Roger Ailes did not participate in this book, notwithstanding my numerous attempts over two and a half years to arrange a sit-down interview. He discouraged sources close to him from speaking with me and went to elaborate lengths to obstruct my reporting. Through surrogates, Ailes attempted to create a counter-narrative about my journalism. “From what I understand, you’re preparing a personal dossier about Roger,” his attorney, Peter Johnson Jr., told me in December 2011. When I asked to interview Johnson two months later, he threatened legal action. “What the hell am I going to talk to you about? I may wind up suing you, for Christ’s sake.”
Around the office, Ailes spread odd, inaccurate stories about this book, telling his executives, for instance, that I was being secretly paid by George Soros to write it. “There’s a lot of liberal, George Soros money behind him,” Ailes told his brother, Robert, who relayed the conversation to me. In 2012 I received a fellowship at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., that received .5 percent of its funding from Soros that year. James Pinkerton, a Fox News contributor and former Republican operative, was for years a New America fellow.
Fox News’s head of programming, Bill Shine, encouraged Fox personalities to post derogatory comments about me on Twitter. Andrea Tantaros, co-host of The Five, tweeted that I was a “harasser” and a “Soros puppet.” Sean Hannity called me a “phoney journalist” [sic]. Karl Rove wrote about my “disturbing habit of misinterpreting anything Fox News related.” In a Foxnews.com column, Fox political analyst Patrick Caddell called me an “embarrassment to the journalistic trade.”
Conservative websites also participated in Ailes’s campaign. From December 2012 to May 2013, the website Breitbart News posted a series of columns, many of them anonymously written, totaling more than 9,250 words that described me as a “Soros-backed attack dog,” a “harasser,” and a “stalker.” On December 21, a Breitbart column quoted a “Fox source” saying “Gabe Sherman is Jayson Blair on steroids,” a reference to the disgraced former New York Times reporter who fabricated articles and abused drugs. As it happened, two days earlier, Bill Shine told Ailes in a meeting that I was like “Jayson Blair.” When I asked Shine if he was behind the Breitbart smear, he declined to comment.
Another way Ailes sought to shape his narrative was to release his own book. In December 2011, I learned that Ailes was moving forward with his memoir. He wanted to title the book Fluke, a riff on his improbable, Horatio Alger career. But shortly after the New Year, Ailes unexpectedly put the memoir on hold. Instead, he invited Zev Chafets, an Israeli-American journalist in his mid-sixties who had recently published a glowing biography of Rush Limbaugh, to write an authorized biography.
Ailes’s decision to collaborate with Chafets was at odds with what his PR department told me when I first approached Fox News the previous January about writing this book. I had been covering media full-time for almost a decade, first at The New York Observer and then for The New Republic and New York magazine. In a meeting at the News Corporation cafeteria in January 2011, Brian Lewis and Irena Briganti informed me that Ailes had turned down multiple interview requests from book authors over the years. “You might get a few disgruntled former employees to talk, but that’s it,” Lewis said. I replied that I would press ahead with my research, and that I remained hopeful that Ailes would eventually speak with me. A few weeks later, Lewis contacted me with good news. Ailes would meet for an off-the-record conversation to discuss the book. But twenty-four hours before our sit-down, Ailes canceled and did not offer an alternative date.
In the spring, Lewis presented me with a condition. Before Ailes even agreed to “think” about speaking with me, Lewis said, I must agree to refrain from using any background quotes or anecdotes that Ailes could consider “negative.” I told Lewis that while I agreed that on-the-record sources should be the bedrock of reporting, I could not agree to such a blanket deal, as Ailes might retaliate against people whom he deemed to be disloyal.
In the course of my reporting, I spoke to Ailes twice at public events, both of which encounters were illuminating of his character. On the evening of April 11, 2012, I attended a party hosted by The Hollywood Reporter at the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, where Ailes was being honored along with media industry luminaries such as CBS CEO Les Moonves and Today anchor Matt Lauer. As Ailes and his wife, Beth, entered the restaurant’s Grill Room, I approached them and introduced myself.
“I don’t want to be rude, but you know what? I don’t want to talk to you,” he said.
“I understand,” I replied.
“I don’t think you do understand,” Beth added over his shoulder.
“No, you don’t,” Roger said. “Look, leave her paper alone. You’re harassing her. I don’t care what you do to me.”
I was taken aback. The subject of my book was Roger, not Beth.
“I’m just a reporter, Mr. Ailes.”
“No, no, no. You’re a harasser,” he shot back.
“Roger, he’s got his recorder on,” Beth interjected, then looked at me. “You’re trying to make a buck off my husband.”
“Your entire premise is wrong,” Roger added, referring to a cover story I wrote for New York magazine in May 2011 that revealed Ailes’s efforts to shape the 2012 GOP field. “I’m not going to go into it. But I am going to tell you—leave her alone. Leave her alone.”
They walked off, and I ventured to the other side of the room. Half an hour passed. I didn’t think I’d see Ailes again that evening and began to make my way toward the exit. A bottleneck around the bar prevented me from moving very far. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ailes barreling toward me. At first, I thought he must be walking to see someone else, but his eyes locked on mine. “Listen, your entire premise is wrong. It is just flat wrong,” he said, shaking his arms.
“What do you mean, Roger?”
“I’m not going to get into it. I’m just not.” He was speaking loudly now and people began to look our way. In front of us, CBS president David Rhodes was talking with Moonves and 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft. Rhodes excused himself from his conversation and approached us.
“David, how ya doing?” Ailes said, then addressed me. “You know, I have a present for you. Barbara Walters is back there. She says she’ll talk to you for your book.”
“Great, I’d love to speak with her. I’ve been trying to for months,” I said.
“But you won’t want to talk with her because she’ll only say nice things about me,” Ailes said.
“Listen, I don’t want to get in the middle of any of this,” Rhodes said.
“No, stay here,” Ailes barked.
“Well,” Rhodes said, “you know what Mike Wallace said once”—the veteran 60 Minutes anchor had passed away earlier that week—“ ‘You know when people say nice things about you? When you die.’ ”
Rhodes’s stab at humor did not lift Ailes’s mood. Ailes took a step back. It was unclear now who he was addressing. “Let’s look at this for a minute: Sarah Palin? She couldn’t get elected to anything. Huckabee? He says to me, ‘I couldn’t raise a nickel.’ Santorum? When we hired him, no one, I mean no one, knew who this guy was. And Gingrich has been working here for a long time. So the idea that I’m somehow propping up these candidates is just absurd.”