Gabe Sherman’s 7,200-word NY magazine cover story reveals new and sordid details about the chaos that engulfed Fox News after Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against network CEO Roger Ailes in July. He resigned amid an internal investigation 15 days later.
Advertisement
5 cover story, “The Revenge of Roger’s Angels”, Sherman wrote that Fox News executives obtained the phone records through the use of a private investigator.
In the fall of 2010, Strupp had written a number of articles based on information from anonymous Fox sources.
According to a person close to the Murdochs, Rupert’s first instinct was to protect Ailes, who had worked for him for two decades. ‘Getting phone records doesn’t make anyone blink’.
“It’s no secret that we’ve been a harsh critic of both Ailes and Fox and we obviously have made some impact at various points, and if people have taken illegal actions or tactics for retribution, then we want to get to the bottom of it”, Beychok said.
Arguably the biggest name to attach herself to the scandal was Kelly, who told investigators several weeks after Carlson’s lawsuit that she, too, was sexually harassed by Ailes almost a decade ago, during her divorce from then-husband Daniel Kendall.
Rather than making more drastic changes to leadership in the light of blatant sexual harassment, Ailes was simply warned by Lewis to watch his behavior. According to executives, [Ailes] instructed Fox’s head of engineering, Warren Vandeveer, to install a CCTV system that allowed Ailes to monitor Fox offices, studios, greenrooms, the back entrance, and his homes. “When Ailes spotted James Murdoch on the monitor smoking a cigarette outside the office, he remarked to his deputy Bill Shine, ‘Tell me that mouth hasn’t sucked a cock, ‘ according to an executive who was in the room; Shine laughed”. Fox News and Roger Ailes did not respond to requests for comment.
Ailes denied the allegations in Carlson’s suit, calling them “false” and “retaliatory” for not renewing Carlson’s contract in June.
Megyn Kelly became so concerned about the rumors that she went to Ailes’s then-PR chief, Brian Lewis, and attempted an intervention.
Sherman accused Ailes of “recruiting” Fox News personalities to defend him after news of the allegations broke.
Advertisement
Besides his sons dislike of Ailes, the 85-year-old Murdoch had also begun to develop a “strained” relationship with him, according to the report. Later that same month, NY magazine reports Murdoch and Ailes agreed on a severance package for the former Fox News CEO that would include a payment of $40 million, the promise to retain Ailes as an “advisor’ to Fox News, and a multi-year noncompete clause that Ailes would never work with a rival network”.
