David Folkenflik

Opinion contributor

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this column misidentified one of the presidents Roger Ailes advised. It was George H. W. Bush.

Roger Ailes liked to create story lines at Fox News with clear-cut bad guys and good guys, victims and saviors.

Ailes, the founder and former chairman of the network, died Thursday at the age of 77. He was long a hero to many Republicans and conservatives, widely admired within the television industry for his achievements, and enjoyed by reporters for his capacity to charm.

He saw opportunity where others didn’t and redefined what cable news would be. And he inspired intense loyalty from many of those who worked for him; Fox stars such as Brit Hume, Shepard Smith and Ainsley Earhardt offered emotional tributes to him Thursday.

Few have had more influence on the worlds of media and politics over the past 50 years. No one did more to erode the boundaries separating the two in that period, coarsening each in the process.

By the end, Ailes earned billing as the heavy of his story, disgraced by the tawdry accounts of many women that he demanded sexual acts in exchange for career advancement.

Ailes built a profit-generating marvel on an insight with his longtime patron and boss, Rupert Murdoch: a diet of political red meat, with side dishes of cultural outrages, humor, sex appeal and some straight-ahead reporting would ultimately translate into a big audience for cable.

The grievance and alienation among conservatives was real. Ailes recognized it, fed it, nurtured it, and sought to ensure it grew.

He came from the world of entertainment — the Mike Douglas Show on TV, the Hot-L Baltimore on Broadway — and brought that showman’s sensibility to successful presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

After helping to create CNBC, Ailes built a fortune by infusing Fox News with both entertainment and political values. Simple narratives. Starkly defined enemies and friends. Despite a slogan of “fair and balanced,” and despite having capable journalists in his employ, Ailes sought to present his right-of-center fans with a largely unchallenging view of the world.

His hosts often devoted weeks to stories for which there was little substance, such as the threat posed by the New Black Panthers, whose membership appeared to range in the lower two digits, or outrage over the War on Christmas, which drew life from increasingly innocuous holiday greetings.

In online parlance, Ailes had expert trolling skills.

There are two easy ways to assess the integrity of any news outlet. Does it admit facts that cut against the point it is seeking to make? And does it admit when it makes mistakes?

Under Ailes, Fox was grudging on the first count and infamous for failing to do the second. He saw the admission of mistake as concession, a weakness rather than honesty. A very political trait.

He didn’t simply approach the news conservatively. He approached it as a political player, meddling in campaigns, hiring prospective presidential candidates, and pounding messages helpful to the cause. The business proposition fueled the partisan allegiance, and vice versa.

Ailes labeled his detractors as liberals, or self-important journalists, or both. He believed that, but he also recognized it was good for business to believe that.

In fact, Ailes would turn Fox into a near-perpetual media criticism machine, attacking major news organizations that broke stories reflecting badly on favored politicians and institutions.

The lasting nature of his DNA is easily seen in how the network contorts itself to cover the crises swamping the Trump White House. Fox does cover major developments, but it is often late to the game. And its hosts instead quickly pivot to focus on the wrongs committed by sources and news outlets, a cause of tension for some of its news staffers, including Chris Wallace and others, who are left trying to underscore the importance of the latest news.

Jesse Watters, newly part of the prime-time show The Five, declared the current Russia scandal to be boring. Kimberly Guilfoyle, another host of the show who has openly campaigned to replace Sean Spicer as White House spokes person, suggested James Comey might have committed a crime in drafting a memo about his meeting with Trump. Another host asked whether Comey had been drinking.

These are all signs of Ailes’ successors hoping to summon his spirit and capture his successes once more.

It has proved hard for them to do of late. MSNBC is winning a lot of prime-time ratings races these days as liberals bathe in their own outrage by turning to a friendly prime-time lineup that took inspiration from Fox’s conservative example.

Ailes was, of course, ousted not because of any programming failings but as part of the fallout of former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit accusing him of punishing her for rejecting his sexual advances. Other women came forward, including Megyn Kelly, whose experiences influenced her decision to leave the network. There are two dozen lawsuits against Fox News, on complaints of sexual harassment, racial bias and others. A federal criminal inquiry appears to be picking up steam.

In later years, Ailes dubbed his network “the most powerful name in news” — power being a quality few news organizations seek or claim. Yet Ailes sought to project power on and off the air, controlling what women wore on screen, insisting on a sexualized culture, instituting a “leg cam” to linger on the figures of his female hosts.

Ailes’ accusers have offered a remarkably consistent account of his behavior over the course of decades: that he sought to extort sexual acts from women whose careers he could influence or control. He had phones and corridors bugged at Fox News. Federal investigators are exploring the legality of steps he took to intimidate his critics. (Ailes had denied all allegations against him, though the network’s parent company effectively conceded he had harassed Carlson and others.)

Rupert Murdoch this week announced plans for a brand new newsroom designed to promote collaboration and the values of “openness and transparency.” It involves gutting the warren of second-floor offices from which Ailes ruled Fox News with near-complete autonomy. Murdoch and his sons at 21st Century Fox say they want a new day.

Bill O’Reilly and many top executives have been forced out. But Fox News’ top lawyer, publicity executive and programming chief remain. All are defendants in lawsuits and stand accused of facilitating and hiding Ailes’ behavior.

For two decades, Ailes was a runaway success, the creator of an economic engine throwing off more than a billion dollars a year for Murdoch and his sons.

Those successes enabled Ailes’ excesses in what he put on the air and his abuses off it. And those around him allowed it to happen, charmed and awed by one of the most compelling acts in town.

David Folkenflik is the media correspondent for NPR News and author of Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires. Follow him on Twitter @davidfolkenflik

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