Fox News founder Roger Ailes dead at 77

NEW YORK >> Roger Ailes, the communications maestro who transformed television news and America’s political conversation by creating and ruling Fox News Channel for two decades before being ousted last year for alleged sexual harassment, died Thursday, according to his wife, Elizabeth Ailes. He was 77.

Ailes died after a fall at his Palm Beach home on May 10 caused bleeding on the brain, the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office said. Ailes fell in his bathroom, hit his head and was bleeding profusely. He was taken to a hospital by attending paramedics, the Palm Beach (Florida) Police Department said.

A former GOP operative to candidates including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, Ailes displayed a mastery of modern messaging early in his career. Then he changed the face of 24-hour news when, in 1996, he accepted a challenge from media titan Rupert Murdoch to build a news network from scratch to compete with CNN and other TV outlets they deemed left-leaning.

That October, Ailes flipped the switch on Fox News Channel, which within a few years became the audience leader in cable news. Ailes branded the network “Fair and Balanced” and declared he had left the political world behind, but conservative viewers found a home and lifted primetime commentators Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity to the top of the news ratings.

“He has dramatically and forever changed the political and the media landscape singlehandedly for the better,” Hannity tweeted on Thursday.

Fox News and 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch called Ailes “a brilliant broadcaster (who) played a huge role in shaping America’s media over the last thirty years” in a statement.

“He will be remembered by the many people on both sides of the camera that he discovered, nurtured and promoted,” Murdoch said. “Roger and I shared a big idea which he executed in a way no one else could have. In addition, Roger was a great patriot who never ceased fighting for his beliefs.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recalled Ailes’ influence on the nation’s politics from the late 1960s to now.

“Roger Ailes was a genius at politics and the news media. His advice to Presidents Nixon and Reagan was historic and helped elect both,” Gingrich tweeted.

“The history of cable television will have a very big chapter on Roger Ailes. Without his success at Fox News Trump could never have won.”

Others laid the nation’s political dysfunction and inability to find common ground at his feet, creating the atmosphere for Trump to succeed.

“It’s a very complicated story,” said Gabriel Sherman, author of the Ailes biography, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” “He is in some ways a genius and in some ways tragic. His quest for power consumed him.”

By mid-2016 Ailes still ruled supreme as he prepared to celebrate Fox News’ 20th anniversary.

But in little more than two weeks, both his legacy and job unraveled following allegations by a former anchor that he had forced her out of Fox News after she spurned his sexual advances. The lawsuit filed on July 6 by Gretchen Carlson quickly triggered accounts from more than 20 women with similar stories of alleged harassment by Ailes either against themselves or someone they knew.