tv After Words CSPAN March 2, 2014 9:00pm-10:01pm EST
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country and more developed countries and these discussions are going to take place. they are going to be emotional discussions in many instances and it is healthy that discussions take place. i think what the monument men story does is highlighted point in time that is a break where wars have been fought in the past that these things should go back to the countries from which they were taken and return to their rightful owners that this is something to be proud of for the role the .. remember the e-mail earlier asking about monuments men who may have confiscated, art has e-mail again. just looked at the roster. the man in question does not appear on the roster. the stories i heard come from reliable sources including some with connections to the particular museum. appears he was not a monuments' man but a soldier somewhere down the line who had access to a substantial number of pieces of artwork.
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you have a book here, any thought of conducting a tour? >> the m t the monument foundation did that and is doing that. we call it in the footsteps of the monuments men and it's something we are going to be doing to italy in 2015 and also to europe so people can follow the story as they took place in italy and also in the monuments men. we had on humans accompany us when we were on the trip last year and one of the stops we made was at the cemetery to the grave of the monuments officer who was one of the two killed during combat. >> host: monumentsmenfoundatio host: monumentsmenfoundatio n.org is the website. rescuing da vinci is a beautiful picture book if you are interested in seeing the works of art.
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thanks for being on booktv. >> guest: thank you. up next on booktv "after words" with jane hall journalism professor. this week gabriel sherman of the loudest voice in the room how hw that really into bombastic roger ailes built fox news and divided the country. the editor provides a detailed look at the life of the former nixon white house member that started fox news channel. this program is about an hour. >> host: congratulations on your new book.
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it's generating a lot of interest. it's particularly interesting to me who covered for many years in new york and also because i was on a fox news program years back. so i want to ask first of all what attracted you to write a book about roger ailes? >> guest: that is a great question. i've covered the media for a decade now and i've been fascinated by the intersection of media and politics and covered the times, the post, cnn, msnbc and wanted to do with the history of fox news because it revolutionized cable news and it was the most dominant network. the ratings were double that of cnn and msnbc. and very early in the reporting of the book i realized the way to tell the story was true to th the life and career of roger ailes of fox is a complete expression of his worldview. the network is shaped in his image and without the unique talent i don't think fox would be the success that it is so it developed into a portrait of
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ailes with fox news as a culmination of everything he worked towards both in politics intand show business and television. >> host: you said fox news is a political operation that hires. can you tell me what you mean by that? >> guest: is a political person. you know, he starred in television that he owes his career to his work on the republican political strategist and campaign adviser to the republicans like mitch mcconnell and george h. w. bush, ronald reagan and richard nixon whose he worked for in 68, and he drives in the culture of the political campaigns on the secrecy of paramount, driving for roush's competitiveness. all the things that we associate with is tied to roger ailes career background. so when he came to fox and started the network for rupert murdoch he brought all of that
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campaign. i write in the book how he structured it like a political campaign. there is a group of executives, some of the seniormost team that call themselves the g8 and that is a reference to the cheese which was a group of campaign advisers for george h. w. bush in 1988 and so you see all of these little phrases and sayings that come from the political of the campaign but more than that the way the network operates is more on the structure of the political campaign. it starts with the 8 a.m. meeting in the news meeting and everyone marches in lockstep and there is a sin of mission and purpose that flows from the top and you see all of those attributes that come out of the political world. >> host: how do you see on the air with c. as a reflection of roger ailes dictating this agenda and its republican agenda?
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>> guest: what you see at fox that is so unique -- it is the timing and the talent and taking the time and that speaks authentically is a testament. the way that it manifests itself is to drive the narrative into the storylines that really come out of the political world. in 2008 with the rise of barack obama you see these storylines through the first term of his presidency this idea that the administration is appointing the policy advisers that had extra constitutional authority. useful for health care debate was a huge story and i write in the book how he gave a prop to the pundit who could go on camera and make the point that the bill was an yielding. on the building. he literally gave an on air talk
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with a stack of papers this call that says you can wave on screen to make that point and you see that scripting and that sense of the narrative message that comes out of the political world in the programming. >> host: fox is usually criticized and we have democrats, we had dennis kucinich, a liberal, what is your response to that and how is it so unilateral? >> guest: the critique that has been the network doesn't mean they can't have liberal voices. there are separate issues and the testament it is a testament to his talent that he care aides the people who appear on his network so that there is a mix of voices so that you have a gis feeding red meat to the conservatives. it's never a fair fight. anyone that watched with never consider hannity and equal exchange of left and right ideas
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and in fact in the book i describe how the producers actually created an elaborate ruse to keep him on board and they can feel like an equal part or in the show when he was the de facto executive producer of the show and he would pick the talking points that they would cover and then the producers would say okay what is your feedback but the whole structure of the show was dictated by sean hannity. so what ailes has done is he stacked the decks of the conservatives always when while allowing himself to have some liberals to give him that talking poinbacktalking point te gave both sides. >> host: what you make that people said they had good journalism in the washington bureau. not everyone set up a storyline that you had set out here. >> guest: again it goes back to the genius as a political messenger and i want to step back a second and talk about his
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work on behalf of richard nixon which will help people to understand why fox can still be a political organization while having the liberals and reporters on the payroll. let's go back in time. roger ailes was a television adviser to richard nixon. he had come out of the daytime tv and was the executive producer of the douglas show and talked himself onto the mixing campaign by providing him he needed to master a television. and for ailes goes to work for nixon and how did he structured the campaign? a baby's town hall events that roger ailes called the man in the arena and they were as aged events makes and would appear in front of a group of panelists that were regular citizen at the handpicked an and nixon would answer questions in the audience would be local republican supporters cheering for the candidates. so the entire event was staged to make nixon look courageous that he was facing questions from the panelists and in fact
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the staging and the audience was put in place. what's fast forward in time. if you had roger ailes that wants to communicate a republican message to advance the public's interest, he knows if you feed the right-wing talking points to the audience, it's not going to be authentic. if he applied the same technique by handpicking the audience having people that come for credibility that are hostile to his message and event exchange of ideas come first the level of credibility the same way makes and was able to convert the credibility on the campaign by y picking the 1980 campaign they thought the best panel, the best town hall was the toughest where he had to face the tough questions because the audience wanted to see him fight and it's the same thing.
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ailes knows that the audience wants to see republicans have to fight for their side and then ultimately when they win it is then that much more effective. >> host: the public-relations -- >> guest: on the political campaign. >> host: but they said you didn't talk to roger ailes and to check the facts with them. you have the most incendiary comments attributed to the source familiar. you didn't fact check. how do you stand on that? >> guest: i had a team of two fact checkers with every word of the manuscript. they are both in pursing and
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writing i travel to different states to see him in person where he was giving speeches at public events i wrote to his attorney in the public-relations advisers i would sit down to discuss every single fact in the book and he declined every request. >> host: how did you ascertain the truth if you were not checking it? >> guest: we talked to the the sources i interviewed and we checked the second resource is a documentary records and ultimately as i said in the ending notes, i feel very confident on the reporting and it's important to point out that the book has been out now, and all of the revelations in the book has been out in fox news hasn't challenged one single point in the book. >> host: they checked the anti-somatic remark and i don't really want to go into all of that, but he was denied something. so it's not true that we haven't tried -- >> guest: that specific episode that you are referring
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to is based on the record on nbc from the internal investigation that nbc human resources commission to investigate roger ailes, and the lawyer they hired the outside counsel to do the investigation this is in the documentary record that he produced on behalf of nbc. so as a reporter i reflect the denial in the buck but i realize i'm the historical record when this event took place, the episode was discussed. the man in question that made this mark said at the time he'ss denying all these years later when there's other factors that come into play he said he is a personal friend of roger ailes and there's other factors. i realize i'm the historical record while giving the subject to deny. >> host: you're encountering very true to me. and years ago he says to you use
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it in the buck. he said you are all wrong and there is a certain kind of kid you're all wrong. he said you're a good reporter but you are all wrong and that's not what i want to do. obviously they have had a bout of political people. yet at the same time he didn't elect the president, and so that seems to be a contradiction. he was reported by others trying to get the approach to petraeus. you also say that he is disdainful of mitt romney. so, how do you say he wanted to be elected the next president that he was able to do? >> guest: that gets to one of the things that makes him such a
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fascinating character is that he has these competing interests. he is a man in a certain way that is at war with himself because he is both a tv man and a party man, and those two things can be in conflict with each other and what i find so fascinating is that with my book shows is that in the year 2012 in this campaign we saw the limits of roger ailes ability to shape the political landscape through the medium of television, and through much of his career, television was the all powerful tool. it propelled his candidate and shaped the way they perceived the candidates but what happened is that fox news became so powerful it shaped the brand of the republican party that is ultimately eroded his efforts to get a republican into the white house because the brand, the image that fox presented to the american public, while it was a phenomenally successful
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television product it wasn't a winning political message. it is a story of decline and they followed his career to the peak but now he's in the decline and fox isn't this all powerful tool to get a republican into the white house. it is preceded as an often white male audience which, you know, fox news anchors are often attractive women. my question to you is who is he appealing to because it seems to be kind of an angry appeal. in the past when he created the network i encountering a bias to the mainstream media. i would think he might even consider himself eager than the republican party.
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so who do you think that he is appealing to? >> guest: she has been appealing himself the same decades richard nixon appealed to. they assembled the 68 campaign in the 80s they were the voters that stayed with george h. w. bush in 1988 when roger ailes was running the media campaign, and he took down michael dukakis who was weak on foreign policy, you know, all of the notions of patriotism. these are all of th look the sof middle-class populace white voters often times. roger ailes grew up in a factory town, so he grew up in a factory town and even the voters that felt that the america they knew from the 1950s and early were
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slipping away. that is why fox was so successful making these cultural appeals. the war on christmas, the american traditions are under siege. these are the voters and they are getting older and it's important to point out that the media and continues to grow up ango up andit is an older demogd the wider demographic because the voters o voters that they ao our getting older every year and the coalition that keeps them speaking for decades now. >> host: do you think that he believes it? >> guest: ailes is a true conservative believer. there's always been a guessing game is at television, is it show business, is it real and the politics are real and you see it in ailes views on immigration, foreign policy, views on government spending. there is no doubt about that and that's fine. those are his beliefs. i think it's interesting why he
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is not wanted to own those in the past. he's wanted to talk his way out of situations and keep people off balance never truly knowing what he says. i think it's interesting a fox news producer can never really talked about roger ailes. there's a saying in the network when people want to communicate what he wants and see on the screen they say what the second floor wants or says. in the record for the second floor is roger ailes executive suite on rupert murdoch's headquarters in manhattan. so i think it's interesting that ailes wants to be this kind of man behind the curtain and not go to his views but that is a separate point. subs is a true belief are but he is owing to use that show business technique for the true belief. the war on christmas is one issue where he does believe the war on christmas is a tradition that is under attack. but that said, he knows it is a very successful programming strategy and in an interview
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with roger ailes brother, robert ailes, he told the roger looked at the demographic and set a vast majority of the american people some of the christmas through a marketing strategy fox should be the network that should appeal to the christmas supporters and let the other networks fight over this. so that is a great anecdote that shows how ailes is willing to use his show business acumen to achieve his political ends. >> host: let's talk a little bit about what is the impact of the success at fox news on the other networks. what do you see as an impact? >> guest: the biggest impact, one of ailes lasting latest is one of the reasons i argued in the book he divided the country is because he divided the media. this notion of the liberal media that has been a conservative belief going back to the time of nixon and goldwater earlier.
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ailes brought back to the service box really forced the media to choose sides. with me illustrate that. i go into greater detail in my book about how cnn and msnbc responded to fox especially in the years after 9/11. fox passed in the ratings game in 2002 and never turned back and in my book i describe how the executives at msnbc in the run-up to the iraq war were really concerned and apoplectic in this idea that fox was continuing to run around the cable race and what they did is they said maybe we should try to be more conservative and rebrand ourselves as american. msnbc was called america's news channel. they put american flags all over the screen, hired radio host and tried to al fox fox. what i think is interesting is for one thing it didn't work
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because no one can match roger ailes talent to reach conservatives, but number two, after that failed, msnbc found success with keith olbermann during the second term of bush's presidency, then he decided to go all see in and grounded themselves as a liberal progressive news network, and so you see how ailes was so successful that he forced other networks to literally change their programming strategy, and that has been his legacy he not only changed through fox and he's changed the media through the other channel in every media now is forced to sort of explain to the viewers are we conservative, are we liberal, are we down the middle, but the fact that we are having this conversation to argue whether "the new york times" is a centrist or liberal newspaper is a testament to ailes' talent to make others define themselves. >> host: that drumbeat, particularly after 9/11, was particularly effective. i'm not sure if you can
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contribute it entirely to robert ailes because people were being asked to wear flag pins on the air or they were accused of being anti-patriotic if they were not. >> guest: often times i interviewed one producer in my book who told me about how after 9/11 they were literally from the vendors to put on their anchors they had ripple effects throughout the culture. >> host: cnn was to have some of their executives say let's be sure to point out even during some of the worst abuse and they pointed out during boot. there were others. that job beat has been very successful. whether it is attributable to fox or post-9/11. post-post 9/1. there is always pressure building for the war. let me ask you one other question i wanted to get to
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about president obama specifically. you write that ailes is telling people he thinks that he's bad for the country. he is close to the socialists although as someone said ailes technique is more of a socialist headline. tell me how obama has complained about the way and get it hasn't quite known whether to go on the air. he has gone on o'reilly. what is it about the depiction of obama that you see as driving some anti-obama agenda? and give some specifics. what is on the air that shows you that they have been unfair to president obama. >> guest: i think that going back to before he was the president in 2007, and you know, fox news ran with a record that he was educated.
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they were skirting close to the lines of pushing this idea that he's a muslim and is hiding his beliefs and the obama campaign complained. fox issued a sum of apologies. but it is this idea painting him outside of the american mainstream. you know, ailes said that obama hates capitalism and th into thn energy. they have hammered the solyndra bankruptcy but it's emblematic they want to get control of the economy. i think the health care debate and that the was something that was accepted in the popular culture and wasn't just relegated but the idea that whether they had the was a legitimate point of the health care debate is because fox was pushing aggressively. what's interesting is the candidacy and the election changed the mission of fox news
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great i interviewed someone very close to ailes who told me prior to the candidacy, ailes saw himself competing with cnn, msnbc, "new york times." fox was the counterbalance in the american media. but with obama's rise he saw something different and fall the america that he knew as a child and as an adult changing and he saw the mission really pick in front of the white house and it became a personal mission where he was standing up to the president and that is where i opened the book with an exchange that took place at the white house in 2011 at the holiday party that they posted for the administration for the members of the media. and ailes took his son to the white house and he is going to greet the president and barack obama turns to roger ailes and as i sesince i see the most powl man in the world is here.
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i made them myself. what is interesting in that exchange is you see so much revealed. you see the president who in the air 2011 was facing a tough reelection while he was making the big really there is truth to it. it seemed like it was possible to change the political landscape and they answer this joke you see the rumor into the way that he used self-deprecation. he downplays his ambition and it would have been this charm that would have been a big part of his career. and i thought it was such a way to open the book to bring them together to show how roger ailes and barack obama was the adversary and it shows you it was a way to get into the book and it's about fox and the president. >> host: you said it's
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changing. is it a racial attack? they were quoted as saying that obama had a hate of people. what changed when obama was elected? >> guest: he said in his meeting there is no reason to have the civil rights movement anymore because we have a black man in the white house, his words not mine. people who were in a meeting. he grew up at the time when white christian men were the dominant voice in national politics. he was born in 1940 and he lived for civil rights in the women's movement. we have all of these competing voices enter the conversation. and they were speaking to that part of america to feel like they ran the country and no longer do. i think that he sees himself as a protector of that america and
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-- >> host: you don't have any evidence that this is a racially motivated attack on president obama. >> guest: i think the politics are very much a part of it. his views on immigration and environmental regulation, the idea of america becoming a culturally -- multicultural country that has strict environmental laws if you look at europe they have higher taxes on gasoline and energy use and the idea that america would go down these other form of policy choices he sees america as a different country and fox is a network speaking to those that feel that america shouldn't be open to other waves of governing itself.
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so race is one part of it and the other is that obama validated addressing the election and he's now done away with this idea that we should have affirmative action for civil rights but it's not limited race. race is just one issue that he uses. >> host: you don't really know, do you? >> guest: i am addressing this notion that he's had the presidency means we don't have to have a civil rights movement anymore. this is not an issue of black versus white specifically but it's a view about the politics. the idea that as a country we should have the political sensitivity of the legacy of the racial history and if you look
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at the stories they pushed around the time in the 2008 election we are short on time but they are pushing the new black panther story and the idea that the white house wasn't punishing groups that were breaking the law because they were black groups and not because they were giving favorable treatment. >> host: that is what you have to be the last. we are going to take a break and when we come back we will talk about the biography. i want to ask you what you learned and what makes you see them clearly. going back to roger ailes hometown in ohio you talked to
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his brother. i want to ask you given that a lot of people were afraid to talk to you see anything but a the trailer and what did you learn about his growing up? i don't think most viewers know what was his childhood like, what does he deal with and what connections if any do you make to how he goes on? >> guest: he built fox news from his life experience into that quote really designated with me and i wanted to understand what is that like that we see manifested on the screen and fox news so i went back and it's a factory town in northeast ohio on the outskirts of youngstown that the more well-known factory town in that area and it is essential to understanding who roger ailes is in favor of his parents went to college and he was a reformer
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and blue-collar job, he managed in his mother was a very ambitious woman and didn't have an education which he pushed the boys. he had a brother and his sister and he pushed them to take acting and began a lesson. it's interesting to note that at the time this is a time of limitless possibilities for the blue-collar america. the factoriefactories were booml motors, the parent company was employing thousands upon thousands of people, union jobs were plentiful, there was healthcare, there was benefits. it was a city unto itself and had some newspapers, they had company advance, it was a community and divisive social cohesion in the blue-collar towns like warren. but going back tgoing back to re he would go to the cinema so that sense of pride defined his
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childhood and the other thing that defined his childhood is a darker thing in his struggle with hemophilia a blood condition that prevents the blood from clotting when someone gets a cut so he suffered from this condition when the average life expectancy was about ten or 11-years-old. it was a very serious medical condition and this really define it gives childhood because he lived with the fear and he said he didn't know how long he would a ki it and it's that sense of t well to overcome and mark his competitiveness ever since. i think an interesting thing to point out the other part of his childhood was his father was a very resentful bitter man pushed around the college boys could be educated managers of the plant and his father took it out on the children, his brother told me and they have spoken up the
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beatings in his house. his father was a violent man and we consulted the records into roger's mother testified in the divorce records that the father was a violent man and he threatened to kill her. it was a very dark childhood and i think out of the dark childhood, you see the strain of successful people all over the country. country. peoples will to succeed and rise antothrive and overcome the difficulties of their past. roger ailes really took that and the one thing that really define the childhood was television. roger ailes was often watching tv at home and this was in the 1950s and was really coming into the own in the media and he grew up on shows like gunsmoke and these classic american shows, which based on the male lead in stark division between good and evil and it's that world of television that captivated roger ailes and propelled him on his career. and i think that you see that the seeds that were planted you see them flowering.
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>> host: even this kind of quality pushed around and kind of populism. there is a kind of populism that is interesting in the background that you talked about and she's also included as saying it was a difficult. >> guest: that he talked about it in his later life is he's filled with these aphorisms and life lessons and i would recommend it to any uri message and the fact into the philosophy but using this idea people make positive people bring them down. the school is hard to block that he came out of and one of the things i found in the doing all of these people that worked with him is that sense of loyalty and the sense of inspiration, and he
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channeled this dark childhood that he had into this message of making people feel like they can overcome anything. and himself -- postcode people are feeling their world is disappearing. so that is kind of a contradiction. but he is able to sort of harness all of these contradictions to appeal to people's different needs. i want to talk about television for a second. he winds up at ohio university. they had a kind of endearing and broadcasting department. radio television is really kind of becoming an industry in the 1950, and ailes was kind of lost. when he got to college he didn't know what he wanted to do but because of the hemophilia was kept out of the airport. so he stumbled into broadcasting and found his mission by his own image and his wife was studio he would come in at six in the morning and would be the last
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one to leave and as a reporter it was interesting to see your subject line to their mission in life and hearing him talk about it you see someone finding their direction. a lot of people don't know he meets richard nixon on the mike douglas show and is a successful producer. he is the star of the book about the making of richard nixon which is the first idea about packaging the president with everybody else has noticed recently. one of the things that is interesting is that he has a very good press because he is often quoted in a very combated wade and he says some awful things about the composition of the journalists seem to like him. >> guest: that has been one of
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the things that propels him to where he is, the ability to charm that reporters. i think that his unwillingness to sit down with me is connected to that. >> host: tommy about that. >> guest: he has a power by controlling the images of republicans into the news media. about his channel. but if you think about it, the number one story that he has controlled has been his own and it goes back to his days on the mike douglas show. he was a television adviser to richard nixon and 68 and here comes the philadelphia inquirer was going to write a book about the campaign, and roger ailes, through his charm and his profanity and charisma he talks himself into being the star of the book and when that book came out, he was unknown to the american public all of a sudden he became an overnight celebrity sought out by republican and even as he was trash talking nixon, the republicans wanted him to do the same thing for nixon that he did for them.
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he wanted them to work his magic and he became the tv to rue of his generation and that was a testament of his ability to sell himself and throughout his career, he has massaged and analyst his own life narrative to the mass power. what was so interesting for me as a reporter is to look at the hundreds if not thousands of quotes that he is given through the years and compare that to the historical record that i consulted archives on the mike douglas show, the richard nixon presidential library of his time as a broadway producer and his colleagues, ailes sapostrophy version of events with the historical record often times for a discrepancy that this wasn't a case of gotcha to say it was a tall tale. what i does trying to do is see where in his life did he massaged his story to portray himself in a way that would advance his career and it was
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amazing. in this greaand this great tradf american storytellers like pt barnum, citizen kane and these larger than life characters who have impress themselves on the american consciousness by massaging their story is what i'm trying to say and he is a great storyteller and that is a testament to his talent, not in any way a critique. >> host: i want to ask you something that you uncovered i didn't know much about which is the direction of what you can explain is a new service and how that impacts what is on the air. as a journalist covering this and need a critic to bring this up is always difficult to say where and how someone may or may not be doing something on the air that might be putting us on a scale.
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talk to me about what you learned in operation. >> guest: this is a fascinating little known part of american history that i hope my book eliminate cause it was one of the most interesting parts of the project. roger ailes was a news director. it was a fledgling news service that was and is us from it and 774 to early 76 and went bankrupt. it was financed by joseph of the colorado magnet. his financing person throughout the 70s and 80s. so roger ailes gets there as the newest rector in 1975. and what he was trying to do is package news stories to sell to local broadcast affiliates, political news coming international news in a way that would balance out the big three because at the time as everyone remembers in the 1970s he was the only source of television
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news. in the mainstream media even though we weren't talking about it in those terms back then, so he gets there and i consulted these documents and the founder as a man named robert hawley who is a former executive and he teamed up with joseph and they were fascinating document and they were strategizing how they could package the news to appeal to the conservatives. there was one effort they would literally send their lineups to a conservative october group called the accuracy in media which was a kind of air watchdog group now we have media matters on the left and news busters on the left. this idea that tbn was going to send their line to the conservative activist group to basically give their seal of approval was showing me how explicitly they were trying to dictate to the news from a
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conservative perspective. they were focusing on techniques they could use and there was one memo where there was a consultant for tbn where they figured out they could develop their own posts. so if liberals were hammering the fbi and cia for their abuser abuses of power, then the conservatives could hammer the welfare agencies, the department of education by the environmental protection agency, conservatives could have their own boogie man to beat up on it. on. so literally they were kind of deconstructing is to advance a political agenda, and i saw a blueprinsolve ablueprint on foxs a fascinating story because ailes didn't talk about it most and in most of the interviews he lost over that part of the biography. but he was working there and he was in the environment and he was soaking up the techniques that 20 years later he applied at fox news. it is classic and driving the message. >> guest: they develop story
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lines into the health care debate was a classic fox news story line going back in the time of the iraq war and the run-up to the iraq war. >> host: what do you mean by good guys, bad guys? >> guest: they develop adversaries to the case of iraq. fox news was hammering the united nations and remember the whole freedom thing they were handling the television network as hostile and michael moore was a fox news editor and they were on the opposing side and then they would build up the characters on the pro side that president bush was the hero. they repeat them and go through the news hour and they are continuing at prime time and they discuss how the repetition of the stories can be a powerful
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propaganda technique. >> host: since he watched msnbc and fox. >> host: user they've been about acorn or solyndra. what would you say to people what do you see is the difference between what msnbc is getting. are they similar or how are they different? >> guest: they decided that their business is it progressive liberal talk channel and that is an interesting marketing strategy. it's important to point out that was a business decision, not an ideological position. as i talked about it was more than happy to try to be a conservative right-wing network after 9/11 when they thought that was a better marketing strategy.
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so, they started fox for political reasons. msnbc is more of a business marketing issue but what i think is interesting is msnbc is not as good as fox. ask your television, the programming is not as compelling because they do not have the unique talent on the ability to foster conflict and the ability to pick talent. if you look at the talent he picked that they were often times -- they were often times personalities. bill o'reilly was out of work. sean hannity had never hosted an actual television show. steve was out of work. they see personalities that are authentic that jump through the screen on the emotional visceral level and msnbc gets too caught up in the ideologically pure
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rather than understanding the te type of vision is about performance and about the drama and spectacle. >> host: i think the people that msnbc would disagree with your proposal that they are purely ideological. they seem to be attracting the younger demographic. and ailes has been quoted i saw recently he said they asked how you reported an interview with him and he said he liked rachel matt although he didn't want to get her into trouble. i think that they would disagree about how the programming comes across. but back to the talent here. what do you think roger ailes view of bill o'reilly is today because bill o'reilly has had a success. what is their relationship? >> guest: it's an interesting relationship. it's not particularly close another they both need each other. and what's interesting is that the bill o'reilly is the one outlined at fox who can do almost what he wants.
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>> host: he can disagree. the >> guest: that is a testament to two things. he built the show from scratch. ailes is a television genius but bill o'reilly really made of the show. it was a testament to the performance as a performer. it's interesting to point out in 1996 when o'reilly joined fox he was hosting a show that was really going nowhere and they moved o'reilly to 8 p.m. during the clinton and monica lewinsky scandal and o'reilly can did with this audience was outraged and he said thatdrama of the story and to aspire the style i described them in the book as almost like an irish street cop to please her in on what the issue is. so i think that is a testament to the power center and he has the numbers he has the highest rated show and i it is the lincf the prime time lineup.
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and ailes jokes that o'reilly uses the show to sell his books and promote himself, but it's because ailes has a respect that o'reilly is a self-made man. >> host: o'reilly has come out in ways that you are describing on immigration and on gun control. you're saying because he is powerful -- >> guest: there are a factor of viewers. they have some exception. they are in lockstep with what they want and it's interesting to note the programming deputy and it's that line between sean hannity where he can get what he wants on the air through hanni
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hannity. >> host: let's come back to a couple things about the election. there is a famous moment where karl rove's who's been on fox is raising money against obama and in the commentary about obama disbelieved the call. tell us about that because somebody said let's go check. it doesn't fit the scenario. what happened in that moment where she says let's look at the return. >> guest: roger ailes comes in and is planning a coverage and in the afternoon they have a news meeting where the analysts talk about how they are going to cover that night and he was
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frustrated chris christie had given obama a photo op on the beach after hurricane sandy and othe analysts said that the pols don't show that hurt and they said they couldn't help so everyone in that room as one of my subjects told me they didn't believe the polls. they felt that the polling was skewed and romney had a chance so it was this idea that they don't trust the data. that is the mindset a lot of people have going into election night. fast forward and rove who is a insider was fighting with megan kelly saying we are not going to call it. this is the denial that took place on fox. you have the talking heads proclaiming the landslide and he predicted the winner -- >> host: >> guest: i think the reason that resignation is it showed the world that on fox news it
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really was a self contained universe of people on fox thought romney was going to win. even the data except for the rasmussen poll showed romney facing an uphill battle into some megan kelly which i think is a testament to listen we are going to challenge you on this and it made for an amazing television moment. this makes him such a television genius he turned what could have been the ultimate gaffe of the humiliating moment denying the reality on the air and they turned into a television moment everyone in politics interviewed the fox analyst and they broke the tie the network called it and i think that was such a fitting end to the way that fox covered the 2012 election. >> host: does it also proved that she was an independent journalist? >> guest: i think it's both. i think that's megan kelly has
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conservative views but she's also willing to challenge people's assumptions and she used it at the moment to flex her muscles and ailes used it to make great television. >> host: what do you see is as the future of fox news? >> guest: the future is dependent on the roger ailes. what's interesting is that he had so far declined to name a successor at least publicly. he said he has one but he hasn't disclosed who it is. as he is the corporate. they don't fox news but he is the visionary that created it. so fox news cannot exist in its current form. it is a reflection of his personality of his political instincts and everyone we to take their cues from him. there isn't a strong personality in a network that could rise up to fill those shoes so it is an
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open question. >> host: what about rupert murdoch and his relationship? do you think they envisioned what was going to happen? is he ideological in the way that you portrayed them? >> guest: don't think that rupert murdoch could ever have imagined the success. he was the most profitable division of the media empire that generates a billion dollars of reliable profit every year. i think ideologically rupert murdoch is a conservative and a pragmatist and a business person that has demonstrated an ability really to back the politicians of all stripes when it suits the needs of the business. he cozied up to tony blair in the united kingdom and he reached out to hillary clinton here in the state. but that said i think that his profits give him the independent
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program so on the issues like immigration, issues like education and issues like climate change rupert murdoch and roger ailes are not on the same page but they allow them to do it because it suits their business interest. >> host: we live in such a different world and he acknowledged that he was slow to understand or put money behind any kind of an apparatus. you paint him as the man that divided america. and that is the title of your book the brilliant band that divided america. came back at the fact on this reflectively first of all i guess i have two questions what do you think has been the long-term going forward impact on the political discourse? what is the impact on how the politics are conducted in washington, d.c. with ailes in your opinion has run? >> guest: roger ailes has
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brought it back to an earlier time in history. if you go back for the second world war history was marked by partisan media. >> host: it wasn't always this objectivity. >> guest: it was supposed to be the referee and let the politics do get out was a post war anomaly. with ailes has done is brought us back in time and now the genie is out of the bottle. the media is here to stay and the internet has flowered with a million different voices on the left, right, conservative. we are a partisan media country, and i think that is ailes lasting legacy. in the politics i think the lasting legacy has been to normalize the zero-sum vision of politics. it is a cassette to the success democrats copied the success. bill clinton in 1992 the democrats talked about how they
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ran a campaign confronting the attacks in the room. barack obama ran the campaign -- >> host: but that was before fox news was invented. >> guest: that was going back to the time in the 80s using the distortion and the scorched tactics to attack your opponent always on offense with the school of politics. obviously he didn't invent that school but he was better at it than anyone else and it's important to point out that he banned the campaign in 2012, defining mitt romney as a private equity type that likes to fire people, the famous 47% video. those were roger ailes style attacks. it was successful defining romney as many americans were out of touch, i think ailes legacy will be that politics now is considered a zero-sum game and partisanship is the alternate goal and both the left and the rights now -- if you
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look at the polarization in congress, the politics now is about trying to get all of your issues across the finish line rather than seek compromise. >> host: and you think this is different from how congress operated 100 years ago? >> guest: i don't think -- i think that they brought us back in time. i don't think that he has invented a new style of, but he has brought us back to this style of politics. he has made the notion of consensus a dirty word in american politics. ..
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