Roger Ailes

Roger Ailes (born May 15, 1940, Warren, Ohio, U.S.—died May 18, 2017) was an American television producer and political consultant who became the founding president of Fox News Channel (1996–16).

Ailes, the son of a foreman at a Packard Electric plant, grew up in an Ohio factory town. He began a career in television the year that he graduated from Ohio University (B.A., 1962), serving as a property assistant for the Cleveland-based program The Mike Douglas Show. By 1965 he was working as a producer for the show, and in 1967–68 he served as executive producer, receiving an Emmy Award for his work both years. It was during his tenure as executive producer that he met Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who appeared as a guest on the show. Ailes subsequently left The Mike Douglas Show to serve as a media adviser for Nixon’s presidential campaign. Aided by Ailes’s television expertise, Nixon won the presidency in 1968.

The following year, Ailes founded the consulting firm Ailes Communication, which counted New York’s WCBS-TV among its clients. He also served during this period as a producer for a number of theatre and television productions, including the Broadway musical Mother Earth and the award-winning Off-Broadway production The Hot l Baltimore. In 1984 he returned to political campaigning, focusing his attentions on the reelection of Pres. Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s landslide victory secured Ailes’s reputation as an aggressive and effective political consultant. Ailes was also part of the team that guided George Bush to victory in the 1988 presidential election, though he did not work on Bush’s failed reelection bid. Also in 1988, a self-help book was published that Ailes had coauthored, You Are the Message. In the early 1990s he left political campaigning and served as president of the television station CNBC (1993–96).

In 1996 Ailes was commissioned by News Corporation Ltd. head Rupert Murdoch to create Fox News Channel, a new arm of Murdoch’s media empire. Ailes proceeded to build a network news juggernaut. Under his direction, Fox News developed into an influential and lucrative player among the major news outlets. Notwithstanding its slogan of “fair and balanced,” Fox News came under frequent fire for its right-wing leanings and supposed conservative bias, particularly that of such popular hosts as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Megyn Kelly. Ailes himself emerged as one of the most powerful news executives of his time.

In 2016 Gretchen Carlson, a former host on Fox News, filed a sexual harassment suit against Ailes. She alleged that he had made unwanted sexual advances and had engaged in sexist behaviour. Other women reportedly made similar claims, most notably Kelly. Although Ailes denied the accusations, he resigned in July 2016.