in a time when jobs were plenty, white people had all the power, and the tenets of Christianity were never questioned. He also grew up during a pivotal and (for him) significant technological revolution: television.
Born and raised in 1940 in the blue-collar town of Warren, Ohio, Ailes grew up with the wondrous and therapeutic glow of TV always playing in the background.
Ailes was a sickly child---he was a hemophiliac who was in and out of emergency rooms. Doctors did not expect him to survive to his adulthood. This undoubtedly went a long way in shaping the kind of person Ailes was to become. A sense of urgency---as if the next shoe could drop at any second---was what drove him.
As a student at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, Ailes discovered broadcast journalism. He was especially drawn to TV news. He was especially interested in the untapped potential that television provided.
While working in Cleveland and Hollywood on The Mike Douglas Show, Ailes, as executive producer, met presidential hopeful Richard Nixon. Nixon, who thought TV was a “gimmick” that politicians had to use to bolster poll ratings, was quickly berated by Ailes, who told him, “Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again.” Needless to say, Nixon liked Ailes’s straightforward and unique vision.
Ailes became a media consultant for the Nixon campaign, and his savvy knowledge of the television industry helped to get Nixon elected. Nixon would not be the only candidate that Ailes helped to get elected thanks to TV.
For a brief time, Ailes was involved in a second love, theater. He worked to get several shows put on Broadway, many of them flops, but his brief time in the theater world shaped his views on the power of entertainment.
When Ailes met media mogul Rupert Murdoch, it formed a friendship that would have major impact in the fledgling world of cable news. Several failed attempts at cable news channels did not deter Murdoch and Ailes, both of whom believed that there was a market for a “fair and balanced” news source in a medium overrun by “liberals”. Ailes dreamed of a “conservative” news source to counteract the destructive liberal media, one that would incorporate his love for conservative politics and entertainment.
After some bumpy starts, FOX News aired in 1996. Its immediate success was in large part due to a fortuitous event: President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with an intern at the White House named Monica Lewinsky. The subsequent media shitstorm was a godsend for FOX News. Not only was it a Democratic president being excoriated and pummelled, but the story had the perfect amount of sex and tawdriness to help boost the ratings of the new cable channel.
While many people even within FOX News knew that Ailes’s creation was a Republican propaganda tool, there was some speculation, at first, as to how much Ailes, himself, bought into his own rhetoric.
Was he being devil’s advocate or did he actually drink the Kool-Aid that he and his on-air puppets like Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly were trying to sell to the American people?
Life-long friend Bobby Kennedy Jr. said that, “Roger believes that ends justify the means. Which was a Nixonian idea. It’s the idea that everybody does it, that the world is really a struggle for power. That justifies a lot of the things he’s done at FOX News. His views are sincere. He thinks he’s preserving the American way of life. In his heart, he thinks America is probably better off being a white Christian nation. He’s driven by his own paranoia and he knows how to get in touch with his own paranoia. He makes Americans comfortable with their bigotry, their paranoia, and their xenophobia. (p.108)”
That FOX News has continued to be a successful channel says much more about Americans than it does Ailes. It also helps to explain the popularity of presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump, who would not be as popular, arguably, without Ailes and FOX News.
Trump embodies the xenophobic and anti-intellectual qualities that Ailes has tried to hone in past potential Republican presidential candidates and to inculcate in FOX News viewers.
Ultimately, it’s sad that a person as brilliant as Ailes would use his intelligence and power to foment discord and hatred in the country. That he is obsessed with being well-liked is even sadder. It is one of many contradictory things about Ailes.
As Sherman writes, “Ailes’s campaign to be liked was at odds with his uncompromising vision. “All progress is made by irrational people,” he told a journalist in 1989. The statement could well be turned back on Ailes, because he embodied a number of contradictions. He accommodated naive idealism about American life and history alongside profound cynicism about many Americans, from presidents on down. He justified the use of smash-mouth political tactics in the service of protecting his sentimentalized notion of picket-fenced America. He bullied real and perceived enemies, but played the victim when criticized. He could be the most menacing or the funniest, most engaging conversationalist. He decried Manhattan elites, but was one. He entered the journalistic trade, whose practitioners he regularly expresses contempt for. And the starkest contradiction, the one of lasting consequence, is his creation of a “fair and balanced” news network that effectively functioned as an arm of one political party. (p. 393-394)”
He has capitalized upon fear and paranoia.
He has almost single-handedly contributed to the irreparable divisiveness in this country.
He is undoubtedly brilliant. He is also undoubtedly terrifying in the power that he wields.
His name is Roger Ailes.
The man behind the creation and promulgation of FOX News is, in some ways, an enigma. Ailes, himself, has fashioned himself that way. He does not offer himself for interviews very often.
Indeed, Sherman admits that his numerous attempts to sit down with Ailes resulted in failure. Ailes accused Sherman of harassment and that his “basic premise” of the book he was going to write was “flat wrong”. He also accused Sherman of being paid by George Soros to write a smear piece. (Sherman admits that he received a fellowship at the New America Foundation in 2012, a self-described “nonpartisan think tank” that received only .5 percent of its funding from Soros. That was his only connection to Soros.)
Sherman’s “basic premise” was shaped by a May 2011 New York magazine article he wrote that described how Ailes was attempting to “shape the 2012 GOP field” in that year’s upcoming election.
Ailes’s reaction was odd in that his attempts to shape the political landscape for the past two decades via FOX News---a blatant Republican propaganda tool since its inception in 1996---was no secret, at least to anyone who knew, respected, and/or feared Ailes.
It is perhaps not that ironic that Ailes would refuse to give his side of the narrative to Sherman, an enemy liberal who would skew or decontextualize his words in some way to make him look awful, because this is the same “journalistic” tactics that Ailes encouraged at FOX News.
In truth, Sherman’s book is as close to objective journalism as one can expect to get nowadays, given how muddled and partisan-biased mainstream media seems to be today.
Aside: I personally don’t understand the “liberal” and “conservative” bias in news. News should be news: a straight reportage of facts. If anything is biased, it is news commentary. Unfortunately, news commentary has become interchangeable with journalism today, making it difficult to separate or distinguish the two. In my opinion, “liberal” bias in news is simply news that attempts to involve all sides of an issue or simply covering an issue, especially issues that conservatives don’t like to hear---gay rights, global climate change, religious fundamentalism, wealth inequality, just to name a few. “Conservative” media does not cover those issues for fear of lending credence to them. “Conservative” media also does not like criticism of conservatism in any way. If it is not news that paints conservatives or conservatism in a positive light, then it’s not news.
Sherman’s portrayal of Ailes is less demonic than it is simply pathetic. I use the word “pathetic” in the sense of its primary definition: evoking pity or sadness.
Ailes is not an evil man. Misguided, irrational, paranoid, hateful, and overzealous: yes. But he’s not evil. He is, if anything, the embodiment of a Baby Boomer knee-jerk reaction to 21st-century realities such as globalization, the Internet, an ever-changing diversification of the American populace, and the perceived pro-intellectual threat to religious fundamentalism. Ailes simply grew up in a time when jobs were plenty, white people had all the power, and the tenets of Christianity were never questioned. He also grew up during a pivotal and (for him) significant technological revolution: television.
Born and raised in 1940 in the blue-collar town of Warren, Ohio, Ailes grew up with the wondrous and therapeutic glow of TV always playing in the background.
Ailes was a sickly child---he was a hemophiliac who was in and out of emergency rooms. Doctors did not expect him to survive to his adulthood. This undoubtedly went a long way in shaping the kind of person Ailes was to become. A sense of urgency---as if the next shoe could drop at any second---was what drove him.
As a student at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, Ailes discovered broadcast journalism. He was especially drawn to TV news. He was especially interested in the untapped potential that television provided.
While working in Cleveland and Hollywood on The Mike Douglas Show, Ailes, as executive producer, met presidential hopeful Richard Nixon. Nixon, who thought TV was a “gimmick” that politicians had to use to bolster poll ratings, was quickly berated by Ailes, who told him, “Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again.” Needless to say, Nixon liked Ailes’s straightforward and unique vision.
Ailes became a media consultant for the Nixon campaign, and his savvy knowledge of the television industry helped to get Nixon elected. Nixon would not be the only candidate that Ailes helped to get elected thanks to TV.
For a brief time, Ailes was involved in a second love, theater. He worked to get several shows put on Broadway, many of them flops, but his brief time in the theater world shaped his views on the power of entertainment.
When Ailes met media mogul Rupert Murdoch, it formed a friendship that would have major impact in the fledgling world of cable news. Several failed attempts at cable news channels did not deter Murdoch and Ailes, both of whom believed that there was a market for a “fair and balanced” news source in a medium overrun by “liberals”. Ailes dreamed of a “conservative” news source to counteract the destructive liberal media, one that would incorporate his love for conservative politics and entertainment.
After some bumpy starts, FOX News aired in 1996. Its immediate success was in large part due to a fortuitous event: President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with an intern at the White House named Monica Lewinsky. The subsequent media shitstorm was a godsend for FOX News. Not only was it a Democratic president being excoriated and pummelled, but the story had the perfect amount of sex and tawdriness to help boost the ratings of the new cable channel.
While many people even within FOX News knew that Ailes’s creation was a Republican propaganda tool, there was some speculation, at first, as to how much Ailes, himself, bought into his own rhetoric.
Was he being devil’s advocate or did he actually drink the Kool-Aid that he and his on-air puppets like Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly were trying to sell to the American people?
Life-long friend Bobby Kennedy Jr. said that, “Roger believes that ends justify the means. Which was a Nixonian idea. It’s the idea that everybody does it, that the world is really a struggle for power. That justifies a lot of the things he’s done at FOX News. His views are sincere. He thinks he’s preserving the American way of life. In his heart, he thinks America is probably better off being a white Christian nation. He’s driven by his own paranoia and he knows how to get in touch with his own paranoia. He makes Americans comfortable with their bigotry, their paranoia, and their xenophobia. (p.108)”
That FOX News has continued to be a successful channel says much more about Americans than it does Ailes. It also helps to explain the popularity of presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump, who would not be as popular, arguably, without Ailes and FOX News.
Trump embodies the xenophobic and anti-intellectual qualities that Ailes has tried to hone in past potential Republican presidential candidates and to inculcate in FOX News viewers.
Ultimately, it’s sad that a person as brilliant as Ailes would use his intelligence and power to foment discord and hatred in the country. That he is obsessed with being well-liked is even sadder. It is one of many contradictory things about Ailes.
As Sherman writes, “Ailes’s campaign to be liked was at odds with his uncompromising vision. “All progress is made by irrational people,” he told a journalist in 1989. The statement could well be turned back on Ailes, because he embodied a number of contradictions. He accommodated naive idealism about American life and history alongside profound cynicism about many Americans, from presidents on down. He justified the use of smash-mouth political tactics in the service of protecting his sentimentalized notion of picket-fenced America. He bullied real and perceived enemies, but played the victim when criticized. He could be the most menacing or the funniest, most engaging conversationalist. He decried Manhattan elites, but was one. He entered the journalistic trade, whose practitioners he regularly expresses contempt for. And the starkest contradiction, the one of lasting consequence, is his creation of a “fair and balanced” news network that effectively functioned as an arm of one political party. (p. 393-394)”
October 24, 2019
Illuminating!
February 10, 2014
The best thing about this book is the description of the birth and development of cable news. The worst thing about the book is how Roger Ailes uses his power (or attempts to) to act out his crazy bigotries and paranoia, all while pretending to be the essential American. At times I almost stopped reading because Ailes was so unlikable and nuts. But then his role in shaping American history (for the worst in my opinion) recaptured my interest. I would hold my nose and read on.
January 29, 2014
disclaimer: I was predisposed to believe that Roger Ailes is a scumbag. this book reinforced my opinion that he is totally unfair & scarily unbalanced. a well-researched & -sourced look into how he has turned "news" into entertainment to push an agenda
Read
May 28, 2016Don't know how to be fair star-wise. I read(audio) this because I I wanted insight into the insanity of Glenn Beck, Palin, Rush,the big bully O'Reilly, Hannity, tea-party, fair and balanced Fox "news". Think I learned that Ailes is nuts and that some of the above are either manipulative, meglomanical, just scary stupid (read Sarah here) or drinking the cool-aid too long.
June 8, 2014
This good-but-not-great book tells the detailed story of Roger Ailes first rise in the political world, then second, much larger rise in the world of media, but combined with that, to head Fox News.
It also shows how Ailes has not only become more and more of an a-hole along the way, but paranoid, and seemingly not just in a folk sense but a more narrowly psychological one. Sherman details this through Ailes' move up the Hudson with his current wife to a small town near West Point, where he eventually buys the community paper, only to find, as Sherman puts it, that the Fox News bombast model doesn't scale down to the local level.
Well, at least not there. But, Sherman, while noting that Ailes was undone here in part by the rise of the Net, which in this case created online competition to the Putnam County Journal, that Putnam County, NY, isn't exactly small-county red-state Texas, Mississippi, or Oklahoma.
That's a lesser flaw to two bigger shortcomings, though.
First, Sherman notes that at one time, Ailes, like Rush Limbaugh, claimed this was all about entertainment. But later in the book, and far before the end, it's clear that Ailes really believes all of this, including black-helicopter level paranoia.
Problem is that Sherman never, other than vague tie-ins to 9/11, really explains what lead to this.
Second problem is his willingness to paint Rupert Murdoch as being good cop at times to Ailes bad cop. The reality of social psychology, though, is that when two people agree to play "good cop, bad cop," they're really both agreeing to play bad cop.
It also shows how Ailes has not only become more and more of an a-hole along the way, but paranoid, and seemingly not just in a folk sense but a more narrowly psychological one. Sherman details this through Ailes' move up the Hudson with his current wife to a small town near West Point, where he eventually buys the community paper, only to find, as Sherman puts it, that the Fox News bombast model doesn't scale down to the local level.
Well, at least not there. But, Sherman, while noting that Ailes was undone here in part by the rise of the Net, which in this case created online competition to the Putnam County Journal, that Putnam County, NY, isn't exactly small-county red-state Texas, Mississippi, or Oklahoma.
That's a lesser flaw to two bigger shortcomings, though.
First, Sherman notes that at one time, Ailes, like Rush Limbaugh, claimed this was all about entertainment. But later in the book, and far before the end, it's clear that Ailes really believes all of this, including black-helicopter level paranoia.
Problem is that Sherman never, other than vague tie-ins to 9/11, really explains what lead to this.
Second problem is his willingness to paint Rupert Murdoch as being good cop at times to Ailes bad cop. The reality of social psychology, though, is that when two people agree to play "good cop, bad cop," they're really both agreeing to play bad cop.
March 18, 2014
I am so glad I never met, and never had to work for, Roger Ailes. It is terrifying that a man this unstable, paranoid, and full of hate has control of an entire network.
Here's the short version: Ailes makes Glen Beck look halfway sane.
Here's the short version: Ailes makes Glen Beck look halfway sane.
June 7, 2020
As the thing I hate most in the entire world, besides Trump, Fox News has made disgusting people a lot of money, and, in my opinion, monetized hate and gave people who shouldn't have a voice, a voice. I read this because, I guess, know your enemy? It was well-written. Fox Nation elected Trump, in my opinion, which is reason enough to hate it forever.
April 10, 2014
Author Gabriel Sherman sets the tone for this unauthorized Roger Ailes biography right at the opening bell. The very first sentence in the first chapter characterizes Sherman’s target as believing “the . . . myth of an America in danger of being lost.” For the next 406 pages, Sherman sets out to debunk Ailes’ alleged worldview.
“The Loudest Voice in the Room” is a multi-count indictment of Ailes as well as the broadcast empire he created within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Fox News. Here’s just a partial list of those charges:
---Ailes considers politics as entertainment. (Page 30)
---Ailes adopted a new view: journalists were the enemy. (Page 48)
---Ailes believes TV can be a potent weapon for division. (Page 60)
---Ailes believes television can harness the liberal culture even as it is critiquing it. (Page 70)
---Ailes’ personality is marked by bold impulsiveness, paranoia and aggression. (Page 142)
---Ailes believes viewers want television to tell them how to think about what happens in the world. (Page 233)
---Ailes understands television news as nothing but a show. (Page 235)
---Ailes’ unmatched ability to fuse politics and entertainment into a marketable product. (Page 236)
---Ailes’ lack of concern about journalistic standards. (Page 246)
---Ailes’ partisan agenda. (Page 258)
---Fox’s approach to news isn’t actual journalism. (Page 273)
---Cable news changed the agenda of what is news. (Page 287)
---Fox News changed politics. (Page 291)
---The whole Fox News culture had a whole sexualized nature to it. (Page 298)
---Fox personalities take a direct role in creating the story they’re covering. (Page 331)
---Fox News is journalism-as-advocacy. (Page 331)
---Fox News is ideology-driven. (Page 358)
---Fox News is blamed for Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012. (Page 384)
With so many anti-Ailes biographies available, perhaps most notably, David Brock’s “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine,” why do we need another one? Perhaps because Sherman did more research than Brock? This one draws primarily from 614 people Sherman interviewed. The author talked to those 614 individuals “who have worked with Roger Ailes and observed him at close range at various points in his five decades of public life.” This latest attack on Ailes and Fox News includes 97 pages of detailed footnotes. Sherman’s bibliography alone contains thirteen pages of books, periodicals, transcripts, tapes and private papers the author consulted in compiling this Ailes profile.
A couple of closing observations: I found it difficult to discern if any of the above charges Sherman makes describes Roger Ailes and Fox News today. Or, is it all in the past? The most glaring omission, however, is the fact Ailes himself would not agree to an interview with the author. It was not because Sherman didn’t try. He documents the attempt here. He also suggests the reasons why Ailes would not talk on the record with Sherman. (See page 406.) But still, for my money, the only way this expose could ever be called “fair and balanced?” If we got to actually hear from the actual loudest voice in the room!
“The Loudest Voice in the Room” is a multi-count indictment of Ailes as well as the broadcast empire he created within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Fox News. Here’s just a partial list of those charges:
---Ailes considers politics as entertainment. (Page 30)
---Ailes adopted a new view: journalists were the enemy. (Page 48)
---Ailes believes TV can be a potent weapon for division. (Page 60)
---Ailes believes television can harness the liberal culture even as it is critiquing it. (Page 70)
---Ailes’ personality is marked by bold impulsiveness, paranoia and aggression. (Page 142)
---Ailes believes viewers want television to tell them how to think about what happens in the world. (Page 233)
---Ailes understands television news as nothing but a show. (Page 235)
---Ailes’ unmatched ability to fuse politics and entertainment into a marketable product. (Page 236)
---Ailes’ lack of concern about journalistic standards. (Page 246)
---Ailes’ partisan agenda. (Page 258)
---Fox’s approach to news isn’t actual journalism. (Page 273)
---Cable news changed the agenda of what is news. (Page 287)
---Fox News changed politics. (Page 291)
---The whole Fox News culture had a whole sexualized nature to it. (Page 298)
---Fox personalities take a direct role in creating the story they’re covering. (Page 331)
---Fox News is journalism-as-advocacy. (Page 331)
---Fox News is ideology-driven. (Page 358)
---Fox News is blamed for Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012. (Page 384)
With so many anti-Ailes biographies available, perhaps most notably, David Brock’s “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine,” why do we need another one? Perhaps because Sherman did more research than Brock? This one draws primarily from 614 people Sherman interviewed. The author talked to those 614 individuals “who have worked with Roger Ailes and observed him at close range at various points in his five decades of public life.” This latest attack on Ailes and Fox News includes 97 pages of detailed footnotes. Sherman’s bibliography alone contains thirteen pages of books, periodicals, transcripts, tapes and private papers the author consulted in compiling this Ailes profile.
A couple of closing observations: I found it difficult to discern if any of the above charges Sherman makes describes Roger Ailes and Fox News today. Or, is it all in the past? The most glaring omission, however, is the fact Ailes himself would not agree to an interview with the author. It was not because Sherman didn’t try. He documents the attempt here. He also suggests the reasons why Ailes would not talk on the record with Sherman. (See page 406.) But still, for my money, the only way this expose could ever be called “fair and balanced?” If we got to actually hear from the actual loudest voice in the room!
May 28, 2014
If this is a "biography" then it's not a good one--not very well written, tabloid in its approach with all sorts of outside works quoted instead of primary sources, and obviously written to try to make Ailes look hypocritical and untruthful. The author makes no attempt to be objective and subjectively inserts his opinionated conclusions at will instead of finding facts that stand for themselves.
The problems with the book start right away when the author gives us a pop psychology analysis of Ailes' upbringing, then jumps to the Mike Douglas Show and states just plain factually incorrect information. To claim that the Douglas Show started to decline in popularity in 1968 and then spent the next decade wallowing in low ratings is not true. To say that Douglas was old-fashioned by 1970 is again wrong and shows a lack of understanding of early TV talk shows (trust me--I know because I've done the research and written a book on it).
Namely, the author takes bits of information that he knows nothing about, then pieces them together to draw a conclusion that will make Ailes look less impressive. Once I read the distortion of the Douglas Show I knew I couldn't trust the rest of the book.
I'm no Ailes defender and the guy does feel like a pushy behind-the-scenes jerk who loves wielding power. But to claim he's the most powerful man in America (as this author does) is ridiculous--he runs a network that has shows that average only 1 to 2% of the population, and most of those are over 60 years old. It's obvious that Ailes tries to use his network to push a political viewpoint, but he also hired a bunch of liberals that he disagrees with and his interest seems more to be to put on a great show than to force a conservative agenda down anyone's throat. He could just as easily be hired away by CNN and turn that network around because he is a showman and understands the entertainment aspect of news and politics. Too bad this book is so poorly written (by a first time author!? ha!) and seems to do the same thing Ailes is accused of by offering a biased view of the subject instead of fair and balanced truth.
The problems with the book start right away when the author gives us a pop psychology analysis of Ailes' upbringing, then jumps to the Mike Douglas Show and states just plain factually incorrect information. To claim that the Douglas Show started to decline in popularity in 1968 and then spent the next decade wallowing in low ratings is not true. To say that Douglas was old-fashioned by 1970 is again wrong and shows a lack of understanding of early TV talk shows (trust me--I know because I've done the research and written a book on it).
Namely, the author takes bits of information that he knows nothing about, then pieces them together to draw a conclusion that will make Ailes look less impressive. Once I read the distortion of the Douglas Show I knew I couldn't trust the rest of the book.
I'm no Ailes defender and the guy does feel like a pushy behind-the-scenes jerk who loves wielding power. But to claim he's the most powerful man in America (as this author does) is ridiculous--he runs a network that has shows that average only 1 to 2% of the population, and most of those are over 60 years old. It's obvious that Ailes tries to use his network to push a political viewpoint, but he also hired a bunch of liberals that he disagrees with and his interest seems more to be to put on a great show than to force a conservative agenda down anyone's throat. He could just as easily be hired away by CNN and turn that network around because he is a showman and understands the entertainment aspect of news and politics. Too bad this book is so poorly written (by a first time author!? ha!) and seems to do the same thing Ailes is accused of by offering a biased view of the subject instead of fair and balanced truth.
December 26, 2016
One star off because there was far too much information that was not necessary ... do I really need to know what each major and minor player thought, said and/or did during the whole Time Warner vs. City of NYC and Fox News fiasco?! Saying Mayor Rudy Guliani and friends helped Fox News enter the coveted cable news market in NYC by threatening to pull Time Warner's $500 million a year monopoly probably would've sufficed.
One star off because there were far too many times where the author's source was some unidentified individual personally interviewed by the author. It gave the book a feel like a deliberate "smear campaign" and/or "hatchet job". Now I know the redactions may seem petty, odd or somewhat contradictory. But they are not.
Writing a book on this type of subject has got to be tedious at best. But there exists a fine balance between giving the reader just enough information to compel them to read more books on the topic and far too much information that makes one think, "Why does any of this really matter?" Don't get me started about Murdoch, Fat Roger, Bill "Loud Mouth" O'Reilly and Fox News. Needless to say they collectively produced days, weeks and months of heated discussion and hard feelings betwixt my folks and myself. Were there to be a focus group study between those who watch Fox News and CNN or MSNBC, I am pretty confident there would be an age, race, gender and/or education gap that the former fills most assuredly. That is not meant as a compliment to Fox and it's viewers.
Nevertheless, it was a good book on an interesting topic in need of a bit more editing and fine-tuning. Read at your own risk.
One star off because there were far too many times where the author's source was some unidentified individual personally interviewed by the author. It gave the book a feel like a deliberate "smear campaign" and/or "hatchet job". Now I know the redactions may seem petty, odd or somewhat contradictory. But they are not.
Writing a book on this type of subject has got to be tedious at best. But there exists a fine balance between giving the reader just enough information to compel them to read more books on the topic and far too much information that makes one think, "Why does any of this really matter?" Don't get me started about Murdoch, Fat Roger, Bill "Loud Mouth" O'Reilly and Fox News. Needless to say they collectively produced days, weeks and months of heated discussion and hard feelings betwixt my folks and myself. Were there to be a focus group study between those who watch Fox News and CNN or MSNBC, I am pretty confident there would be an age, race, gender and/or education gap that the former fills most assuredly. That is not meant as a compliment to Fox and it's viewers.
Nevertheless, it was a good book on an interesting topic in need of a bit more editing and fine-tuning. Read at your own risk.
September 23, 2014
Ailes is a media genius. That's the point of the book. Good or bad, Ailes changed American politics more than any person since Reagan.
This book won't cause anyone to change their political views. It will, however, explain how our polarized political culture got from point A to point B.
Ailes himself has always boasted that he's not a news person ("newsie"). In fact, he disdains news people. Before anyone else, he realized that people vote by how they feel rather than how they think. Ailes seeks to persuade people to his politics through pure entertainment. He's impervious to shaming by fact-checking because he's the first one to admit he could care less about facts. That's "old thinking." He's proven himself right. He was the first to mix politics and religion with electronic entertainment. He just happens to have right wing views, but that's not the author's point.
Fox News is not a news organization. It's a political and profit making organization that employs anchor people and talk show hosts. That's the point of the book and it was well made. The left believes that's blasphemy. But Ailes laughs all the way to the bank.
Ailes is not hollow. His conservative views are genuine. He believes his politics justify his means. Any means.
Again, reading this book won't convince anyone to switch political parties. But it will give you insight into our culture.
This book won't cause anyone to change their political views. It will, however, explain how our polarized political culture got from point A to point B.
Ailes himself has always boasted that he's not a news person ("newsie"). In fact, he disdains news people. Before anyone else, he realized that people vote by how they feel rather than how they think. Ailes seeks to persuade people to his politics through pure entertainment. He's impervious to shaming by fact-checking because he's the first one to admit he could care less about facts. That's "old thinking." He's proven himself right. He was the first to mix politics and religion with electronic entertainment. He just happens to have right wing views, but that's not the author's point.
Fox News is not a news organization. It's a political and profit making organization that employs anchor people and talk show hosts. That's the point of the book and it was well made. The left believes that's blasphemy. But Ailes laughs all the way to the bank.
Ailes is not hollow. His conservative views are genuine. He believes his politics justify his means. Any means.
Again, reading this book won't convince anyone to switch political parties. But it will give you insight into our culture.
March 8, 2014
I just finished listening to it on Audible. Incredible. Fills in details for me of how he helped shape the narratives of American politics since 1968. It was also disturbing. His use of fear is a valuable reminder of how powerfully it can affect people, and ultimately decisions. What was most important to me was that this information was revealed. The secrecy that is such a part of his life makes this book very important in helping to understand where American politics is today, and how we got to where we are.
November 25, 2018
This book could easily have been half its size. And it would have been much better for it.
Most of the book after the initial years of Fox is just....a drag, a repeat of the same principles already established in earlier chapters. And without a deep look into the personal side of Roger Ailes - the book is too uni-directional and suffers for it.
Whatever your political leanings though, you cannot help but walk away from the book with grudging respect for the man who built his legacy from scratch.
Most of the book after the initial years of Fox is just....a drag, a repeat of the same principles already established in earlier chapters. And without a deep look into the personal side of Roger Ailes - the book is too uni-directional and suffers for it.
Whatever your political leanings though, you cannot help but walk away from the book with grudging respect for the man who built his legacy from scratch.
March 31, 2014
Clearly I'm losing it. Why would I even check out a book on one of the most disgusting creatures ever? The book, what I read of it, seems well researched but that's no excuse. The man and his minions fabricate and twist stories every day. Sadly, they have a group of poorly educated bots and crackpots who cling to every word. Take heart--over 50% of their viewers are over 65 and Fox is actually repelling younger people.
May 1, 2017
Roger Ailes is "a living, breathing integrity crisis." Quote pretty much says it all. Book is great. I highly recommend. Was I the only one that didn't know that Fox star, Sean Hannity, from whom so many Americans faithfully get their "news" (and thus their world-view), is a three time college drop out who never earned a degree in anything? It makes so much more sense now.
March 9, 2014
Fascinating look at Roger Ailes and Fox News. For those who think he is a defender of the American way of life or those who think he is an evil genius. For those that loathe Fox and for those that only watch Fox. Well researched and written, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
July 12, 2017
This book improved for me as moved along the timeline towards more recent history. I'm not in agreement with Fox political views. It was interesting reading about someone who has so profoundly influenced the election outcomes for the last 30 years. He was a creep.
February 25, 2014
Pretty surprised that Roger Ailes actually believes the stuff he puts on air. I thought it was all a gimmick for money.
September 18, 2016
This well written and well sourced biography will leave most sane readers with a "WTF?" face throughout.
August 22, 2019
This book was written before Roger Ailes before his disgraceful conduct was made known. It has been on my TBR for a long time, but became easily available with the new TV movie based on this book. The book deals minimally with early (in his professional life) sexual harassment.
The book starts in Warren, Ohio, the city of his birth and follows though early jobs in show business (e.g. The Mike Douglas Show) and into his transition into politics. Although he always had a "healthy ego," it seems he really became a bully once he became the head of Fox News.
The book starts in Warren, Ohio, the city of his birth and follows though early jobs in show business (e.g. The Mike Douglas Show) and into his transition into politics. Although he always had a "healthy ego," it seems he really became a bully once he became the head of Fox News.
January 25, 2014
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Loudest Voice in the Room': Detailed Account of Roger Ailes -- the Man Behind Fox News Channel
"I used to say, you pull a .45 on Roger, he'll have a bazooka trained between your eyes" -- Catherine Crier, former Fox News Channel on-air personality, quoted on Page 218 of "The Loudest Voice in the Room"
* * *
I was puzzled about all the controversy surrounding Gabriel Sherman's exhaustive (and often exhausting) dissection of Roger Ailes: "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country" (Random House, 560 pages, notes, index, no photographs, $28.00).
After all, no matter what you say about Roger Ailes, even his enemies have to admit he's a programming genius. Otherwise, the canny Australian media supermogul Rupert Murdoch wouldn't have chosen him in 1996 to start a cable news channel to compete with -- and ultimately defeat -- CNN and MSNBC.
To put Sherman's book in context, readers should get their hands on a book I reviewed on this site last Oct. 20, "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires" by David Folkenflik. Link to my review: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/74991
Ailes' skills and knowledge of middle America derive from his being a product of same. He was born in 1940 in the once thriving, now rust-belt city of Warren Ohio to a real working class family -- not an ersatz one like Bill O'Reilly's, whose father worked as an accountant in Manhattan. Roger Ailes' knowledge of what "flyover country" folks want was bred in the bone. I would dispute the part in the book's subtitle that Ailes "divided a country": it's more of a case of Ailes's instinctively recognizing the divisions that existed in the country, exploiting them to the fullest in his grand design for Fox News.
Regardless of what people think of TV news, my guess is that most viewers want entertainment. If it comes with good-looking women -- like Crier, Megyn Kelly, Andrea Tantaros to name just a few -- so much the better. If it comes with a bombastic loudmouth from Long Island named Bill O'Reilly, so be it. I regularly look at all three of the cable news channels and it seems that they all have good-looking female and male personalities -- and bombastic types, too, like the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
This comprehensive look at Ailes and FNC covers events from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to the Bush-Gore recount, from the war in Iraq to the Tea Party attack on the Obama presidency. It also covers the allegations of sexual harassment against Bill O'Reilly from producer Andrea Mackris, which don't seem to me to have any relevance with the arc of the career of Roger Ailes, but which cost O'Reilly a lot of money in a settlement.
Nor does his campaign waged in his home in Garrison, NY, across the Hudson River from West Point, a subject to which I think Sherman devotes an inordinate amount of space to show something we already have learned: That Roger Ailes is a guy who just won't quit.
Sherman tried and failed to get a sit-down interview with Ailes himself, but his book is based on three years of research, including hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present. He interviewed disgruntled employees of FNC, but also gruntled ones, to coin a word.
Sherman documents Ailes’s tactical acuity as he battles the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives strategize Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with Fox News stars such as O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.
OK, did I like the book? I did. As I said, it's an ideal companion to Folkenflick's tome. I wish the publishers had included a selection of photographs. "The Loudest Voice in the Room" will appeal largely to devotees of inside-baseball information, but general readers should gain an understanding of Fox News Channel from reading it.
"I used to say, you pull a .45 on Roger, he'll have a bazooka trained between your eyes" -- Catherine Crier, former Fox News Channel on-air personality, quoted on Page 218 of "The Loudest Voice in the Room"
* * *
I was puzzled about all the controversy surrounding Gabriel Sherman's exhaustive (and often exhausting) dissection of Roger Ailes: "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country" (Random House, 560 pages, notes, index, no photographs, $28.00).
After all, no matter what you say about Roger Ailes, even his enemies have to admit he's a programming genius. Otherwise, the canny Australian media supermogul Rupert Murdoch wouldn't have chosen him in 1996 to start a cable news channel to compete with -- and ultimately defeat -- CNN and MSNBC.
To put Sherman's book in context, readers should get their hands on a book I reviewed on this site last Oct. 20, "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires" by David Folkenflik. Link to my review: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/74991
Ailes' skills and knowledge of middle America derive from his being a product of same. He was born in 1940 in the once thriving, now rust-belt city of Warren Ohio to a real working class family -- not an ersatz one like Bill O'Reilly's, whose father worked as an accountant in Manhattan. Roger Ailes' knowledge of what "flyover country" folks want was bred in the bone. I would dispute the part in the book's subtitle that Ailes "divided a country": it's more of a case of Ailes's instinctively recognizing the divisions that existed in the country, exploiting them to the fullest in his grand design for Fox News.
Regardless of what people think of TV news, my guess is that most viewers want entertainment. If it comes with good-looking women -- like Crier, Megyn Kelly, Andrea Tantaros to name just a few -- so much the better. If it comes with a bombastic loudmouth from Long Island named Bill O'Reilly, so be it. I regularly look at all three of the cable news channels and it seems that they all have good-looking female and male personalities -- and bombastic types, too, like the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
This comprehensive look at Ailes and FNC covers events from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to the Bush-Gore recount, from the war in Iraq to the Tea Party attack on the Obama presidency. It also covers the allegations of sexual harassment against Bill O'Reilly from producer Andrea Mackris, which don't seem to me to have any relevance with the arc of the career of Roger Ailes, but which cost O'Reilly a lot of money in a settlement.
Nor does his campaign waged in his home in Garrison, NY, across the Hudson River from West Point, a subject to which I think Sherman devotes an inordinate amount of space to show something we already have learned: That Roger Ailes is a guy who just won't quit.
Sherman tried and failed to get a sit-down interview with Ailes himself, but his book is based on three years of research, including hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present. He interviewed disgruntled employees of FNC, but also gruntled ones, to coin a word.
Sherman documents Ailes’s tactical acuity as he battles the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives strategize Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with Fox News stars such as O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.
OK, did I like the book? I did. As I said, it's an ideal companion to Folkenflick's tome. I wish the publishers had included a selection of photographs. "The Loudest Voice in the Room" will appeal largely to devotees of inside-baseball information, but general readers should gain an understanding of Fox News Channel from reading it.
September 6, 2017
Love 'em or hate 'em, it's a fact that Mr. Ailes helped to transform our country's manner of political discourse. No one person does it alone. Mr. Ailes had help as well as willing customers and clients. Mr. Sherman does an excellent job of keeping his eye on the ball by focusing on Mr. Ailes's life. It is no small matter when you consider Mr. Ailes was surrounded by many colorful controversial people. The author does very quick descriptions of other notorious celebrities such as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, President Nixon, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mike Douglas. Rupert Murdoch is more in depth because of the nature of his and Mr. Ailes's relationship. Executives and employees are also used to give a fuller picture of how Mr. Ailes's actions were received by his targets.
Mr. Ailes was a complicated individual. The author explains the evolution of Ailes from his humble beginnings to his rise as a media maestro. The book covers such topics as Mr. Ailes's college years, his work for the Mike Douglas Show, his chance meeting with candidate Richard Nixon which propelled him into political campaigns, his efforts into producing New York City plays, the George H.W. Bush presidential run, his first dabbling into conservative television at TVN, and his eventual success creating Fox News. About half of the book focuses on the happenings during his tenure at Fox News. It involves a lot of examples of the power struggles and ideological clashes between Mr. Ailes and enemies, some actual while others are just a figment of his imagination. Mr. Sherman helps flesh out his subject matter even more by spending time explaining Mr. Ailes throwing his weight around in his bedroom community of Garrison, New York. It's safe to say that the Fox News bully had an unhealthy oversized ego which grew out of control as he rose to higher levels of power.
The paperback edition includes an Afterword which explains many examples of sexual harassment and his rapid downfall at Fox News. The Afterword was first published in 'New York' magazine. There are no photographs in the book. Also, please take time to read Mr. Sherman's 'A Note on Sources' which is after his Acknowledgements near the back of the book. It explains the reporter's few encounters with Mr. Ailes and the push-back Mr. Sherman received while writing 'The Loudest Voice in the Room.' It is very illuminating. Sadly, viewers of Fox News will dismiss Mr. Sherman's excellent work because the propaganda station is much like an altar to them and they are the brainwashed disciples going forth to spread the conservative Fox News word. Critical thinking takes a back seat to their emotional needs. The paranoid Mr. Ailes melded his conservative philosophy and his genius for creating marketable propaganda into personal power and contributed to our country's current political dysfunction. It was a large factor in helping that bombastic turnip head from New York City win the White House. It's well worth reading.
Mr. Ailes was a complicated individual. The author explains the evolution of Ailes from his humble beginnings to his rise as a media maestro. The book covers such topics as Mr. Ailes's college years, his work for the Mike Douglas Show, his chance meeting with candidate Richard Nixon which propelled him into political campaigns, his efforts into producing New York City plays, the George H.W. Bush presidential run, his first dabbling into conservative television at TVN, and his eventual success creating Fox News. About half of the book focuses on the happenings during his tenure at Fox News. It involves a lot of examples of the power struggles and ideological clashes between Mr. Ailes and enemies, some actual while others are just a figment of his imagination. Mr. Sherman helps flesh out his subject matter even more by spending time explaining Mr. Ailes throwing his weight around in his bedroom community of Garrison, New York. It's safe to say that the Fox News bully had an unhealthy oversized ego which grew out of control as he rose to higher levels of power.
The paperback edition includes an Afterword which explains many examples of sexual harassment and his rapid downfall at Fox News. The Afterword was first published in 'New York' magazine. There are no photographs in the book. Also, please take time to read Mr. Sherman's 'A Note on Sources' which is after his Acknowledgements near the back of the book. It explains the reporter's few encounters with Mr. Ailes and the push-back Mr. Sherman received while writing 'The Loudest Voice in the Room.' It is very illuminating. Sadly, viewers of Fox News will dismiss Mr. Sherman's excellent work because the propaganda station is much like an altar to them and they are the brainwashed disciples going forth to spread the conservative Fox News word. Critical thinking takes a back seat to their emotional needs. The paranoid Mr. Ailes melded his conservative philosophy and his genius for creating marketable propaganda into personal power and contributed to our country's current political dysfunction. It was a large factor in helping that bombastic turnip head from New York City win the White House. It's well worth reading.
April 14, 2018
Gabriel Sherman, who I believe now writes for Vanity Fair, takes a close look at the life and impact of Roger Ailes. I lived through Ailes’ era and still learned a lot although I found it very sad to revisit such painful times in our history. Hanging chads, anyone?
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