0:01

Hey everyone, it's Ed and I just

0:03

wanted to let you know that today we're bringing you

0:05

a very special episode of Slate's

0:07

award winning podcast, slow

0:10

Burn. The podcast is back

0:12

with a new season titled The Rise of

0:14

Fox News. Hosted by Josh Levin.

0:17

This season looks at the early years

0:20

of the Fox News Channel, when it went

0:22

from bumbling to seemingly

0:24

invincible, the moment Fox

0:27

actually became Fox during

0:30

the two thousand election, Fox News would

0:32

captivate the nation and arguably

0:35

change the fate of American democracy forever.

0:38

You'll hear from Fox insiders who have

0:40

never spoken out before, sharing

0:42

some shocking details about their time

0:44

at the station. And you'll hear from

0:47

some activists and comedians and

0:49

even me about my time at the Daily

0:51

Show, where we tried to call out

0:53

Fox News from time to time. So keep

0:55

listening for the first episode of slow Burn

0:58

The Rise of Fox News, and

1:00

then follow and listen to the entire season

1:02

wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04

Enjoy.

1:06

Mike Schneider was getting ready for one of the

1:08

biggest moments of his journalism career.

1:11

It was November nineteen ninety six, and

1:13

he was about to anchor election night coverage

1:15

on a national television network. There

1:18

was only one problem. Even

1:20

his biggest fans had no clue

1:22

he was still on TV.

1:24

What they would say to me is where you been.

1:27

Mike had been an anchor and correspondent

1:29

on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and

1:31

Nightline over decades. He'd

1:33

built his name as a solid old school

1:35

journalist.

1:36

Be honest, be fair, don't

1:39

be boring, but don't hype anything up.

1:42

Just go tell the story. It

1:44

also didn't hurt that he looked the part I

1:46

had a face where grandma's

1:49

thought that their daughters might be interested

1:51

in seeing young mister Schneider.

1:55

By the mid nineties, Mike wasn't quite

1:57

as fresh faced as he used to be. But

1:59

just when his time as a TV news star

2:01

seemed to be running out, he'd gotten

2:03

an opportunity he hadn't expected.

2:06

Our news sources, your

2:09

source for news Fox

2:11

News Channel.

2:15

Roger came to me and he said,

2:17

listen, I would like you to

2:19

anchor our newscaster

2:21

record every evening.

2:24

Roger was Roger Ale's, the chairman

2:27

and CEO of the brand new Fox News Channel,

2:30

and he wanted Mike front and center.

2:32

So I want to know why, I

2:35

mean, maybe part of its ego. I'm

2:37

looking for a compliment. I don't know, and he said, because

2:40

I think you're one of the best anchors in the country, and

2:43

because you have a reputation for fairness.

2:46

Mike knew that Ales had a reputation for

2:48

pushing his conservative views, but

2:50

that fairness line hit his ear just

2:52

right.

2:53

If they really wanted to do this, and they really

2:55

wanted to do it right, I felt,

2:58

Okay, let's see where they want

3:01

to take this thing, and then we're off to the races.

3:03

And it was the way you want it, when you want

3:05

it. Fishneighter Report weeknights, Fox

3:08

News Channel.

3:10

But when Fox News debuted on the fall of

3:12

nineteen ninety six, it wasn't available

3:14

on some of the country's biggest cable systems,

3:17

including Time Warner in Manhattan. That's

3:20

why Mike's fans didn't know that he was still on

3:22

TV.

3:23

We used to watch you on AVC or NVC. Where

3:25

are you, Ben? What are you doing? And I'd say,

3:27

on the Fox News Channel, where can

3:29

I see it? You can't.

3:31

But on November fifth, nineteen ninety

3:33

six, everything was supposed

3:35

to change.

3:37

On election night, we would be on the

3:39

air with comprehensive coverage

3:41

a full traditional election

3:44

night show.

3:45

That Election Night with Bob Dole challenging

3:48

Bill Clinton, would be Fox News's first

3:50

big showcase, a chance for

3:52

this cable TV upstart to prove

3:54

it was a serious player. The

3:57

plan was for the whole show to get simul asked

4:00

on the Fox broadcast network, the

4:02

channel that showed NFL games and The Simpsons.

4:05

Pretty Much anyone with a TV could watch

4:07

broadcast Fox. That meant

4:09

Mike and the cable Fox News channel

4:11

would get a massive promotional boost.

4:14

The idea of me and the anchor chair that night.

4:17

I was jazzed.

4:21

Then what actually happened on Election

4:23

Night?

4:23

That was a shit show.

4:26

Imagine something that could go wrong on a live

4:28

television show. It probably happened

4:30

to Fox News on Election Night. The

4:32

actual broadcast signal kept fizzling,

4:35

the sound went in and out. When Mike and

4:37

his co anchor Katherine Kryer tried to go

4:39

live to a reporter in Arkansas, it

4:42

just didn't work. After

4:46

only a few minutes, they had to abandon

4:48

everything and just roll a half hour

4:51

of taped footage about congressional races

4:53

in complete.

4:54

Honestly, I'll tell you what was

4:56

happening off camera. In those days, you would

4:58

have a phone on the set. Well, you'd pick it

5:00

up to talk to the producer and control room,

5:03

and I said, what are we doing next? What are we doing next?

5:05

What are we doing next? And they get back

5:07

to you a minute, get back to you in a minute. And I said,

5:09

Okay, if nobody's going to answer this phone,

5:11

I guess we don't need the phone. So I ripped

5:13

the phone off the wall and I threw it across the studio.

5:16

Made a point when I asked

5:18

you to picture what could go wrong on live

5:20

TV. You may have imagined some bad

5:23

technical glitches and a frustrated anchor.

5:25

But something else happened that night that I'm guessing

5:28

you haven't thought of. Remember

5:30

how Mike had been promised that his big election

5:32

special would get shown on the broadcast Fox

5:34

network. Well that didn't

5:37

happen.

5:38

Tonight Fox presents a special

5:40

movie presentation. Do you remember the movie that

5:42

they should?

5:44

Oh?

5:44

God, I don't know this election day,

5:47

America is going to the dogs

5:52

with two hundred pounds of shedding. Truly

5:55

betoved, Oh Charles Groden film,

5:57

Holy shit, some

6:00

bites into your Election Night on NonStop

6:03

Fox.

6:06

Mike didn't get totally drowned out by a

6:08

drooling Saint Bernard. Twice

6:10

an hour during commercial breaks, the

6:12

Fox News hosts would pop in to give updates

6:15

on the race.

6:16

You could see that mister Clinton has now amassed three

6:19

hundred and sixty seven electoral votes according

6:21

to our account.

6:22

Roger Ayles claimed he was fine with getting

6:24

preempted by a dog movie because

6:26

it wasn't a dramatic presidential race anyway.

6:29

But critics weren't buying the span. They

6:32

called Fox News disorganized, incompetent,

6:35

and laughably inept. Ales

6:38

and Fox's billionaire founder Rupert

6:40

Murdoch had been touting their grand ambitions

6:42

to take over TV news, but

6:45

chances were it wasn't going to survive long

6:47

enough to redeem itself.

6:49

Viewership is dismal, and some

6:51

analysts say that Rupert Murdoch has overreached

6:54

again.

6:57

That's how things looked in nineteen ninety six,

7:00

but Fox News Channel wouldn't stay inept

7:02

or invisible for long. Four

7:04

years later, it was on the air all over

7:06

the country. It looked and sounded

7:09

different than its TV rivals, full

7:11

of eye catching graphics and blaring

7:13

sound effects, and when the next

7:15

big election came, around in November two

7:17

thousand, Fox would captivate

7:20

the nation and just maybe

7:22

changed the fate of American democracy.

7:25

Who will be the next president?

7:28

You has died?

7:28

He had two days elected him

7:31

day coverage owner on the Fox

7:33

News Channel.

7:37

This is Slow Burn, Season ten, The Rise

7:39

of Fox News. I'm Your Host

7:42

Josh Levigne. In just

7:44

a few years, the Fox News Channel went

7:46

from non existent to bumbling to

7:48

seemingly invincible. Its sudden,

7:51

shocking emergence as a cultural force

7:53

and political kingmaker transformed

7:55

the country and left a mark on all of

7:57

us along the way.

8:00

Today, as another election approaches,

8:02

Fox's future prospects feel totally

8:05

uncertain. It's been buoyed by

8:07

its codependent relationship with Donald Trump

8:10

and nearly sunk by peddling his election

8:12

lies. It's been outflanked

8:14

to the right by insurgent TV news challengers,

8:17

and it's now imperiled by a Murdoch

8:19

family succession drama that recently

8:21

spilled into public view. What

8:24

is clear, almost three decades into

8:26

the country's Fox News era, is

8:28

that Fox's fate and America's are

8:31

bound together. This series

8:33

is about how that happened and

8:35

how it almost didn't. Over

8:39

the next six episodes. I'm going to tell you

8:41

about a crucial inflection point in the nation's

8:43

history, the moment between two thousand

8:45

and two thousand and four when Fox News

8:48

first surge to power and a whole bunch

8:50

of people rose up to try and stop it. You'll

8:53

hear from the hosts, reporters, and producers

8:55

who built Fox News, many who've

8:58

never spoken publicly about what they saw

9:00

and what they created.

9:01

And I said, I don't give a good god fuck

9:04

who you are.

9:04

You are not going to kick a garbage can at

9:06

my head. You'll also hear from

9:09

Fox's biggest antagonists, the

9:11

political operatives, journalists, and comedians

9:13

who attacked it, investigated it, and tried

9:16

to mock it into submission.

9:17

Here we were like scrappy little

9:20

fighters and we're going to take them down,

9:22

and they were like, oh, look cute they are.

9:25

And you'll hear from Fox's victims who are

9:27

still coming to terms with how a cable news

9:29

channel upended their lives.

9:31

Maybe they couldn't find anything

9:33

wrong with the actual work I was doing, so

9:36

they went after me.

9:38

But first in two thousand, with

9:40

one of the tightest presidential elections ever

9:42

hanging in the balance, Fox News

9:44

made a call that divided America, maybe

9:47

forever.

9:49

If there were any more surprises that could take

9:51

place tonight, it seems impossible to

9:53

imagine.

9:55

This is episode one

9:58

we report, you can say. Caroline

10:11

Brunner came to New York in the mid nineteen nineties

10:14

with dreams of becoming a star.

10:16

I wanted to be an actor. I had an internship

10:18

at a soap opera, at Guiding Light, and I thought

10:20

that was fab.

10:24

Acting felt totally thrilling, but

10:26

also risky and unreliable. So

10:29

Caroline quickly changed course and

10:31

set her sights on a different career.

10:33

Television news kind of gave me the same sort

10:35

of buzz that I felt when I would go

10:37

on stage. There was action and there was things

10:40

happening, and it was interesting and it was challenging.

10:43

Caroline got a job at NBC News

10:45

and loved it, but when that role

10:47

ended, she couldn't find anything else. She

10:50

was desperate to get back into the industry. Somewhere

10:54

at her college reunion, she spotted

10:56

a woman who she knew worked in TV news.

10:59

Caroline approached Colds and basically

11:01

begged for help.

11:02

And she said, how resourceful are you? And I said,

11:05

I can be very resourceful. She's like, find me a ball of bourbon

11:07

and a pack of cigarettes Menthols within

11:09

fifteen minutes and we'll.

11:11

Talk hard

11:13

liquor smoking. A nearly impossible

11:16

deadline. It was like she was working in TV

11:18

news already, and Caroline

11:20

nailed the assignment. After

11:23

she handed over the bourbon and the Menthols,

11:26

she got a personal referral to Fox News.

11:29

In nineteen ninety nine, she landed a job

11:31

as a Fox production assistant in the Washington

11:33

DC bureau.

11:35

When you're dealing with something like NBC and that

11:37

behemoth, it was a lot harder to get

11:39

the ship to change course.

11:41

Whereas Fox, if something wasn't working, they would change it immediately.

11:44

I do better when things are not like

11:46

said in Stone, operationally, and

11:49

you're kind of creating things as you go.

11:51

Jim Mills was working at c SPAN when

11:53

he heard that a new thing called Fox News

11:55

Channel was staffing up in Washington, DC.

11:58

It was going to be young and swashed, not

12:01

bound by the stale conventions of classic

12:03

TV news.

12:04

That's going to be kick ass, and I want to be part

12:06

of it. I needed to be the guy

12:08

they hired for Capitol Hill.

12:11

Jim spent his days chatting up politicians

12:14

and staffers, scouring the Capitol

12:16

building for tidbits to pass along to

12:18

Fox's on camera reporters. He

12:21

was also a Fox News evangelist, telling

12:24

everyone on the hill what the channel was and

12:26

what it wasn't.

12:27

It took forever to get people

12:30

to notice that we were a separate network

12:32

than Homer Simpson. I had to go

12:34

around and go into offices

12:37

physically turning their TVs to Channel

12:39

eighteen so they could see that we have

12:41

a whole network here.

12:43

He was always up on the hill occasionally.

12:45

It was very exciting when he walked into the bureau, was

12:47

like Jim Mills is here.

12:48

Ann McGinn worked in DC too. She'd

12:51

started out at ABC News but quickly

12:53

found herself stuck with no room for advancement.

12:57

Then a couple of her mentors, including

12:59

Kochi Robs, suggested she look

13:01

at Fox.

13:02

See what this whole cable thing's about,

13:04

and then the line was and when they fail,

13:07

when they closed down, come

13:09

back to ABC.

13:12

Whether or not. Fox News crashed and burned

13:15

and would have a lot of opportunities. Unlike

13:17

its broadcast competitors, Fox

13:20

was non union, which meant there were

13:22

basically no restrictions on which

13:24

people could do what jobs. As

13:26

a newbie in Fox's DC bureau, and

13:29

worked long hours learning how to edit

13:31

tape and work with satellite.

13:33

Feats with non union I

13:35

was great cheap labor. But when you're

13:37

in your twenties and it's a startup and it's fun

13:40

and you are learning, you can rationalize

13:43

the low pay.

13:44

And Jim and Caroline were the workhorses

13:47

for Fox's daytime and early evening

13:49

programming blocks. They worked exclusively

13:52

on hard news, and none of them saw their

13:54

work through an ideological lens. Well,

13:57

Fox News Channel was founded by well known

13:59

conservatives. Anne didn't see

14:01

that kind of partisan lean in the newsroom.

14:03

Within the Washington bureau, there

14:06

were so many more Democrats working,

14:08

at least behind the scenes than

14:10

non Democrats.

14:12

Anne and Jim both told me they were middle of

14:14

the road politically back then. Caroline

14:16

Tilton more to the left. In DC.

14:19

She worked alongside one of Fox's highest

14:21

profile conservative journalists, brit

14:24

Hume, the anchor of the nightly newscast

14:26

Special Report. Not

14:28

long after Caroline started, she heard

14:31

him demand that Fox be more fair to

14:34

Hillary Clinton. During

14:37

Clinton's two thousand center race. Someone

14:39

had sent along an unflattering photo of her

14:42

to use in an on air graphic.

14:43

So he's like, you absolutely remake that graphic.

14:46

You make her look as good as she can.

14:49

Is not your job to make her look bad.

14:51

To be clear, this was happening on the news

14:53

side of Fox News. The primetime

14:55

opinion shows were a totally separate operation

14:58

with a very different approach. Well,

15:01

brit Hume insisted on being impartial

15:03

towards Hillary Clinton. Conservative host

15:05

Sean Hannity aired conspiracy theories

15:08

about her connection to a White House staffer who

15:10

died by suicide in the.

15:11

Article you talk about affairs of not

15:14

only the President, but of Hillary

15:16

Clinton.

15:16

With Vince Foster, at least David.

15:18

We were the news gatherers. Those shows

15:21

were the opinion page, and they got

15:23

a little batshit crazy sometimes.

15:26

The batshit crazy stuff. Was easy

15:28

for Jim to ignore her. He was busy

15:30

on Capitol Hill doing actual journalism,

15:34

and as the political calendar flipped to two

15:36

thousand, he felt like Fox and its

15:38

campaign reporters were holding their own.

15:41

We just did kick ass coverage of the two thousand

15:43

election. Carl Cameron and Jim

15:45

Angle, I mean, they were doing some great work.

15:48

Carl what feeling do you get from the Bush campaign?

15:50

Is this feeling of confidence anxiety?

15:53

Well, it's funny, actually, the Texas governor today said, you

15:55

don't like to feel confident in this business.

15:58

And that's the only sort of moment of

16:00

deprecating humility that we've heard in a while. This

16:02

is a very cocky campaign.

16:04

We had some great reporters

16:06

out there doing what I was doing,

16:08

which was being first, being scrappy,

16:11

being competitive.

16:12

Here we are sitting next to the

16:14

other guys, ABCCBSCNN.

16:18

It just felt like we belong.

16:21

And Jim and Caroline all say that

16:23

Fox's politics didn't affect their day

16:25

to day work. They had free reign to

16:27

look into whatever stories they wanted without

16:29

the layers of bureaucracy that weighed down

16:31

other networks. At least

16:34

that's what they thought. But just days

16:36

before the presidential election, Fox's

16:38

journalistic values would get put to the test.

16:42

A long buried secret from a candidate's

16:44

past threatened to leak out. It

16:46

was a story that could prove Fox News's

16:48

neutrality or demonstrate that a

16:51

Fox's editorial independence was

16:53

just a mirage. And the guy

16:55

who instigated everything was a Democrat

16:57

from Maine. Who called a Republican from Texas

17:00

a big wiener.

17:03

My name is Tom Connolly and

17:06

an attorney. I've been practicing now for

17:08

forty two years.

17:10

Tom Connolly is a defense lawyer and

17:12

his clients are usually in desperate straits.

17:15

Severe severe mental illness, and severe

17:17

violence.

17:18

Real hard, hard cases.

17:19

You know whoa.

17:21

Tom was active in the main Democratic Party

17:23

and the delegate to the two thousand Democratic

17:25

National Convention. He was always

17:28

looking for a chance to speak out against

17:30

the death penalty and Reaganomics. So

17:32

when the fiscally conservative capital

17:35

punishment endorsing George W. Bush

17:37

started campaigning for president, Tom

17:39

had to give him a piece of his mind.

17:42

One of the first stops was in Maine,

17:44

so I went over to protest it.

17:46

Tom found a spot in the crowd and

17:48

waited for his moment.

17:50

So he comes out and turns around

17:52

the big limo and he's got the window down, and there

17:54

he is. I'll see him, and so I yelled, you

17:57

big wiener, and he yelled back at

17:59

me.

18:00

Who you call him?

18:00

Wiener boy?

18:01

Is what he said, and he drove away.

18:04

That wiener boy incident kicked off a

18:06

grassroots anti Bush campaign. Tom

18:09

launched a wiener boy website and made

18:11

ws for Wiener bunts that featured a

18:13

drawing of Bush stuffed inside a hot dog

18:15

bun. Despite Tom's best efforts,

18:18

the whole Wiener thing didn't really catch on.

18:21

Bush got the Republican nomination, and

18:24

as the election drew closer, he had

18:26

even odds to win the presidency.

18:28

The Bush and Gore campaigns don't agree on much,

18:30

but tonight they do agree on this.

18:33

The race goes to the wire.

18:35

But Tom was about to learn something with the

18:37

potential to throw the election into

18:39

chaos. On the afternoon

18:41

of Thursday, November second, he was in

18:44

court defending a client when a friend

18:46

approached him with some information.

18:48

Did you know George Bush had a drunk drive in charge

18:50

hearing me?

18:51

I said no.

18:52

He said yeah. I said no, he said yeah.

18:55

I said really, He said.

18:56

Yeah, Even though his friend said

18:58

yeah at least three times. Tom

19:01

wanted to confirm it for himself, so

19:03

he called up the Clerk of court in Biddeford,

19:05

an old milltown not far from the Bush

19:08

family's summer estate and Kennebunkport,

19:10

Maine.

19:10

So you can need a check for a closed file and

19:12

she said okay, sure, Tom, about you and

19:15

I said George Bush.

19:17

She says, I know that, Like she was waiting for

19:19

this call.

19:20

You know, the.

19:23

Clerk facts Tom what She had a

19:25

document from nineteen seventy six showing

19:27

that George W. Bush had pleaded guilty

19:30

to a misdemeanor for operating a vehicle

19:32

under the influence and paid a small

19:34

fine. Although Bush's hard drinking

19:36

past wasn't a secret, he had never

19:38

revealed this arrest publicly. And

19:41

now this powerful, potentially

19:43

election changing intel had fallen

19:45

into the hands of the w is for Wiener.

19:47

Guy, And I thought, why hasn't

19:50

this come out? And so I'm telling anybody

19:52

that would listen, Hey, did you know? Did you know?

19:54

One of the people who listened was a local TV

19:57

reporter who happened to be hanging around the courthouse

20:00

that afternoon. Tom told her what he knew,

20:02

and then he waited for the fallout.

20:04

At six o'clock that night, I just watched

20:07

local news and I remember thinking, huh,

20:09

it's not even on there.

20:11

What Tom didn't know is that his story

20:13

was now in the hands of a national news

20:15

network.

20:17

Fox News Channel. We report,

20:19

you decide.

20:24

We'll be right back. Fox

20:31

News Channel learned about George W. Bush's

20:34

trunk driving conviction mostly by dumb

20:36

luck. On November two, two

20:38

thousand, a reporter for a local Fox

20:41

station got a tip from Tom Connolly about

20:43

Bush's dui. Her

20:45

station then got in touch with its corporate sibling,

20:47

Fox News and asked for help confirming

20:50

the story.

20:51

The internal conversation it was a healthy

20:53

debate, as it should be in any newsroom about

20:56

does this matter? Is this fair?

20:58

Ann McGahn worked on the team that coordinated

21:01

special coverage for Fox News primaries,

21:04

political conventions, and in just five

21:06

days election night. She

21:08

knew that revealing Bush's drunk driving arrest

21:10

could have massive ramifications if

21:13

Fox chose to report it.

21:16

Are we going into gossipy territory?

21:19

Is it relevant? Is it sensational?

21:22

It concerned me slightly, maybe

21:25

more than slightly.

21:26

Ann was a respected producer, but way too

21:28

junior to have any real say. This

21:30

decision came quickly from the very top,

21:33

from Roger Ayles. Fox was

21:35

going with the story.

21:36

Fox News has learned that in nineteen

21:39

seventy six, Governor Bush was arrested

21:41

in Maine and charged with driving under the influence

21:43

of liquor. The date of the charge October fifteenth, nineteen

21:45

seventy.

21:46

Six, Fox's reporter inside the Bush

21:48

campaign, Carl Cameron broke the news.

21:51

CNN, MSNBC and all the

21:53

broadcast networks scrambled to catch up,

21:56

and everyone had the same question. Had

21:59

Fox News Channel just sunk the Republican

22:01

presidential candidate.

22:02

There's never been a bigger surprise

22:05

this leak in the game.

22:06

This whole episode has added a dose of uncertainty

22:09

to the Bush campaign at the worst possible

22:12

moment.

22:12

The question tonight is whether Bush's decision

22:14

to keep his arrest from the public will hurt him

22:16

politically.

22:23

Hey, honest. Second, George

22:25

W.

22:25

Bush spoke for himself later that evening

22:27

and told a gaggle of journalists that everything

22:30

Fox had reported was true.

22:32

I

22:34

oftentimes said that years

22:36

ago, I made some mistakes. I

22:38

occasionally drank too much, and I did on that night,

22:41

and I regret that it happened, but

22:43

it did. I've learned my lesson.

22:46

Bush sounded vulnerable, his

22:48

presidential ambitions, possibly thwarted

22:51

by the network everyone had assumed would

22:53

be his biggest ally, but

22:55

he didn't just apologize for his mistakes.

22:58

He also wondered about the motives of who ever

23:00

had peddled this scoop.

23:02

I think it. I think that's an interesting question. Why now,

23:04

four days before an election, I got

23:06

my suspicious Thank you all, I've

23:08

got my suspicious.

23:10

Bush was basically giving the national

23:12

media an assignment figure out

23:14

where the dui story came from.

23:17

It didn't take long to find an answer.

23:19

Thomas Connolly of flamboyant Portland,

23:22

lawyer and active Democrat.

23:23

He now operates an outlandish anti Bush

23:26

website called w is for Wiener.

23:28

When Fox News first reported the dui

23:31

the focus was on Bush's drinking and

23:33

whether he'd hidden his arrest from voters. Now

23:36

that Tom had been identified as the source. Producer

23:39

Ann McGann watched that focus shift.

23:42

You saw Fox's coverage change a bit.

23:44

It was softening.

23:46

Twenty four hours after he broke the news

23:48

of Bush's arrest, Fox's Carl

23:50

Cameron reported another story, this

23:53

one focused almost entirely on Tom

23:55

and his Democratic Party ties. Cameron

23:58

was squarely on the news side of Fox News,

24:01

not an opinion slinger like Bill O'Reilly

24:03

or Sean Hannity. But now

24:05

he was suggesting that the dui story

24:08

very well could have been a Democratic plot,

24:10

and that Tom Connolly had been part of the plotting.

24:13

Is it fair to call it a what you

24:16

did a political dirty trick? Not at

24:18

all dirty trick?

24:19

Telling the truth.

24:20

No dirty trick is if I sat on and knew

24:22

about it in August or something, and then

24:24

snuck it out at the last minute.

24:26

Maybe that's a dirty trick.

24:27

Maybe it's not.

24:27

It's called the truth.

24:29

Is Tom Drumore scrutiny. George

24:31

W. Bush did an exclusive sit down

24:33

with Carl Cameron and essentially

24:36

thanked him and Fox for looking

24:38

into where the Dui story came from.

24:41

I understand through your reporting and others

24:43

that a Democrat

24:46

official has in

24:48

Maine put

24:51

this information out.

24:53

A couple of hours later, Bill O'Reilly

24:56

told his viewers that it was now clear that

24:58

Fox News had no partisanate, that

25:01

the channels reporting on George W. Bush's

25:03

arrest proved that. What he didn't

25:05

say is that Fox then helped Bush by

25:07

deflating its own scoop. So

25:10

why did Fox change course? O'Reilly

25:13

offered one possible answer. He

25:15

said that he'd gotten more than five thousand

25:18

letters about the Dui story, many

25:20

of them from viewers who were angry that Fox

25:23

News had put Bush in a negative light. Fox's

25:26

most loyal audience members didn't want

25:28

journalistic neutrality. They wanted

25:30

their candidate to win. Ann

25:36

McGinn hadn't been at Fox News for the network's

25:38

first presidential election, the one with

25:40

Beethoven, the slabbering Saint Bernard, and

25:43

Mike Schneider ripping the phone off the wall. By

25:45

the time she got to Fox, that early catastrophe

25:48

had become a part of workplace lore.

25:50

Folks who were there in ninety six, you could see

25:53

that they just wanted to put their head in their hand,

25:55

kind of like, wow, that was so bad.

25:58

On November seventh, two thousand, Anne

26:00

would be one of the producers in Fox's New

26:02

York control room, and she felt certain

26:04

that this time there wouldn't be any kind of debacle.

26:07

It was just like, Okay, look

26:09

how far we've come. We actually know what we're

26:11

doing now. There was a confidence I felt.

26:13

In two thousand, Fox's election special

26:16

would be hosted by the network's two star

26:18

anchors.

26:19

Now God Great Human follows on, We're

26:21

continuing election night coverage. That's clear and

26:23

consids on America's number one network

26:25

for political coverage.

26:29

Sean Hannity's primetime opinion

26:31

show would get preempted on election night,

26:34

but that afternoon, Anne and her boss

26:36

saw the conservative host coming out of his office.

26:39

Ann says that as they passed each other, Hannity

26:42

made a prediction about the presidential race.

26:44

I think our guys got this, and

26:48

I had a physical reaction. My head snapped back,

26:51

and I thought, our guy, who's our guy? We

26:53

have no guy, but I know exactly who Sean

26:56

Hannity was referring to, and

26:58

I thought it was very sumptuous

27:00

that he was assuming that we all

27:03

had the same guy.

27:05

A Fox News spokesperson says, Sean Hannity

27:08

has no recollection of this, but

27:10

no matter which candidate Hannity or the rest

27:12

of Fox preferred, election night would

27:14

come down to how America voted.

27:17

As the country desires, We'll bring you up to

27:19

the minute results with a special eye on the

27:21

exit polls and the crucial electoral vote

27:23

county.

27:24

The broadcast networks, CNN and

27:27

Fox News all relied on the same source

27:29

for their state by state vote totals, a

27:31

group called Voter News Service. While

27:34

all the channels had the same data, they

27:36

still made their own calls, relying

27:38

on in house decision teams to crunch the

27:41

numbers and project which candidate had won.

27:44

These decision desks were typically kept

27:46

separate from the rest of the newsroom to avoid

27:48

outside influence, and they were

27:50

seen as basically infallible.

27:53

If we say somebody's carriage state, you

27:55

can pretty much take it to the bank book

27:57

it if that's true.

27:59

The Fox Control only heard from

28:01

the decision team through an intermediary

28:03

who gave Ann's boss a heads up whenever

28:05

a call got made.

28:07

Results are in this is what it is Fox

28:09

News Projects.

28:11

At Fox those projections would trigger

28:13

an on screen graphic and sound effect,

28:16

the wiz Bang New.

28:18

Hampshire Roll the whiz Bang Delaware.

28:21

Oh, I love the wiz Bag. It would wiz

28:24

in and like do a turn and then there's like

28:26

a star effect at the bottom to make

28:28

it look very pretty and official and patriotic.

28:31

Sh

28:32

sh that

28:35

was great.

28:37

The Knight's first consequential whiz

28:39

Bang came around seven to fifty pm

28:41

Eastern time.

28:42

We've just been able to make a call in the state of Florida

28:44

and Fox News Projects at al Gore will

28:47

carry the state of Florida's.

28:48

Fox News wasn't going out on a limb there.

28:50

They made their call after CBS,

28:53

CNN, and NBC.

28:55

He wins the twenty five electoral votes.

28:57

It turns out that Governor Jeb Bush was not his

29:00

brothers keeper.

29:01

After all those announcements, Gore

29:03

wins Florida felt like a settled

29:05

fact, and it seemed like the election

29:07

could be trending his way. But

29:11

then two hours later everything

29:14

got unsettled.

29:15

Florida is now too close to call

29:17

with the networks.

29:18

Give us the networks, take it away.

29:20

Computer and data problem one of the CBS

29:23

News Election night headlines of the hour.

29:25

The numbers from voter News service had been

29:27

off, and the network decision teams

29:29

weren't so infallible after all. By

29:32

this point it was clear that whoever really

29:34

won Florida was going to win the White House,

29:37

and Fox's Bridge Hume sounded totally

29:39

uncertain about when the night might end.

29:42

The decision desks all over the place

29:44

are looking at this, scratching her heads and unable

29:46

to call this race.

29:47

As Tuesday night turned to Wednesday morning,

29:50

it felt like nothing was going to break the deadlock. But

29:54

at two sixteen am Eastern, the

29:56

wiz Bang banged again.

29:58

Is now projects w Bush the

30:00

winner in Florida, and thus it appears the

30:02

winner of the presidency of the United States

30:05

Fox News projection.

30:06

This time, Fox was taking the lead projecting

30:09

Florida for Bush before any of the other

30:11

networks, and Bridge Hume didn't

30:13

sound totally convinced.

30:15

I must tell you, everybody, after all of this,

30:17

all night long, I feel a little bit apprehensive

30:19

about the whole thing.

30:20

I have no.

30:21

Reason to doubt our decision desk, but

30:24

but there it is.

30:25

At Bush headquarters in Austin, Texas,

30:27

the candidate's chief strategist, Carl

30:29

Rove, was feeling wary too. When

30:31

that call came across the screen. Rove

30:34

said, it's just Fox, but

30:36

it wouldn't be just Fox for long. Within

30:39

minutes, everyone in TV news that made

30:41

the exact same call.

30:43

Oh, something's happened.

30:44

George Bush is the president of the Black of the

30:46

United States.

30:47

Florida goes Bush.

30:48

The presidency is Bush. That's

30:50

it. Unless there is a terrible calamity.

30:53

George W. Bush, by our projections,

30:55

is going to be the next president of

30:58

the United States.

31:00

Victory Party in Austin was ecstatic

31:02

about their candidates projected when and

31:05

the network that called it first and

31:07

Fox anchor paula Is on wanted

31:09

to make sure her channel got the credit

31:11

it deserved.

31:13

We're gonna take some time out now for some shameless

31:15

self promotion. You want to know what these folks

31:17

are waving at on the JumboTron themselves?

31:19

They are seeing themselves on the Fox

31:22

News channel feed the way, a lot

31:24

of these folks found out that the

31:27

president.

31:27

Elect at Gore headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.

31:30

It wouldn't stop raining, and the

31:32

Democratic nominee was certain it was all

31:34

over.

31:35

Gore had to call and concede.

31:38

Jenny Bachis was the communications

31:40

director for the Democratic National Committee

31:42

on election eight, she was in the Gore campaign's

31:45

war room.

31:46

Gore was going to go get his speech,

31:48

which was probably like five minutes away,

31:50

and that's just when all chaos broke loose.

31:53

The Florida Secretary of State says, the

31:56

margin in Florida, get this, folks.

31:58

Six When

32:01

Fox had called Florida for Bush, his

32:03

lead was in the tens of thousands. Now

32:07

with the margin shrinking down to almost

32:09

nothing, it felt absurd for

32:11

Gore to give up on the presidency.

32:13

And I'm like, can I call the networks? Can I

32:15

call the networks?

32:16

Jenny got the go ahead and told one

32:19

of her network contacts that Gore

32:21

was taking back his concession.

32:23

And she said, are you fucking sure? And

32:25

I said, I'm fucking sure, and I gotta

32:27

go.

32:28

Vice President Al Gore has called

32:30

Governor Bush and retracted

32:33

his concession because

32:36

he is now of the mind that things could

32:38

be turning yet again in Florida.

32:43

The truth is, no one should have called Florida

32:45

for George W.

32:46

Bush.

32:47

The margin was just too narrow and the

32:49

chances of a data air were just too high.

32:52

The Associated Press understood that and

32:54

decided that they couldn't make a projection. But

32:57

Fox News and its television rivals

32:59

all screw root up twice. Fox's

33:02

second retraction came after CBS,

33:05

ABC and NBC had already

33:07

pulled back their calls. It was around

33:09

four AM as gores campaign chairman

33:12

called out Fox and everyone else for

33:14

giving the race to Bush.

33:16

It now appears that their call was premature.

33:24

Now returning the state of Florida through the

33:26

too close to Call column in light of

33:28

developments there, it

33:32

would take.

33:32

A recount and a whole slew of bitter

33:34

legal fights before a real winner could

33:37

be declared. The whiplash

33:39

on election night had sewed chaos, anger,

33:41

and confusion. There was plenty of

33:44

blame to go around to Voter

33:46

News Service, whose data had helped lead

33:48

the TV networks astray, to the

33:50

networks themselves for caring more

33:52

about being first than being right, and

33:55

to Fox News in particular for

33:57

leading the way and declaring that Bush

33:59

had won.

34:00

But it mattered that Fox News was the first

34:02

network They called not only Florida

34:05

for Bush, but the country for Bush,

34:07

and it has shaped the way we perceive things.

34:10

Is sort of like, you know, Bush

34:12

was the presumed president Gores trying to snatch

34:14

something away.

34:16

A lot of people wanted to know how Fox

34:18

News had made such an important decision, one

34:20

that had created the impression that the election

34:23

was over soon. They'd all

34:25

be focusing on the man who ran the Fox

34:27

Decision team.

34:29

His name was John.

34:30

Ellis, and he was George

34:32

W. Bush's first cousin. Let's

34:38

take a quick break. John

34:46

Prescott Ellis grew up in Conquered Massachusetts,

34:49

the grandson of a US senator. He

34:51

roomed with A Kennedy at the private Milton Academy,

34:54

then moved on to Yale. After

34:56

college, she got a job at NBC as

34:58

a producer in their election nit, but

35:01

he stepped down in nineteen eighty nine after

35:03

his uncle, George Herbert Walker Bush

35:05

got elected president to avoid the appearance

35:08

of a conflict of interest. Ellis's

35:11

relationship with Fox News began

35:13

after the channel's first election fiasco,

35:16

the one in nineteen ninety six. Here's

35:18

Ellis in an interview with c SPAN.

35:20

They had what Roger Ayles felt

35:22

was not a very good night, so

35:25

he asked me to come in and sort

35:27

of do the decision desk team to professionalize

35:29

the operation there.

35:32

Ellis ran the decision team during the nineteen

35:34

ninety eight midterms and the two thousand primaries,

35:37

but his work didn't draw much scrutiny. Fox

35:40

producer Ann mcghinn remembers hearing something

35:42

about his family connections, but it didn't

35:44

seem like a huge problem.

35:46

He was related in

35:48

some way to the Bush family, but

35:51

then hearing that he is

35:53

qualified in his own right, felt

35:55

like, Okay, we'll give the benefit of the doubt, and

35:57

what kind of effect could that have on an election?

35:59

Anyway?

36:01

No one had expected the two thousand election

36:03

to come down to a couple hundred votes,

36:05

or that Fox's call in Florida would be

36:07

so pivotal. But even

36:09

so, the makeup of the Fox News decision

36:12

desk wasn't getting much attention until

36:14

six days after the election, when

36:17

John Ellis spoke with a reporter. Here's

36:19

Ellis in a twenty twenty three podcast.

36:22

I did an interview with what I the

36:24

person I thought was a friend of mine from

36:26

the New Yorker. That came out,

36:28

and there was a lot of drama

36:31

because I'm related to the Bush

36:33

family.

36:35

That New Yorker piece was written by Jane

36:37

Mayer, and Ellis seemed excited

36:39

to relive his election calling adventures.

36:42

How the afternoon exit polls had looked

36:44

so bleak for Bush that he'd pantomimed

36:46

a next slash and Roger ALS's office,

36:49

How he'd watched the numbers in Florida flip

36:51

in Bush's favor, How it was so

36:53

cool to be on the phone that night with his

36:55

two cousins, the governor and the

36:57

president elect. It

37:00

was a short article, less than seven hundred words,

37:03

but when it got published, the whole world knew

37:05

where John Ellis worked and who was in his family

37:07

tree.

37:08

It does not look good for Fox News.

37:10

I mean, that's just the trip.

37:12

I watched Fox all night and I think it

37:14

was misinformation for us to be told

37:16

things.

37:17

And it turns out that your analysts say

37:19

it was the cousin of George Bush.

37:21

It makes me very very concerned.

37:28

Before election day and even for a few

37:30

days after, almost no one knew

37:32

or cared that Bush's cousin was running

37:35

the Fox News decision team. Now,

37:38

the whole thing seemed totally bizarre

37:40

and scandalous, like if the home

37:42

plate umpire in the World Series game was

37:44

cousins with one of the starting pitchers. Sleet's

37:47

then editor Michael Kinsley thought it was all

37:50

pretty rich.

37:51

If it had been a cousin of Al Gore sitting

37:53

there making this call, Republicans

37:56

would be burning up the phone lines and spreading

37:58

all sorts of conspiracy theory.

38:01

The person who made the strongest case against

38:03

John Ellis was John Ellis. Along

38:06

with his decision desk work, Ellis had a

38:08

regular column in The Boston Globe.

38:11

In nineteen ninety nine, he told his readers

38:13

that he wouldn't write about the upcoming presidential

38:15

race. He said, there is no

38:17

way for you to know if I am telling you the truth

38:19

about George W. Bush's presidential campaign,

38:22

because in his case, my loyalty goes

38:24

to him and not to you.

38:26

He's too biased to write an opinion

38:29

column, but he's somehow hirable to

38:31

make some of the most important

38:33

news decisions at the Fox News Channel.

38:35

I don't see how that quite works out.

38:39

After The New Yorker published its story about

38:41

Ellis, Fox pleaded ignorance

38:44

about his election night phone calls. One

38:46

of Fox's editorial leaders, John Moody,

38:49

said he hadn't known that the guy running the channel's

38:51

decision desk had been chatting up his cousins.

38:54

In an internal memo, Moody wrote that

38:56

Ellis's status was under review. Meanwhile,

39:00

totally absolved itself of wrongdoing.

39:03

John Moody said it would have been a strange

39:05

not to hire Ellis because of who he is related

39:07

to as to hire him because of his relatives.

39:11

Seriously, that was their argument, that

39:13

it would have been just as unethical not to

39:15

employ George W. Bush's cousin. Finally,

39:20

Fox explained that the head of its decision

39:22

desk wasn't really the one in charge.

39:25

That John Moody, not John Ellis,

39:27

had given the ultimate sign off on the Florida

39:30

call.

39:30

This was sort of one of the earliest

39:32

instances of night being day dealing

39:35

with Fox at times.

39:36

David Fokenflick is now a media correspondent

39:39

for in PR, but in two thousand he

39:41

was on that beat for The Baltimore Sun. Back

39:44

then, David heard all of Fox's

39:46

span about John Ellis's role on election

39:48

night, but he also knew that they

39:50

were scrambling behind the scenes to rewrite

39:53

the LS narrative.

39:54

I get these furious calls from a guy who worked

39:57

for Fox.

39:58

It just so happened that the ball Tamar

40:00

Sun had assigned a freelancer to embed

40:02

with the Fox News decision team on election

40:04

Night. Now Fox PR

40:07

wanted David to command that reporter

40:09

to say publicly that John Ellis had

40:11

not been calling the shots.

40:13

He wasn't saying I need a favor. He said,

40:15

this is what's going to happen.

40:17

That Baltimore Sun freelancer had left early

40:19

on election night and hadn't gotten much information,

40:22

but she had passed along one important

40:24

thing. John Ellis had told

40:27

her directly that he was the one making

40:29

the calls for Fox News. That's

40:31

what David said to Fox PR, and

40:33

Fox PR didn't want to hear it.

40:36

This was met with a fiery

40:38

blast. You know you're trying to fuck us over, and

40:41

the answer is no, I'm telling you this is what she

40:43

observed. This was for

40:46

years a reference point and a grievance

40:48

point with Fox every time I did some reporting.

40:50

They didn't like.

40:54

But even if John Ellis did make the Florida

40:56

call personally, there was still a

40:58

big unanswered question had

41:01

he intentionally cooked the books for his first

41:03

cousin. Ellis declined

41:05

to talk to us for this podcast, but

41:08

over the last twenty four years he said

41:10

emphatically that he didn't do anything

41:12

nefarious.

41:13

It's hard to imagine how preposterous

41:16

conspiracy theories are until you find yourself

41:18

at the center of one.

41:22

In December two thousand, Ellis wrote

41:24

his own blow by blow account of election

41:26

night. In that article, he

41:28

said that Fox's decision to call Florida

41:30

for Bush was totally empirical

41:33

that based on the vote counts, al Gore

41:35

simply could not overcome the math.

41:39

But another member of the Fox decision team

41:41

later said that Ellis wasn't looking at

41:43

the numbers when he made the call. She

41:45

said he was actually on the phone with his cousin,

41:47

Jeb, the governor of Florida, and

41:50

according to her. When Ellis hung up, he

41:52

announced to the rest of the team, Jebby

41:54

says, we got it. Jebby says, we

41:56

got it. But Fox

41:58

News wasn't the only NAE work to call Florida

42:01

for Bush, just the first. So

42:03

was Fox really responsible for everyone

42:06

else falling in line? Ellis

42:08

said this in twenty twenty three.

42:10

If I'd never realized I had the power

42:13

to make CBS call for

42:15

a Bush and make NBC call for.

42:17

Bush, Ellis didn't have the

42:19

power to make CBS do anything. When

42:22

Fox made its call at two sixteen am,

42:25

the leader of the combined CBS and CNN

42:27

decision desks declined to follow suit,

42:30

saying Fox has an agenda, don't

42:32

forget. But

42:37

NBC made a different decision. When

42:40

the head of that decision desk heard about Fox's

42:42

projection, he immediately hung

42:44

up a phone call, saying, sorry, gotta

42:46

go. Fox just called it. NBC

42:49

would declare Bush the President elect a minute

42:52

and a half after Fox did. Just

42:54

twenty two seconds after that, CBS

42:56

and CNN called it too. The

42:58

network's clearly he felt competitive

43:01

pressure instigated by Fox News's

43:03

call. Maybe if Fox didn't

43:05

call the race first, nobody would have jumped

43:07

the gun, and we could have lived in a world

43:09

where neither candidate was the presumed

43:11

president elect.

43:13

Other networks were definitely influenced

43:15

by the fact that someone had gone first and

43:18

said, in this fraught

43:20

moment, George W. Bush will be the next

43:22

president of the United States. What you

43:24

hear in journalism all the time is you

43:26

want to be first, but it's more important to be right.

43:29

What you see all the time is you want to be

43:31

first, and yes, we'd like to be right.

43:34

Here's where I come down. It was

43:36

totally nuts for Fox News to put

43:38

John Ellis in charge of its decision desk.

43:41

It was also nuts for Ellis not to recuse

43:44

himself and to be chatting it up with George

43:46

and Jeb Bush all night. But I

43:48

don't believe that Fox or Ellis had

43:50

some kind of secret plan to steal the

43:52

presidency. So why was

43:55

John Ellis running the Fox News decision team

43:57

during the two thousand election. Think

44:00

Fox was sending two different signals.

44:03

The first was to a potential Republican administration,

44:06

showing that the network would be full of friendly

44:08

faces. The second signal

44:10

went out to Fox's media peers.

44:13

It was a kind of a wink at the rest

44:15

of the establishment press, saying we

44:17

can create our own counter establishment.

44:19

And by the way, if you guys are going to get all pious

44:21

about it, screw you. It's them

44:23

saying, hey, we don't have to live by your rules. You

44:26

know, we write our own rules.

44:30

Fox's rule breaking did inspire a bunch

44:32

of piousness about ethics and morals

44:34

and all that high and mighty journalism kind

44:36

of stuff. Congress also took

44:38

an interest in how Fox and everyone else

44:41

in TV news bungled the election. In

44:43

his testimony in Washington, d C. In two

44:45

thousand and one, Roger Ailes actually

44:48

said he was sorry.

44:49

Our lengthy and critical self examination

44:52

shows that we let our viewers down.

44:55

I apologize for making those bad projections

44:57

that night.

44:58

It will not happen again. Ales

45:01

may have apologized, but he wasn't admitting

45:03

that Fox did anything wrong. He

45:06

said that those bad projections were caused

45:08

by bad numbers from Voter News Service.

45:11

In his written testimony, Ales added

45:13

that John Ellis was a consummate professional,

45:16

and he said that Ellis's frequent phone calls

45:18

to his cousins on election night were nothing

45:20

more than a good journalist talking to his

45:22

very high level sources, or

45:25

to put it in another way, screw

45:27

you. Ellis

45:29

would ultimately resign his position leading

45:31

the Fox News decision desk, but

45:33

the role he played in the two thousand election loomed

45:36

large for Fox's critics, including

45:38

the Daily Shows John Stewart.

45:40

Mister Bocle has forced network higher ups to change

45:42

their slogan from we report you decide

45:44

to we report you can suck

45:47

it.

45:49

That was sort of the beginning of the Democratic

45:52

axiom that Fox News is the

45:54

axis of all evil.

45:58

Democratic spokesperson Jenny back Guests

46:00

says the two thousand election and the recount

46:02

that followed made her see the world differently.

46:05

She believed that Fox News was a destructive

46:07

influence on American life. She

46:10

was also jealous of its power and reach.

46:13

The Republicans had a motor

46:15

in their motor boat that was a cable news station

46:17

that was taking their talking points and pushing

46:19

it out or approaching the news of the day from

46:22

that perspective, we didn't have that.

46:24

I started wising up during

46:26

the recount.

46:27

Fox News producer Anne McGahn had been scandalized

46:30

when she heard Sean Hannity say that George

46:32

W. Bush was our guy. Now

46:35

she started picking up that vibe everywhere

46:37

at Fox.

46:38

It became much more apparent how

46:41

the organization felt. I

46:43

just was left with this constant feeling of

46:47

people really hope that this is going to go

46:49

towards Bush.

46:50

A special edition of The O'Reilly Factor is on

46:52

tonight.

46:53

It looks like George W.

46:54

Bush has it is on election night, Fox

46:56

News called Florida ninety seconds before

46:58

anyone else the legal

47:00

wrangling started. Bill O'Reilly declared

47:02

that Bush had won more than two weeks

47:05

before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

47:07

This whole thing in Florida was about hustle

47:09

and calculation on the part of al Gore's

47:11

team.

47:12

They brilliantly executed a plan that

47:14

almost gave the vice president to win.

47:17

During the Florida recount, Fox News's

47:19

audience grew four hundred and forty

47:21

percent to an average of more than a

47:23

million daily viewers. When

47:25

the numbers settled back down, Fox's

47:27

audience was still bigger than MSNBC's

47:30

basically permanently, and it was closing

47:32

in on CNN. Fox

47:34

News now had a loyal army of fans,

47:37

and when they called in to Fox's weekend

47:39

media criticism show. They expressed their

47:41

gratitude for what they were seeing and hearing.

47:44

You're the only ones who give a fair and balanced

47:47

news of the election.

47:48

I did choose Box channel surfing

47:50

because I felt that they were touching the closest

47:52

to the truth.

47:53

I really can only stand a turn on Fox

47:55

News to hear the coverage because it seems to

47:57

be the only network that reports

47:59

it in a fair manner.

48:02

We would get messages from people saying,

48:05

we've burnt the Fox News icon

48:08

into our TV screens because

48:10

we have an on all day, so when you turn

48:12

off the TV, you'd still see Fox News burned

48:14

into the glass.

48:15

Fox producer Caroline Brunner.

48:17

That was a turning point for me,

48:20

realizing that things were a bit different. The

48:22

Fox News bug, the logo,

48:24

it started moving because otherwise

48:26

it was burning into screens.

48:30

That Fox News logo started spinning

48:32

in the summer of two thousand and one, a

48:34

few months into the Bush presidency, in less

48:36

than five years after the channel got off

48:38

the ground. At that point, Anne

48:41

and Caroline and a bunch more of the Fox staffers

48:43

we spoke with said they still believed in each

48:45

other, but they knew that Fox News

48:48

was becoming a different place, that

48:50

a whole, big universe of Americans

48:52

believed in Fox in a different way than

48:54

they did.

48:55

I would travel around and I would tell people.

48:58

They'd ask, what do you do?

48:59

I worked for Fox News Capitol

49:01

Hill producer Jim Mills, and it's

49:03

oh, man.

49:04

Fox, I love Fox.

49:05

That's all I watch. And I

49:07

would say to them, don't

49:09

do that to your brain.

49:18

Coming up this season on Slowburn, so

49:20

we.

49:20

Just expect to do fine balanced

49:23

journalists.

49:24

I said to Roger, the last thing you

49:26

are at fair and balanced.

49:27

That should have been my slogan.

49:29

It was like, oh, I'm living in a Vanity Fair article.

49:31

Oh my god, this is insanity.

49:34

He writes it in his book. He tries to make me out.

49:36

No no, no, no, no no no, that's shut up. Yeah

49:39

you thirty five minutes.

49:40

Shut up.

49:42

There were moments where I'm like, wait,

49:45

are you fucking serious?

49:47

You know, sending a woman out to

49:49

pretend to date me was just idiotic.

49:52

I can tell you this now.

49:53

Roger was my source.

49:55

And why do you feel comfortable saying this publicly?

49:57

Now?

49:59

Well, I don't think people really asked.

50:04

And next time, before Fox News,

50:06

Roger Ales launched another cable network,

50:09

a channel that was a political and strange

50:12

and that he believed would be a huge success.

50:15

Roger would stand on a soapbox in

50:18

the middle of the newsroom. He's

50:20

giving us our marching orders, and

50:23

we want to do it right for this guy.

50:29

We couldn't make slow Burn without support from

50:31

our members, and I strongly urge you to

50:33

sign up for Slave Plus today. You'll

50:35

get all kinds of perks, including ad

50:37

free listening, and member exclusive episodes

50:39

of slow Burn. In this week's Plus episode,

50:42

you'll hear more fascinating stories about

50:44

the two thousand election from NPR media

50:46

correspondent David fokenfleg He

50:49

talked about John Ellis in the Fox News Decision

50:51

Desk, sparring with the Fox PR team

50:54

and stopping the pressis on election ning.

50:56

Join now by clicking Try Free at the

50:58

top of the Slowburn Show, Ope on Apple

51:00

Podcasts, or visits Slate

51:02

dot com slash Slowburn Plus to get

51:05

access wherever you listen. This

51:11

season of slow Burn was written and reported

51:13

by me Josh Levine, an executive

51:15

produced by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow

51:17

Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel

51:20

Meyer, and Rosie Belson. With help

51:22

from Patrick Fort, Jacob Finston, and

51:24

Julia Russo. Derek john

51:26

is Slowburn's executive producer. This

51:28

season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary

51:31

fry Merrit Jacob a senior

51:33

technical director. Mix and sound

51:35

designed by Joe plored Our theme

51:37

music was composed by Alexis Quadrado.

51:40

Derek Johnson created the artwork for this season.

51:43

We had production help from Chris Sinclair,

51:45

Josh Neil and Hillary Niles. Special

51:48

thanks to Rachel Strom, Murray Edelman,

51:50

David Moore, Leon Napok, Julia

51:52

Turner, and Lauren Levine, and to Slate's

51:55

Evan Chung, Madeline ducharm Forrest

51:57

Wickman, Christina Cattererucci, Greg

51:59

Lavalley, Ben Richmond, Seth Brown,

52:02

Katie Rayford, Caitlin Schneider, Alexandra

52:04

Cole, Emily Hodgkins, Ivy

52:07

Li Simonas, Joshua Metcalf,

52:09

Heidee straw Moon, and Alicia Montgomery,

52:11

Slate's VP of Adria. Thanks

52:13

for listening. We'll see you next week.