O'Reilly out at FOX!

[GreyhoundFan]

"If you think Fox News is changing, Rupert Murdoch’s internal memo shows it isn’t. At all."

Quote

If ever there were an internal memo that said it all, a remarkably brief one from Rupert Murdoch to Fox News staff on Monday is it.

In just 56 words, the top dog at 21st Century Fox managed to fudge, obfuscate and — most of all — reaffirm his allegiance to the only values that matter: profits.

Let’s take it apart. First line: “Sadly, Bill Shine resigned today.”

Well, no. Shine was fighting for his corporate life as recently as last week, reportedly asking the ruling Murdochs for a signed statement in support of his continued leadership of the embattled network. He had been in the co-president job for less than nine months.

By any interpretation except a purely technical one, Shine was fired.

Second line and third lines: “I know Bill was respected and liked by everybody at Fox News. We will all miss him.”

Again, no. Shine, by all reports, was a primary enabler of the abusive Roger Ailes, who also “resigned” last summer after many women who had worked for him accused him of creating a disgusting culture in which sexual favors were expected as payment for career advancement.

Shine may have had a pleasant personality and may not have harassed women himself, but according to the well-sourced reporting of New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, and others, he covered for and helped Ailes at many junctures.

Former Fox booker Laurie Luhn received millions of dollars after claiming that she was psychologically abused in a sexual relationship with Ailes. It was Shine, she said, who arranged for their trysts. And former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claimed in a lawsuit that when she complained to Shine about Ailes’s retaliatory behavior, he told her to let it go.

...

Nowhere in Murdoch’s note is a word about the treatment of women and minorities at Fox. Nothing about cleaning up its tainted culture.

Nothing about the remarkable turmoil over the past year, as Fox’s founder, Ailes, and its biggest on-air star, Bill O’Reilly, have left under pressure, and as superstar Megyn Kelly decamped for NBC. (Ailes and O’Reilly consistently denied all charges of sexual harassment.)

But it’s in the two last sentences that Murdoch delivers the major point. And here, finally, is something that rings true.

“Fox News continues to break both viewing and revenue records, for which I thank you all. I am sure we can do even better.”

Just ratings and profits, and the insatiable desire for more. All this after doing a great deal to deliver the Oval Office to Donald Trump, and continuing to serve as the presidential Pravda.

...

What’s happening at Fox may look like a thorough housecleaning.

But it’s really more like a cleaning crew who believes that dimming the lights and sweeping the dirt under the rug are acceptable substitutes for what’s really needed: a mop, a bucket and some industrial-strength disinfectant.

Bleach would be helpful.

[JMarie]

Another lawsuit against Fox News

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2017/05/04/fox-news-radio-correspondent-sues/22069920/

Quote

Golloher claims she was marginalized because of her gender. She had been based in Moscow in 2013, working as the network's Russia correspondent, but when the Sochi Olympic Games approached they gave the lead reporting gig to a London-based male colleague instead of her. Golloher says she was told to act as Simon Owen's Russian translator and help in in his reporting.

Quote

Earlier this year, Golloher says she pitched a story that would require her to go to Afghanistan but was rejected because it was "exceedingly unsafe." She claims that shortly thereafter the network sent a male reporter to cover the exact story she had pitched.

 

[Childless]

9 hours ago, JMarie said:

Another lawsuit against Fox News

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2017/05/04/fox-news-radio-correspondent-sues/22069920/

 

Why does she still work there?  For godsake, go get a job at CNN or MSNBC or the Washington Post or any number of media outlets that will treat you better than Fox.

[JMarie]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/12/media/bill-oreilly-addresses-fox-news-firing/index.html

Quote

"There's going to be an exposition soon, but I can't tell you when," he told Beck. "About what exactly this crew that goes in and terrorizes sponsors, that threatens people behind the scenes, that pays people to say things. We are going to name them and it's going to be a big, big story."

Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be "fair and balanced".

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, JMarie said:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/12/media/bill-oreilly-addresses-fox-news-firing/index.html

Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be "fair and balanced".

Oh cry me a fucking river Bill'O.  It was business and you lost.

[fraurosena]

Roger Ailes has died.

Roger Ailes leaves behind a much-diminished Fox News

Quote

Roger Ailes, 77, the founding father of Fox News, has died. His decades-long run at Fox ended last year with his resignation, the first of several ousters from the network resulting from widespread accusations of sexual harassment and numerous settlements of claims brought by former Fox female employees. With the departure of stars such as Megyn Kelly, Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly (himself the subject of multiple claims and settlements), Ailes leaves behind a much-diminished operation.

Indeed, at what should be the pinnacle of its success — election of a president whose message aligns perfectly with Fox’s favorite themes (illegal immigration, antagonism toward the mainstream media), Fox is floundering.

[...].

One could attribute this to two phenomena.

First, a number of Republicans may be down in the dumps as they see the presidency collapse and the hope for their agenda go down the tubes. In politically depressing times, there would be an understandable desire literally to tune out. Watch a sitcom, go for a walk. By contrast, anti-Trump voters are thrilled, luxuriating in nonstop schadenfreude. They cannot wait for the next episode of “How Foolish Could He Be?” They cannot get enough of it — new scandals give rise to the hope that they’ll be rid of Trump in less than four years.

Second, Fox has gone off the deep end. Covering made-up conspiracies, howling about the liberal media and doing just about everything other than covering the biggest news in the country — the collapse of the presidency — it now verges on self-parody. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the development of two sets of news viewers, watching different stories and getting different information to reinforce their biases. But when one side refuses to even acknowledge that one major story after another comes along — the firing of an FBI director, Trump’s spilling intelligence to the Russians, hiring an national security adviser under investigation, etc. — it ceases to be news at all. It has become irrelevant, not to mention entirely predictable. How much bellyaching about the mainstream media can one take? In essence, Fox has become so detached from reality that it is losing even Trump voters.

[...]

The excuse for airing the likes of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson has always been that getting ratings and revenue was worth sacrificing journalistic respectability. Now, however, Fox may be faced with a new problem: When there is serious news to watch, viewers aren’t going to go watch Trump fanboys air their grievances. It might just be that Fox has underestimated the intelligence and curiosity of its viewers. The network might need to up its game, even get new hosts capable of conducting reasoned interviews of substance. Fox might have to start acting like a real news operation, not just in the “Special Report” news hour or “Fox News Sunday.” That might be the best thing to happen to Fox, conservative media and the Republican Party in decades — and it sure would come as a relief to the network’s real news reporters. It also would be a proper tribute to Ailes.

 

[bashfulpixie]

Is it bad that my first thought was "good"? I realize this makes me a bad person, but you can mark the acceleration of our slow steady march to the right and the flow of money to the 0.1% by the rise of Fox "News". 

I mean, don't get me wrong. I feel for his family losing a loved one, but I feel like we would have been better off without him. 

[candygirl200413]

Not only that, I feel for much more all his victims. All the women he assaulted, all the minorities he has offended and cause great distress in their lives, I really feel for them.

[GreyhoundFan]

6 hours ago, bashfulpixie said:

Is it bad that my first thought was "good"? I realize this makes me a bad person, but you can mark the acceleration of our slow steady march to the right and the flow of money to the 0.1% by the rise of Fox "News". 

I mean, don't get me wrong. I feel for his family losing a loved one, but I feel like we would have been better off without him. 

A professor I dealt with in college was unfailingly nasty to me, ultimately forcing me out of my original major. He passed away a few years later and my manager at the time, who knew him, asked me, "isn't it such a tragedy?" (he was only in his 50s). I had to think before I replied, but I ended up saying that I felt bad for his daughter and wife and any other loved ones, but I honestly couldn't say I would miss him or was sorry he was gone. I didn't wish him dead, but I didn't want to be around him. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I couldn't help it. In the same vein, Roger Ailes was exponentially more toxic to more people. I'm sorry for his loved ones, but can't say that I'm sorry he won't be around to harass more people and spread more right wing crap.

[infooverload]

A professor I dealt with in college was unfailingly nasty to me, ultimately forcing me out of my original major. He passed away a few years later and my manager at the time, who knew him, asked me, "isn't it such a tragedy?" (he was only in his 50s). I had to think before I replied, but I ended up saying that I felt bad for his daughter and wife and any other loved ones, but I honestly couldn't say I would miss him or was sorry he was gone. I didn't wish him dead, but I didn't want to be around him. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I couldn't help it. In the same vein, Roger Ailes was exponentially more toxic to more people. I'm sorry for his loved ones, but can't say that I'm sorry he won't be around to harass more people and spread more right wing crap.

I'm curious what your original major was. Of course you don't have to divulge, my mind went to was the major where he thought a certain type of person in his own biases would be better suited. Then again maybe the professor was just a jerk of a person in his professional realm.

[GreyhoundFan]

Just now, infooverload said:

 

 

I'm curious what your original major was. Of course you don't have to divulge, my mind went to was the major where he thought a certain type of person in his own biases would be better suited. Then again maybe the professor was just a jerk of a person in his professional realm.

I started out as a music major. Even though he wasn't the professor for my instrument, he was one of the five judges for my jury each semester. He was also the academic adviser for all freshman music majors. Our problems started on our first meeting. I spoke fluent Spanish, having taken AP Spanish in high school and hosted an exchange student from LATAM who spoke almost no English. He told me I would need to start in Spanish 101. Um, no. I walked over to the foreign language department and they gave me their standardized test. I placed into senior-level Spanish. They gave me an override to take the upper-level class. When the adviser saw hit, he literally threw my schedule back at me. He was mad that I hadn't just sucked it up and taken the beginner class. Every time I would see him in the hallway, I'd say, "Good morning, Dr. X" and he'd just glare at me. At the end of first semester, during my performance jury, I got "C"s from the four other judges. He gave me an F and wrote that I was a terrible musician and wore an ugly dress. I'm not kidding. That was enough to get me put on probation.  Second semester, I worked my tail off. Come jury time, I played better than I had ever played. I got "B"s and "B+"s from the other four judges. Once again, he gave me an "F" and wrote a single comment: "You should no longer be a music major." Because they had a rule that you had to get a passing grade from every member, I was forced out. I'm not kidding myself, I was not the most talented person, but I was better than he would admit. It crushed me -- it was the first major thing where I failed. It all turned out okay, but was a major blow to my young ego.

 

[infooverload]

I started out as a music major. Even though he wasn't the professor for my instrument, he was one of the five judges for my jury each semester. He was also the academic adviser for all freshman music majors. Our problems started on our first meeting. I spoke fluent Spanish, having taken AP Spanish in high school and hosted an exchange student from LATAM who spoke almost no English. He told me I would need to start in Spanish 101. Um, no. I walked over to the foreign language department and they gave me their standardized test. I placed into senior-level Spanish. They gave me an override to take the upper-level class. When the adviser saw hit, he literally threw my schedule back at me. He was mad that I hadn't just sucked it up and taken the beginner class. Every time I would see him in the hallway, I'd say, "Good morning, Dr. X" and he'd just glare at me. At the end of first semester, during my performance jury, I got "C"s from the four other judges. He gave me an F and wrote that I was a terrible musician and wore an ugly dress. I'm not kidding. That was enough to get me put on probation.  Second semester, I worked my tail off. Come jury time, I played better than I had ever played. I got "B"s and "B+"s from the other four judges. Once again, he gave me an "F" and wrote a single comment: "You should no longer be a music major." Because they had a rule that you had to get a passing grade from every member, I was forced out. I'm not kidding myself, I was not the most talented person, but I was better than he would admit. It crushed me -- it was the first major thing where I failed. It all turned out okay, but was a major blow to my young ego.
 

What a tool was my first thought. Seriously attacking your clothing choices. What difference in his life did your decision to not take the Spanish class have on him. Also to intentionally sink a students major, while offering no constructive improvement solutions is seriously douche.

[GreyhoundFan]

2 minutes ago, infooverload said:

 

 

What a tool was my first thought. Seriously attacking your clothing choices. What difference in his life did your decision to not take the Spanish class have on him. Also to intentionally sink a students major, while offering no constructive improvement solutions is seriously douche.

I agree. My 50+ year-old self would like to go back to my 17-year-old self and tell her to toughen up and fight him.

[47of74]

Newsweek said Roger Ailes isn't dead.  Ailes lives on in Hair Furor, along with the lawsuits over his behavior, and the Alternative Facts

newsweek.com/roger-ailes-isnt-dead-he-lives-trump-sexual-harassment-suits-and-alternative-611543

Quote

On Wednesday night, Fox News anchor Greg Gutfeld snarled into the camera. Hillary Clinton must be "cackling" he said, in her "woodshed" in Westchester County, as she watched the investigation into President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey widen like a gaping maw. Washington was in chaos, but at the Midtown Manhattan headquarters of Fox News, everything was more or less OK, even if the restoration of American greatness was taking a little longer than expected.

Not 12 hours later, Fox News announced that Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief, had died at 77. He had been deposed from his perch the previous year, ousted in large part by the sons of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. But watch Fox News for even a few minutes, and you'll plainly see that what Ailes wrought remains as healthy as ever.

The cable news channel Ailes created in 1996 had nothing to do with conservatism, if that movement is to be understood as the courtly Republicanism of men like Nelson D. Rockefeller and William F. Buckley, a fundamentally cautious approach to government that borrowed more from the Tories than the Birchers.

Trump was, of course, Ailes's greatest creation, which is likely why Trump defended him even as it was becoming clear that Ailes was going to be felled by multiple claims that he was a cynical and serial sexual predator. “He helped those women,” Trump said of  the women Ailes had sexually harassed.

That headline had me thinking for a second wait you mean this was some sort of hoax and to mentally chastise Newsweek for scaring me like that.  Unfortunately what they're saying is true.

[infooverload]

Seriously Fox once again I have to face palm and go why would you go there. Side not gotta love how Fox has gone from comparing everything to Hitler esque type behavior with Obama, but with Trump the tactics have moved to blame the MSM and shout Clinton/Obama did worse things. Sorry, at what point are you going to focus on the fact shit isn't getting done or if it is, it basically amounts to a middle finger to the middle class. Then there's the pandering bs actions. Frankly you can't say you value truth yet not objectively look back and see the instutional malfeasance is in full swing. So far nothing is happening to improve things for the struggling middle class. As far as I can see congress is useless and all signs point to they will continue to be so. One thing which scares me is I can see some shady financial housing/for profit prison related crisis happening since Trump's business interest is real estate. I was telling my mom recently I worked with a guy who said "If you know where a presidents business/policy interest lie you should invest in stocks related to said industry because those industries will do well." I began thinking about it and went crap I can see his point.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Many publicly mourned Roger Ailes, but the silence was deafening, too"

Spoiler

In the hours immediately after the sudden passing of Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes on Thursday, journalists scrambled to cover his unexpected death and many who knew him offered testimony to his tenacity and vision.

Yet among some of the many figures whose careers Ailes made and molded, there was only stony silence.

Former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who became a star under Ailes’ tutelage, had nothing to say. Nor did Gretchen Carlson, once the co-host of Fox’s morning program, “Fox and Friends.” Bill O’Reilly withheld comment until later in the day, writing in USA Today that “It was a privilege to know him.”

Nor did Donald Trump, whose candidacy was championed by Ailes and whose political ambitions were kept warm by Fox long before he ever declared he was running. Hours after Ailes’s death was announced by his wife, Beth, the White House still had not weighed in about one of the president’s most powerful allies.

The non-responses suggest how mixed Ailes’s legacy is.

Despite building Fox into a profit-making machine and a tribune of conservative ideology, Ailes left a noxious trail of personal accusations stretching over more than 50 years. After former Fox host Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit last summer alleging that her career at Fox was stunted by her refusal to have sex with Ailes, the allegations — only hinted at previously — came tumbling forth.

More than 25 women, including Kelly, told variations of Carlson’s story, dating back to Ailes’s time as a young producer on “The Mike Douglas Show” in the 1960s. The stories fit a pattern: Ailes allegedly acted as a workplace mentor to young female employees, then pressured them for sex in exchange for advancement.

Ailes denied everything, but within three weeks of Carlson’s suit, Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch had tossed Ailes aside. Ailes’s reputation was transformed — from merely “controversial” to allegedly predatory. (O’Reilly faced the same firing squad, for the same reason, last month.)

In addition, Ailes left behind a federal investigation into whether Fox, under his watch, covered up payments to former employees who alleged harassment, a potential violation of securities laws (his death won’t derail the investigation into the corporation’s behavior, said one person close to it). African American employees and former employees at Fox have also filed a lawsuit alleging a pattern of discriminatory hiring and advancement.

Hence, the silence from those long associated with him. And hence the internal reaction within Fox. One Fox journalist on Thursday described the newsroom discussions about Ailes as “awkward.” Ailes hired almost everyone of consequence at Fox News, he explained, but whatever gratitude that engendered was long ago balanced by revulsion and consternation about him.

Ailes, who died at 77, apparently had been infirm for some time. One person who remained close to him described him only two days ago as unable to walk “but a few feet at a time” and only with the assistance of a cane. He reportedly fell and injured himself in his Palm Beach home a week ago; the county medical examiner said Thursday that Ailes died of internal bleeding caused by the fall and that hemophilia contributed to his death. There was no evidence of foul play, the examiner said in a statement.

Much of Ailes’s brief life after Fox was hard to know. The man who spawned a news empire was disciplined in his efforts not to make news himself in the past 10 months. He gave no interviews; sightings of him in public were rare. His only statements were issued through his attorney, and those were rote denials of whatever accusations were being leveled against him.

There were scattered reports — never directly substantiated — that Ailes was advising Trump’s presidential campaign, and that he was preparing to launch a network that would rival Fox, with Trump as its star in the event he lost to Hillary Clinton. The latter was almost certainly never true; as part of Ailes’s $40 million severance package, he was bound by a noncompete clause. Murdoch also named Ailes as an informal consultant, though its unclear if he was ever actually consulted.

Fox News itself reported Ailes’s death sporadically and in muted tones throughout the day. Its hosts and reporters offered brief on-air tributes. Media reporter Howard Kurtz called him “a colorful and controversial character” who “changed the face of television.” Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an old friend and liberal Fox foil, said, “Roger and I had different perspective. The one thing we agreed on was our love of country.”

Murdoch, in a statement, said called Ailes “a brilliant broadcaster [who] played a huge role in shaping America’s media over the last thirty years. He will be remembered by the many people on both sides of the camera that he discovered, nurtured and promoted.”

The most stirring tele-eulogy came from Fox anchor Shepard Smith, who began his midafternoon newscast with a 10-minute monologue about his late boss.

Smith recounted the “underdog spirit” that Ailes engendered when he started Fox in competition with the established CNN and the fledgling MSNBC, which Ailes dubbed “the enemies.” When Smith’s news reporting strayed from Fox News’s conservative orthodoxy — “went rogue,” as Smith put it — Ailes reassured him: “‘You can’t have Fox News without the news,’ ” he said repeatedly while encouraging the network’s reporters during such major stories as the Columbine shootings and Hurricane Katrina. “‘Keep up the good work,’” Ailes would say after each of these conversations, Smith said, adding, “‘I love you.’ ”

When Ailes hosted a reception one year at his home in Upstate New York, the chairman and his wife warmly welcomed Smith and his partner, Gio Graziano. “It was a signal” of acceptance, Smith said, his eyes rimming with red.

“He was my champion and my mentor. He was a father figure,” he concluded. “He changed my life and everyone in my family for generations to come.”

 

[Cartmann99]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I didn't wish him dead, but I didn't want to be around him. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I couldn't help it. 

Not in my book. From your earlier posts, this person was a giant flaming jackass on roller skates to you, and yet you still were a big enough person to realize that his death would be painful to his loved ones. As they say where I come from, I like you, you're good people. 

[47of74]

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone pulled no punches about Ailes...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-roger-ailes-was-one-of-the-worst-americans-ever-w483013

Quote

On the Internet today you will find thousands, perhaps even millions, of people gloating about the death of elephantine Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The happy face emojis are getting a workout on Twitter, which is also bursting with biting one-liners.

When I mentioned to one of my relatives that I was writing about the death of Ailes, the response was, "Say that you hope he's reborn as a woman in Saudi Arabia."

Ailes has no one but his fast-stiffening self to blame for this treatment. He is on the short list of people most responsible for modern America's vicious and bloodthirsty character.

Ailes was the Christopher Columbus of hate. When the former daytime TV executive and political strategist looked across the American continent, he saw money laying around in giant piles. He knew all that was needed to pick it up was a) the total abandonment of any sense of decency or civic duty in the news business, and the factory-like production of news stories that spoke to Americans' worst fantasies about each other.

I think this is my favorite tweet so far in response to Ailes getting fired from life...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

When I mentioned to one of my relatives that I was writing about the death of Ailes, the response was, "Say that you hope he's reborn as a woman in Saudi Arabia."

Or as a woman in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They are also brutal places to be a woman.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Or as a woman in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They are also brutal places to be a woman.

Or being reborn as either a man or a woman in North Korea.  That's one place you wouldn't want to live.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another Fauxer The Dust: "At Fox News, Another Prominent Host Is Fired, and Another Week of Tough Headlines"

Spoiler

For Fox News, it was another unkind week in an unkind year.

The network’s founding chairman, Roger E. Ailes, died on Thursday, sending a shock through a newsroom still reeling from a string of harassment scandals, lawsuits and high-profile departures. The threat of a federal investigation into the network’s financial practices has lingered.

And on Friday, another prominent on-air personality was abruptly tossed. Bob Beckel, a co-host of the prime-time talk show “The Five,” was fired after an African-American employee accused him of making a racially insensitive remark.

The drumbeat of tough headlines has taken a toll on morale at Fox News, with employees on and off camera describing a feeling of being under siege.

And after years as the undisputed king of cable news, Fox News ranked third in prime-time this week among the 25-54 age group most important to advertisers, finishing behind its rivals MSNBC and CNN. In total audience, MSNBC edged out Fox News in prime-time on three nights, an unsettling sign for an evening schedule scrambled by last month’s exit of Bill O’Reilly.

Including daytime hours, Fox News remains first in total audience; last week, it notched its 19th consecutive weekly ratings win. But amid a series of damaging news reports this week about President Trump, the conservative network’s hosts stirred some skepticism among media commentators by instead airing stories about the Clintons’ charitable foundation — the Fox News equivalent of a greatest hits reel.

The exit of Mr. Beckel — one of the channel’s few left-leaning commentators, and known for his signature suspenders — also refocused attention on whether Fox News’s workplace culture had changed after the departures of Mr. Ailes and Mr. O’Reilly.

Mr. Beckel was accused of walking out of his office this week after an African-American network employee arrived to service his computer. Mr. Beckel said that he was leaving because the employee was black, according to the employee’s lawyer, Douglas H. Wigdor.

Mr. Wigdor, who represents 11 Fox News employees in a class-action racial discrimination suit against the network, said Mr. Beckel tried to persuade his client to withdraw the complaint during a meeting with Fox News’s new executive vice president for human resources, Kevin Lord.

Fox News disputed that account — and portrayed the episode as an example of its newly rapid response to internal problems.

“No one tried to persuade Mr. Wigdor’s client to withdraw his complaint,” the network said in a statement, noting that Mr. Lord responded to the employee’s complaint within seven minutes of receiving it. Mr. Beckel, who did not respond to requests for comment, apologized to the employee on Friday shortly after learning of his dismissal.

Mr. Wigdor’s firm also represents plaintiffs in a racial discrimination suit against The New York Times.

Along with Mr. Lord, the network has hired executives for its human resources team and has strengthened sensitivity training requirements.

This is not Mr. Beckel’s first acrimonious departure from Fox News: He was dismissed from “The Five’’ in 2015, but was welcomed back earlier this year. The network’s executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, offered Mr. Beckel a warm reception upon his return.

Mr. Ailes’s death, caused by complications from a fall last week at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., was a jarring reminder of how much has changed in the past 10 months at the network. Anchors offered teary on-air tributes to him throughout the day on Thursday, some acknowledging his flaws, while hailing his skills and vision as a broadcaster.

“He left the company and the rest is history still unfolding,” the anchor Shepard Smith said in a deeply personal monologue. “To the true victims, respect and comfort. It’s all so complicated. Everything here was and is. As he was.”

Some employees, however, say privately that they are unsettled by the power retained by former Ailes lieutenants, including Dianne Brandi, the general counsel, and Suzanne Scott, who was recently promoted to the chief of programming.

A day after the death of Mr. Ailes, the fate of the federal investigation into him and the news network he founded remained unclear.

The inquiry, which began in September, has appeared to focus in part on how settlements at the network were paid and accounted for. Two people familiar with the matter said they were given signals after news broke that Mr. Ailes had died that the investigation was proceeding, although another person said it remained to be seen how its scope and target could change. It is possible the investigation could be put on hold.

Other matters raised in the course of the investigation include how Mr. Ailes conducted business at the network; a New York Times investigation that revealed multiple settlements tied to harassment allegations against Mr. O’Reilly; and the assertions made in recent lawsuits filed against Fox News and Mr. Ailes, two people briefed on the matter said.

Investigators have talked with current and former Fox News employees, including Mark Kranz, the network’s former chief financial officer, and Brian Lewis, its former public relations chief. Both Mr. Kranz and Mr. Lewis were subpoenaed and granted immunity, according to people familiar with the matter.

Legal experts said that, should the investigation continue, the focus would likely shift to the network and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, which could be held liable for Mr. Ailes’s conduct.

“It will not give the company a free pass even if they want to say, ‘Well, Ailes never told us,’” said Peter J. Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. “Well, too bad. It doesn’t matter if the executive lied to senior management. It is the company’s books and records, and those have to be accurate.”

Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and currently a professor at Columbia Law School, said Mr. Ailes’s death removes a potential target and increases the likelihood that he could be blamed for wrongdoing. But, Mr. Richman added, “You have a number of possibilities that the government can continue looking at.”

Earlier this month, 21st Century Fox disclosed in a regulatory filing that the company had “received regulatory and investigative inquiries” relating to allegations of misconduct at Fox News. In February, Fox News said in a statement that it had been in communication with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan and would “continue to cooperate on all inquiries with any interested authorities.”

The death of Mr. Ailes also complicates the multiple lawsuits filed against him and the network.

In April, Julie Roginsky, a current Fox News contributor, filed a lawsuit asserting that she faced retaliation for rebuffing Mr. Ailes’s sexual advances and for refusing to disparage Gretchen Carlson, the former anchor who sued Mr. Ailes last summer. Ms. Roginsky’s lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said her client planned to add the estate of Mr. Ailes as a defendant in the case.

Andrea Tantaros, a former Fox News host, has named Mr. Ailes in two lawsuits. Judd Burstein, a lawyer for Ms. Tantaros, declined to comment as to whether Ms. Tantaros would amend her complaints.

 

[onekidanddone]

I know somebody who lost a child through murder. It was horrific and changed my friend forever.  His wit, his spark just left him and never came back. Added to that were the wispers on why my friends  son was were he was at late at night.  Sounded like victim blaming to me.  It is just not supposed to happen. Parents are never supposed to out live their children. Now it comes out Fox and the other right wing scum bags are using this young man's death as a rating boost.  These people have no soul. Go burn in hell you  Fox shit heads.

Family of slain DNC staffer fights back against conspiracy theories with cease-and-desist letter

Quote

The family of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich is threatening legal action against a man it says has peddled politicized conspiracy theories about the murder of the 27-year-old, who was shot as he was walking home in the District late one night last July.

A lawyer for the Rich family sent a cease-and-desist letter Thursday to Rod Wheeler — a private investigator and Fox News contributor who had been working on behalf of the family.

Citing Wheeler — who was, in turn, citing an anonymous federal investigator — Fox News and its local Washington affiliate reported last week that Rich had leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks before he was fatally shot near his home last July. The underlying suggestion of this claim, which has long been a popular right-wing theory, is that Rich could have been murdered for leaking that information.

Twelve days after Rich’s death, WikiLeaks published 20,000 emails that embarrassed former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and forced the ouster of its chairwoman.

D.C. police have repeatedly said that they think Rich’s murder was the result of a botched robbery. No arrests have been made in the case.

The Fox reports, which gained traction on social media, said that an FBI forensics examination showed that Rich transferred 44,053 DNC emails and 17,761 attachments to a now-deceased WikiLeaks director.

The family has rejected this story and demanded a retraction from Fox. Wheeler has since recanted parts of the story, saying he was misquoted and had no direct knowledge of the identity of the federal investigator or the investigator’s findings.

In the letter obtained by The Washington Post, a lawyer for the Rich family warned Wheeler to immediately “cease and desist” from making any statements about Rich, the murder and the investigation.

“Your improper and unauthorized statements, many of which are false and have no basis in fact, have also injured the memory and reputation of Seth Rich and have defamed and injured the reputation of the members of the family,’ ” lawyer Joseph Ingrisano wrote.

Ed Butowsky, a Dallas financier who regularly appears on Fox’s business channels and on other networks, had been paying Wheeler to investigate the case for the family. A spokesman for the Rich family said that Wheeler had offered his services to the family, “claiming he wanted to help.”

The letter sent by Ingrisano also alleges that Wheeler violated his contract with the family by speaking out about the case without its approval.

Reached by phone Saturday, Wheeler said he could not comment on the content of the letter, but said he hopes the murder case is solved.

“Currently, I am exploring all of my legal options and I sincerely hope that one day we find the person who took Seth’s life,” Wheeler said.

As the theories around the murder have played out in conservative media, the Rich family has continued to try to knock them down.

“Anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath,” family spokesman Brad Bauman said in a statement. “In either case, they should be taken off the air because they are either blind to the damage they are doing to a murder victim’s family or don’t care, showing a profound lack of judgement and common decency.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting opinion piece: "Monica Lewinsky: Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare"

Spoiler

This is not another obituary for Roger Ailes, who died last week 10 months after being ousted at Fox News. It is, I hope, instead an obituary for the culture he purveyed — a culture that affected me profoundly and personally.

Just two years after Rupert Murdoch appointed Mr. Ailes to head the new cable news network, my relationship with President Bill Clinton became public. Mr. Ailes, a former Republican political operative, took the story of the affair and the trial that followed and made certain his anchors hammered it ceaselessly, 24 hours a day.

It worked like magic: The story hooked viewers and made them Fox loyalists. For the past 15 years, Fox News has been the No. 1 news station; last year the network made about $2.3 billion.

Some experts have noted that viewers found Fox for the first time because of the crisis. John Moody, a Fox executive editor, reflected on that period: “The Lewinsky saga put us on the news map.” As he put it in another interview: “Monica was a news channel’s dream come true.”

Their dream was my nightmare. My character, my looks and my life were picked apart mercilessly. Truth and fiction mixed at random in the service of higher ratings. My family and I huddled at home, worried about my going to jail — I was the original target of Kenneth Starr’s investigation, threatened with 27 years for having been accused of signing a false affidavit and other alleged crimes — or worse, me taking my own life. Meantime, Mr. Ailes huddled with his employees at Fox News, dictating a lineup of talking heads to best exploit this personal and national tragedy.

For myriad reasons — information gathering, boredom (I couldn’t leave my home without being trailed by paparazzi) and a touch of masochism — I watched the news around the clock. On Fox, it seemed, no rumor was too unsubstantiated, no innuendo too vile and no accusation too abhorrent.

Let’s not pretend that Fox News was the only network to cover this story in the gutter. Mr. Ailes’s station may have pioneered this new style of television reportage, but the other cable news channels didn’t hesitate to join the race to the bottom. In fact, in late 1998, when Keith Olbermann briefly left MSNBC, he expressed disgust with the frequent Lewinsky coverage.

Just as television news was devolving into a modern coliseum, the internet came along and compounded this culture of shame and vitriol. Remember: The story of my affair was not broken by The Washington Post, The New York Times or the networks, but online by the Drudge Report. The comments on television and online were excruciating. I ceased being a three-dimensional person. Instead I became a whore, a bimbo, a slut and worse. Just days after the story broke, Fox asked its viewers to vote on this pressing question: Is Monica Lewinsky an “average girl” or a “young tramp looking for thrills”?

Our world — of cyberbullying and chyrons, trolls and tweets — was forged in 1998. It is, as the historian Nicolaus Mills has put it, a “culture of humiliation,” in which those who prey on the vulnerable in the service of clicks and ratings are handsomely rewarded.

As the past year has revealed, thanks to brave women like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, it is clear that at Fox, this culture of exploitation wasn’t limited to the screen. The irony of Mr. Ailes’s career at Fox — that he harnessed a sex scandal to build a cable juggernaut and then was brought down by his own — was not lost on anyone who has been paying attention.

There are some positive signs that the younger generation at Fox — James and Lachlan Murdoch — seem to want to change the culture Mr. Ailes created. Last week Bob Beckel, a Fox pundit who made a racist remark to an African-American Fox employee, was dismissed. Would this have happened in the Ailes era?

Although I imagine the desire by the Murdoch brothers to present a clean record to the European Commission reviewing their proposed takeover of Sky News played a role in their thinking, the Murdochs deserve praise for their part in the decision to fire Bill O’Reilly, whose show brought in $100 million a year in ad revenue but who harassed and bullied women he worked with. I hope the Murdochs understand that Americans will no longer tolerate a corporate culture that views hate and harassment as part of running a successful news business.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t have a credible conservative point of view in our media — quite the opposite. If we’ve learned nothing else from the 2016 presidential election, it’s that we must find a way to foster robust and healthy discussion and debate. Our news channels should be just such places.

So, farewell to the age of Ailes. The late Fox chief pledged Americans fair and balanced news. Maybe now we’ll get it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Roger Ailes’s teenage son vows to go after his dad’s accusers — ‘and hell is coming with me’"

Spoiler

Roger Ailes’s teenage son, on the attack after his father’s death, vowed that he’s “coming after” the dozens of women who’ve said they were victims of sexual harassment by the former Fox News chief.

Ailes died last week at the age of 77, nearly a year after being toppled as the founding force behind the conservative TV juggernaut.

His forced resignation — and, later, the ouster of Fox News Channel’s biggest star, Bill O’Reilly — tarnished Ailes’s legacy and the network he’d built from scratch.

His 17-year-old son, Zachary, addressed that at a lunch following Ailes’s funeral  Saturday. Zachary Ailes spoke of his father’s detractors — including the more than 20 women who accused Ailes of soliciting sexual favors in exchange for career advancement.

“I want all the people who betrayed my father to know that I’m coming after them — and hell is coming with me,” the teen told the guests at the luncheon, according to the conservative news site LifeZette.

Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman called the remarks “scary” — but an attorney for the late Fox News founder, Susan Estrich, said “no threat was made or intended” when his son made those remarks at the gathering.

“At the lunch after the funeral, guests were invited to share stories about Roger,” Estrich said. “Zac talked about two movies he and his father enjoyed: ‘Wyatt Earp’ and ‘Tombstone.’ A 17-year-old, distraught over the death of his father, quoted a line from a movie.”

In “Tombstone,” Wyatt Earp (played by Kurt Russell) holds a shotgun and says he’s seeking revenge on the people who killed one brother and maimed another:

It’s a popular quote, and has even sparked a line of T-shirts.

The Palm Beach funeral was attended by numerous conservative media luminaries, including Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. LifeZette’s founder and editor, Laura Ingraham, also attended.

“I loved my father,” Zachary Ailes told LifeZette on Saturday. “He considered how much certain people hated him as a measure of success.”

Ailes died  May 18, days after hitting his head during a bathroom fall. He’d built the Fox News empire from the ground up during President Bill Clinton’s administration to counter cable news outlets that he and media titan Rupert Murdoch believed tilted too far to the left.

Ailes steered the channel to the top of the cable news ratings heap, becoming, as The Post reported, “a primary architect of the modern-day Republican Party and conservative movement.” After his death, Hannity tweeted that Ailes had “dramatically and forever changed the political and the media landscape single-handedly.”

But lawsuits and complaints against Ailes and O’Reilly detailed a woman-demeaning “locker-room culture” at Fox News. The news organization did not return messages seeking comment.

Last July, Gretchen Carlson, who co-hosted Fox & Friends and, later, her own show on the network, filed a lawsuit saying Ailes had sabotaged her career because she wouldn’t sleep with him.

According to Carlson’s lawsuit, Ailes told her: “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.”

Fox News Channel’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, ultimately settled with Carlson for $20 million, although Ailes denied wrongdoing. The suit opened a floodgate of accusations, and 25 other women came forward with similar accusations.

...

As The Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, Scott Higham, Paul Farhi and Krissah Thompson wrote in July:

Interviews with four of those women portray the 76-year-old television powerhouse as a man who could be routinely crude and inappropriate, ogling young women, commenting about their breasts and legs, and fostering a macho, insensitive culture. Three of the women were speaking about their allegations for the first time, including a 2002 Fox News intern who says Ailes grabbed her buttocks, and a Fox News employee who says Ailes touched her and tried to kiss her against her will at his office in 2004.

… It became a locker room, towel-snapping environment. He would say things like, ‘She’s really got the goods’ and ‘look at the t — s on that one.’ ”

Fox News announced Ailes’s resignation on July 21. Several other top executives also lost their jobs.

Then, in April, O’Reilly was pushed out by Fox News, following a New York Times story that revealed that the network had settled five sexual harassment allegations brought by employees against him over 15 years.

To quiet his accusers, Fox News and O’Reilly handed them nearly $15 million.

The O’Reilly news was part of a tumultuous year for Fox that began with reports about Ailes’s unwanted workplace advances. Some of the accusers were stars who had their own shows and made headlines. Others just happened to work close to Ailes.

His assistant-turned-accuser recounted to The Post a time Ailes sent her out to get a copy of the men’s magazine Maxim.

“When I gave it to him, he said: ‘There are some great articles in here. And you’re pretty enough to be in here. You look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.’ ”

The woman told The Post that she spurned Ailes’s advances, but said, “he persists. At first it was once a week. Then it got to be every day.”

After a few weeks, she told him she was quitting.

“When I told him I was leaving, he said he was sorry I was leaving and that he was really disappointed that I didn’t sleep with him,” she recalled. “He said, ‘You could have gotten anything you wanted.’ ”

“And then he grabbed me,” she said, “and grabbed my a–.”

I'm glad that the son is getting an early start on victim-blaming.  <end sarcasm font>

[JMarie]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/22/media/fox-news-staffers-seth-rich-dnc-sean-hannity/index.html

Quote

Fox News staffers expressed frustration on Monday that on-air personalities at their network like prime time host Sean Hannity are continuing to peddle a conspiracy theory about the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

"I'm disgusted by it," one Fox News employee told CNN.

Rich was shot to death last July in the streets of Washington, DC. The Metropolitan Police Department continues to investigate the murder and police say there is evidence to suggest Rich was the victim of a botched robbery.

But for months, right-wing media outlets have floated unproven theories that Rich was the person who provided Wikileaks with thousands of internal DNC emails, and suggested his death was retribution for the supposed leak. No real evidence has been provided to support such claims.

The theory resurfaced with a vengeance last week, in part due to an incorrect Fox News story the outlet has yet to retract. Hannity, along with the hosts of "Fox & Friends," have used their large platforms to push the discredited theory, much to the dismay of the journalists who work at the network. Hannity, who stresses he's not a journalist, posted a flurry of tweets pushing the theory over the weekend. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Fox News contributor who did not respond to requests for comment, floated the theory on the network Sunday.

Multiple Fox News employees told CNN that Hannity, who declined to comment, and others were hurting the credibility of the outlet by continuing to advance the theory, for which there is no real evidence.

"It is disappointing because it drags the rest of us down," said a senior Fox News employee, who asked how Fox News leadership could continue to allow Hannity to spread an unproven theory on the network.

Another Fox News employee said he feels that Hannity isn't letting go of the Rich story because he wants to "distract from any and all Trump scandals."

"It hurts those of us who are legitimately focused on journalism," added the first employee. "We have a chance to turn the corner at Fox, and perpetuating this conspiracy theory damages our integrity."