The American TV scandal that brought down a predator
Last week, new TV drama The Loudest Voice introduced a UK audience to Roger Ailes, Fox News’s disgraced CEO. Here, Jane Mulkerrins reports on the tale that foreshadowed #Metoo
HE WAS A TITAN of US media and a serial sexual harasser whose eventual downfall, in July 2016, predated Harvey Weinstein and the #Metoo movement by over a year. And yet, the dramatic story of the predatory Roger Ailes – the CEO and chairman of Fox News, who was brought down by the testimonies of women he had harassed going right back to the late ’60s – is not widely known in the UK.
That, however, changed last week, when a dramatisation of his undoing – Sky Atlantic’s series The Loudest Voice, starring Naomi Watts, Russell Crowe and Sienna Miller (the latter two in heavy prosthetics)– aired to rave reviews. The same story will be told in forthcoming film, Bombshell, a trailer for which went viral last month thanks to its trio of big-name stars: Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie. It’s also the subject of documentary, Divide And Conquer: The Story Of Roger Ailes, which was recently nominated for an Emmy.
The story of Ailes, who died age 77 in May 2017, after a fall that led to a brain bleed, is in many ways tailor-made for TV and film. ‘He was fascinating and repulsive, and had this incredible rags-to-riches story,’ says the documentary maker Alexis Bloom, who interviewed hundreds of Ailes’ former contacts after his dismissal from Fox, but before his death. ‘Prior to that, people were so terrified of his ability to crush criticism with lawyers that you would have had a hard time finding funds or a distributor for any film. When he was deposed, it was the right time to tell the story.’
Ailes began his career in local television, before becoming a political strategist for (Republican) presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr. Back in TV, he was hired by Rupert Murdoch to be CEO of cable station Fox News, where he ruthlessly employed all he had learnt about voter manipulation and applied it to viewers. ‘He was a propagandist, and he knew how to exploit people’s emotions,’ says Bloom. ‘In all my conversations with anchors who worked for him, on and off the record, nobody ever mentioned him having concern for factual or journalistic accuracy.’
But the dark arts he used to support his friend Donald Trump in the presidential race were nothing compared to Ailes’s treatment of women, demanding sexual favours in exchange for job opportunities – even after prostate cancer rendered him unable to be sexually active. ‘I was told of women having to strip in his office and do things for his viewing pleasure, because he was unable to participate,’ reports Bloom.
In 2013, Gretchen Carlson, a host on the network’s morning show Fox & Friends, was moved to a daytime slot, a step she saw as a demotion and a result of her rejecting Ailes’ advances. On the advice of lawyers, she began secretly recording her interactions with him and, two weeks after she was fired in July 2016, filed a lawsuit against him and Fox News, claiming sexual harassment.
‘She’s a hero,’ Naomi Watts told me, of her role as Carlson in The Loudest Voice.
‘She was the first, inadvertently bringing about the #Metoo movement [which exploded 15 months later], and she doesn’t get a huge amount of credit for that.’
More than 20 other women, including anchor Megyn Kelly, came forward and, within a fortnight, Ailes was forced to resign, pushed by the Murdoch family but handed a $40 million settlement.
Carlson, meanwhile, was given a reported $20 million and an apology, but as part of her deal is forbidden from talking about what happened. And she was not the only one. While gagging orders continue to be questioned, in Carlson’s case, it has done her no harm. She wrote a book, Be Fierce: Stop Harassment And Take Your Power Back,
which told stories of women in other industries. ‘Gretchen’s relaunched her career – she is rare,’ continues Bloom. ‘Sadly, most women who come forward with harassment claims are still defined by that, in a debilitating way, for the rest of their lives.’ ‘The Loudest Voice’ and ‘Divide And Conquer: The Story Of Roger Ailes’ are available now on Sky Atlantic and Now TV