Except the war was only beginning. And after Firdos Square, Fox’s programming options became much more complicated. The narrative of struggle and triumph had concluded—but what the new narrative should be was far from clear. While Fox personalities and George Bush were declaring mission accomplished, troubling portents of the bungled occupation and brutal sectarian insurgency were impossible to miss.
Increasingly, the administration had to defend what they’d announced they’d won. And Fox was the preferred platform. In September 2003, after no WMDs had turned up, Bush’s communications chief Dan Bartlett worked out a deal for Bush to appear on Fox with Brit Hume to do damage control. It was Bush’s first extended interview since the WMD issue was threatening to become a liability. “I think he hid them,” Bush told Hume. “I think he is so adapted at deceiving the civilized world for a long period of time that it’s going to take a while for the troops to unravel. But I firmly believe he had weapons of mass destruction.”
In the fall of 2003, Fox correspondents looked for upbeat stories that showed “signs of a return to normal life.” One October 1 segment highlighted a renovated school with “excited kids checking out the new teacher.” When a Spanish diplomat was murdered on October 9, Fox aired a piece about a theater production as evidence “that some of the artistic pleasures of life are re-emerging with new freedoms in Iraq.”
Hume and others told the audience that the war was going fine, and it was the media that was portraying it negatively. “For a huge part of the Iraqi population, life is returning to normal and has picked up enormously … why would one go over there only to cover the bad news?” Hume complained in one segment.
John Moody told producers not to give too much attention to the rising number of U.S. deaths. “Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there?” Moody wrote in one newsroom memo. “The US is in Iraq to help a country brutalized for 30 years protect the gains made by Operation Iraqi Freedom and set it on the path to democracy. Some people in Iraq don’t want that to happen. That is why American GIs are dying. And what we should remind our viewers.” Moody’s contention was that in war, people die. “It was the same reason why he hated hurricanes and snowstorms,” a colleague explained. “He would say, ‘Why are you surprised it’s snowing in the wintertime?’ ”
Not long after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Moody called the newsroom and told producers to refrain from putting the photographs of abused Iraqi prisoners on a continuous loop. “You know what? I’ve seen enough of these,” he said. In a memo, he said Fox producers should also focus on grisly pictures of an American prisoner. “[T]he pictures from Abu Graeb [sic] prison are disturbing,” he said. “They have rightly provoked outrage. Today we have a picture—aired on Al Arabiya—of an American hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly against his will. Who’s outraged on his behalf? It is important that we keep the Abu Graeb [sic] situation in perspective. The story is beginning to live on its own momentum.”
In 2004, Fox even considered hiring Dan Senor, the Pentagon’s thirty-three-year-old spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, to oversee Fox’s war coverage. His rose-tinted briefings from the Green Zone became an exemplar of wishful thinking. Senor turned down the offer, but signed on as a paid contributor.
As it became increasingly evident that the war in Iraq was not the victory that Fox had helped to proclaim, Ailes began to turn his audience’s attention in other directions. There was also turmoil in the executive suite. In the fall of 2003, Ailes and Brian Lewis entered into a contentious contract negotiation over Lewis’s future at the network. On the surface, it was a dispute over money. Ailes told people that Lewis was asking for too much. “I’ll just fire him and put Zimmerman in his place!” he fumed, referring to Lewis’s deputy, Robert Zimmerman. In reality, the friction represented a struggle between mentor and protégé. For a decade, Lewis had worked in Ailes’s shadow. At forty-six, he asserted himself more, but Ailes chafed at his independent streak, calling Lewis a “cowboy” and a “leaker.” Feeling frustrated, Lewis explored other job offers. One day in November, as Lewis was negotiating with Ailes in his office, the conflict reached a head.
“You demand loyalty from people, but you never show it,” Lewis told him.
Ailes grimaced. He grabbed a water bottle on his desk and hurled it in Lewis’s direction. It thudded against the wall. “I missed you on purpose,” he said.
After the meeting, Lewis told colleagues that his time at Fox might be over. When Judy Laterza walked into his office, he teared up. Six weeks later, in February 2004, Ailes relented and signed Lewis to a new deal. Ailes would need Lewis by his side.
EIGHTEEN
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH ALL THIS POWER?”
AT FOX, ONE OF THE MEANINGS of “fair and balanced” was that an outspoken Democrat could play a key role in the prime-time dismantling of the Democratic nominee for president. On Wednesday, August 4, 2004, Bill Shine recruited Patrick Halpin, a Long Island politician and liberal television pundit, to fill in for Alan Colmes, who was on vacation. It was a side gig that the plainspoken fifty-one-year-old had been holding down for a few years. Halpin and Shine met at the Long Island PBS station WLIW in the early 1990s, where Shine was a producer and Halpin hosted a Crossfire knockoff. Despite their political differences, the two clicked. “He was very grounded. I wouldn’t call Bill Shine an ideologue,” Halpin said.
Halpin only met Ailes once. “You know I elected two presidents?” Ailes said when Shine brought Halpin around the offices. Although he was not a Fox regular, Halpin knew the drill. “It’s show business, make no mistake about it,” he said. It’s why, even though he knew Hannity & Colmes was rigged to make the liberal lose, he welcomed Shine’s invitations to joust on air. It was good sport. Still, Halpin was troubled by some of the subtle tricks Hannity’s producers pulled to manipulate the audience, like making the liberal co-host say the slogan “fair and balanced” on air. Halpin tried several times over the years to get out of reading it, but to no avail. “You could never change the script,” he said. “They know exactly who their audience is: white men,” he said. “They give them a message that resonates.” Shine had told him as much. “I remember asking him once, ‘Bill, what’s with all these hot blondes?’ He just smiled and said, ‘you know, I gotta tell you, the ratings go through the roof.’ ”
The August 4 edition of Hannity & Colmes would forever change the way Halpin saw Fox. About an hour before going on air, Halpin huddled with Hannity’s producers reviewing the lineup. The final segment caught his eye. “Later in the show, we’ll give you an exclusive look at a new campaign ad that could do some damage to Senator Kerry. We’ll have it before anyone else, and we’ll show it to you here,” his line on the script read. Halpin asked a producer about it but got a vague reply, something about a new conservative ad that had to do with a then-unfamiliar term: Swift Boats. The ad arrived at Fox through Hannity’s right-wing connections. “A new television ad released tomorrow is sure to drive the Kerry campaign crazy,” Hannity said on the air. “It was paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and it features Vietnam vets who are opposing Senator Kerry’s candidacy. Now Hannity & Colmes has exclusively obtained a copy of this ad before anybody else. Let’s take a peek.”
The spot opened on a grainy black-and-white photograph of Kerry in his Vietnam uniform, standing in a group of young servicemen. Vice presidential candidate John Edwards’s voice, pulled from a stump speech, narrated the opening frames: “If you ask any question about what John Kerry is made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him thirty years ago.” Bold text replaced Kerry’s photo on the screen: “Here’s what those men think about John Kerry,” it read. Testimonials from middle-aged men played in quick succession. “I served with John Kerry.… I served with John Kerry.… John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.… He’s lying about his record.… I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart, because I treated him for that injury.… John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.”