Ailes helps writer out-fox rival
What, Roger Ailes worried? We hear the Fox News CEO is helping conservative writer Zev Chafets fast-track a book about Ailes’ and the “Fair and Balanced” cable-news network because he’s worried about the exhaustively reported book that New York magazine contributing editor Gabriel Sherman is writing on the same subject.
Media insiders tell us Fox News has granted extensive access to Chafets, who’s rushing to write a book about Fox News and Ailes that Penguin’s conservative Sentinel imprint will publish in the fall. Sherman’s book is not due until 2013. In 2010, Chafets published “Rush Lim
baugh: An Army of One,” a sympathetic portrayal of the controversial radio talkshow host. That same year, he wrote in the New York Times that Limbaugh was the “brains and spirit” behind the resurgence of the Republican party in the wake of
President Obama’s election. Given the author’s perspective and the cooperation he’s getting, one source characterized Chafets’ book “as a way for Ailes to scoop Sherman.”
Another source says: “I don’t know if Ailes went to Chafets or vice versa, but either way, Roger is now helping him.” The source added that Ailes “may even be urging Fox News executives to participate.”
Sherman, who has published two cover stories on Ailes and Fox News, signed a deal with Random House in February 2011 to write a book tentatively titled: “The Loudest Voice in the Room: An Inside Account of the Rise of Fox News.”
(Full disclosure: The editor of this column’s tenure at the New York Observer briefly overlapped with Sherman’s time there.)
According to one Fox insider, Sherman has been working on the book even before the Random House deal was signed and has interviewed hundreds of sources as part of his research.
The source adds that the depth of Sherman’s reporting has ratcheted up the 71-year-old Ailes’ anxiety levels because he’s preoccupied with his legacy these days.
In Sherman’s May 2011 cover story on Ailes, “The Elephant in the Green Room,” he quoted a GOP source who noted that it “bothers” Ailes “that he’s still regarded as an outsider.”
“He doesn’t want to be hated,” the source added. “You can’t gross a billion a year and retain an outlaw sensibility.”
What’s unclear is whether Ailes has given either Sherman or Chafets an on-the-record interview. Both authors declined to comment. “I’m working on a book about Roger Ailes and Fox News,” Chafets wrote in an email. “That’s really all I can tell you at the moment.”
“I’m focused on my own reporting,” said Sherman.
A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to our request for comment by deadline.