City profile

Roger Ailes The “sudden and ignominious downfall” of the Fox News chief, following allegations of sexual harassment, marks the end of the line for America’s most influential “kingmaker”, says The Economist. “The preeminent master of the dark arts of politics and television” had been helping Republicans get elected since the days of Richard Nixon. He built Fox News – “a joke” when Rupert Murdoch started it in 1996 – into the “number-one powerhouse in cable, eventually collecting profits of more than $1bn a year”. The son of a factory worker, Ailes, 76, “instinctively knew how to appeal to white, working-class voters, disaffected, as he was himself, with liberal elites and political correctness”. His brand of “angry, conspiracy-driven political news and opinion set Fox News apart”. Few felt they could challenge him.

In Ailes, Murdoch found a kindred spirit who gave him “a seat at the top table of American politics”, says Matthew Garrahan in the FT. But while the harassment allegations (by former presenter Gretchen Carlson) were “the catalyst” of his departure, the seeds were sown last year when Murdoch gave big roles at Fox to his sons, Lachlan and James, who “have not always seen eye to eye with Ailes”. Indeed, there will be much “fraternal rejoicing” at his departure, says Peter Preston in The Observer. “TV’S ogre-in-chief” was only “tolerated because he was worth it”. Given the channel’s ageing audience, said the FT, Ailes’s downfall is in many ways a chance “to refashion the channel for the digital age.”