Aside from the sexual harassment stuff (horrible as that was), (Covered in this thread ), Ailes ran a black budget operation against his personal enemies that including spying and smear campaigns and was used to pay off sexually harassed women.
This was all part of the New York Magazine and NY Times coverage that was linked in the other thread.
Last week, New York’s Gabriel Sherman reported that those executives subsequently discovered that Ailes maintained a sort of black budget, directing portions of the network’s revenues to a variety of personal purposes — including a staff of private detectives tasked with spying on his enemies.
The black room
According to one highly placed source, Solivan worked out of what Fox insiders called “the Black Room,” an operation Ailes established around 2011 to conduct PR and surveillance campaigns against people he targeted, both inside and outside the company. The “Black Room” was located on the 14th floor of the News Corp building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas . . .
Targets of the campaigns included journalists John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, who have aggressively covered Ailes for Gawker. According to one source, private detectives followed Cook around his Brooklyn neighborhood, and Fox operatives prepared a report on him with information they intended to leak to blogs. (According to the source, one proposed line of attack claimed that Cook — whose wife, Slate news director Allison Benedikt, is Jewish — was anti-Semitic.) “I’m honored to be among Roger Ailes’s enemies,” Cook said.
Fox operatives also targeted Joe Lindsley, the former editor of Ailes’s local newspaper, the Putnam County News and Recorder. In April 2011, Lindsley had a falling-out with Ailes and quit the paper, along with two co-workers. Ailes assigned private investigators to follow Lindsley around Putnam County. He also asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts, two sources said. Meanwhile, Solivan posted negative comments about Lindsley on blogs, a source said.
Personally, if I was in Rupert’s shoes, I never would have given Ailes a cent, let alone $40 million. But I suppose the purpose is to keep the lid on and not let all of this garbage come out in court. The lack of internal controls is astounding.
Chimera
September 7, 2016, 6:59pm
2
Remember, Republicans, this is your boy and he ran your network. You own this.
Dude, the purpose of the black budget was “internal controls”. It’s a feature, not a bug.
silenus
September 7, 2016, 7:07pm
4
Yes, but to Fox viewers he did nothing wrong. They’re only chicks.
Deser2
September 8, 2016, 6:09pm
5
I’m sorry but the correct term is “dizzy broads”. :rolleyes:
BigAppleBucky:
Personally, if I was in Rupert’s shoes, I never would have given Ailes a cent, let alone $40 million. But I suppose the purpose is to keep the lid on and not let all of this garbage come out in court. The lack of internal controls is astounding.
Rupert knew exactly what kind of person Ailes was when he hired him. That’s why he hired him.