Like Fox News, TVN presented an apolitical face. The press release announcing TVN’s debut stated that it had “no philosophical axe to grind.” Behind the scenes, however, Pauley, Coors, and Wilson maneuvered to exert a firm hand on TVN’s journalism. Two weeks before TVN’s launch, Pauley tasked Wilson and Coors to review tapes of each day’s broadcast. Pauley also solicited the advice of leading conservatives, like William F. Buckley Jr. and Pat Buchanan. “I have suggested to Jack Wilson that he get in touch with you and that he keep you informed of the story line-ups,” Pauley wrote Buchanan. But even these measures did not satisfy Pauley. He asked Wilson to make contact with Accuracy in Media, the conservative watchdog group, to provide feedback. “I would suggest that we hire them to look at our product every afternoon in Washington,” Pauley wrote in a memo on May 2, 1973. He urged discretion. “I don’t really think there is any need to broadcast the fact that we are seeking the opinion of the AIM Group.”
When TVN finally launched in May 1973, a bedeviling problem immediately came into focus. While Coors wanted to control what was shown on the air, the journalists he’d hired, many of them network alumni, including a young Charles Gibson, insisted on nonpartisan newsroom standards. Dick Graf, TVN’s news director, vowed to steer an independent line. “There will be days when I’ll put pieces on the air that will make your flesh crawl because of your personal beliefs. But I’ll be doing it because of my professional news judgment and I’ll play them down the middle,” Graf told Coors. “That’s what we want you to do,” Coors replied.
It was a false promise. Throughout the summer, Wilson fired off a series of histrionic memos to Pauley and Coors critiquing Graf’s journalistic instincts. In one, he complained that a negative segment on the FBI left viewers with the impression that “the FBI and SS troops fit in the same picture.” In another, he criticized the coverage of Miller v. California, in which the Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not universally protected by the First Amendment. TVN’s coverage of the decision made him want to “explode,” he wrote. Instead of reporting on the dangers of “smut,” the announcer “picks out a fellow that says that smut is OK and is allowed to give his reasons and that is the end of the story.” In Wilson’s view, “on this issue alone, several people should be fired!!”
Coors, too, was growing nervous. “Why are you covering Daniel Ellsberg? He’s a traitor to this country,” Coors barked at Graf during one board meeting. At another board meeting, he decried Graf’s news instincts as “socialistic.” Paul Weyrich, a cofounder of the Heritage Foundation and an unofficial TVN adviser, was also discouraged by TVN’s lack of zeal. “I’ve had no influence,” he told The Washington Post. “In fact, it’s been the single most frustrating experience I’ve ever had.” All of this heavy-handed political interference created dissension on TVN’s board. Ronald Waldman, a board member and BBC executive, told Pauley that he objected to Wilson’s written reports, warning that TVN’s credibility could be ruined if the partisan memos leaked. As a compromise, Pauley applied some safeguards. On August 13, he outlined them to Wilson:
Remove names from report such as “to,” “from,” and “cc.”
Number each page of the copies and keep a record of which went to whom. Mark them “Classified” although this is sometimes a red light to others.
Mark envelope confidential.
Remove “subject.”
If we observe these rules then any unauthorized use would have to be fictionalized to be believable and then it would be a forgery. I’m not going to ask you to stop. It’s a Board matter. Thanks.
Pauley assured Waldman that the matter was under control “to help insure the classified nature of the critique.” Deception was central to TVN’s mission. “Let’s not get labeled,” Pauley later wrote in a memo. “This is the most dangerous thing which can happen to a journalistic institution.”
In February 1974, Graf was finally let go, replaced by the Northeast bureau chief, who lasted all of two months. By the spring, Coors seized control, naming Jack Wilson president of TVN. “I hate all those network people. They’re destroying the country,” Wilson fumed around the office. “We have to unify the country. TVN is the moral cement.” In short order, Wilson fired en masse most of the TVN network-trained journalists, replacing many of them with staffers more in sync with his conservative views.
It wasn’t his television skills, or even his conservative ideas, that brought Roger Ailes into the world of television news. Rather, Ailes was recruited for his experience in public relations. After months of newsroom upheaval, TVN looked to buff up its image. In May 1974, Wilson hired Ailes as a PR consultant on a $1,500 retainer.
In July 1974, Ailes delivered a progress report to the directors, which was partly an exercise in managing up. The board minutes noted that Ailes had been “demonstrating the growth of TVN” to the press and “acquainting the trade with Mr. Wilson as its chief executive officer.” To address TVN’s minuscule distribution, Ailes sought creative ways to present a winning image. “He said that he would also hope to see TVN receive some awards and citations, as these would help establish TVN as an indispensable service in the eyes of the broadcasting community.”
Ailes’s bravado impressed the board so much that they named him news director four months later. His title was the latest identity change for Ailes. Given his responsibilities in the newsroom, there was a giant hole in his résumé. “He didn’t know anything about news. He knew television,” said Reese Schonfeld, a TVN executive. Still, Ailes eagerly played the part, moving into his spacious new office at TVN’s New York bureau at 10 Columbus Circle. “He took on a role of a news guy,” Stephen Rosenfield recalled. “But he wasn’t a news guy. I remember seeing a typewriter in his office at TVN, which amused me. I don’t think he knew how to type. He had a secretary from the time I could remember.”
But Ailes’s lack of a news background proved a selling point rather than a weakness. His partisan political work was what attracted his new employers. “Ran 1968 Nixon campaign publicity,” Pauley scribbled during a board meeting when Ailes’s name was discussed. “Their politics were way further to the right than he was comfortable with,” Rosenfield remembered. “They made Roger look like a New Deal Democrat.” Ailes demonstrated he could translate their mission into management dictums. “Roger Ailes has quickly given needed leadership to his people while fully understanding the Board’s policy statement regarding news coverage,” Wilson wrote in an internal report. “We are now well on our way to the product we have dreamed of all along.”
The week of Thanksgiving 1974, Ailes sent Wilson an ambitious analysis for an overhaul of TVN’s newsroom. The document, an early road map that pointed toward the strategies he would apply at Fox News, called for an authoritarian management structure. He proposed crafting a “statement of news policy which outlines TVN’s reason for being, self-image, goals and news philosophy.” He would “get control of the news department and the daily feed so that the original vision of TVN can be carried out,” adding, “it is my feeling that control of the TVN feed should be placed entirely in New York with the bureau chiefs primarily responsible for implementing the work of others in the bureau.… This will give us the opportunity to coordinate and achieve the goals and philosophy of TVN.” He would also call out dissenters, naming one female employee for example. “I see her as negative to management and TVN. She is maintaining communications with former employees,” he wrote. But he would reward loyalty and good ideas, “thereby reversing the trend of firings, insecurity and desperate searching for jobs presently going on.”