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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Ed and I just wanted to let

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Speaker 1: you know that today we're bringing you a very special

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Speaker 1: episode of Slate's award winning podcast, slow Burn. The podcast

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Speaker 1: is back with a new season titled The Rise of

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Speaker 1: Fox News. Hosted by Josh Levin. This season looks at

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Speaker 1: the early years of the Fox News Channel, when it

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Speaker 1: went from bumbling to seemingly invincible, the moment Fox actually

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Speaker 1: became Fox during the two thousand election, Fox News would

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Speaker 1: captivate the nation and arguably change the fate of American

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Speaker 1: democracy forever. You'll hear from Fox insiders who have never

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Speaker 1: spoken out before, sharing some shocking details about their time

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Speaker 1: at the station. And you'll hear from some activists and

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Speaker 1: comedians and even me about my time at the Daily Show,

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Speaker 1: where we tried to call out Fox News from time

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Speaker 1: to time. So keep listening for the first episode of

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Speaker 1: slow Burn The Rise of Fox News, and then follow

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Speaker 1: and listen to the entire season wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 2: Enjoy.

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Speaker 3: Mike Schneider was getting ready for one of the biggest

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Speaker 3: moments of his journalism career. It was November nineteen ninety six,

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Speaker 3: and he was about to anchor election night coverage on

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Speaker 3: a national television network. There was only one problem. Even

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Speaker 3: his biggest fans had no clue he was still on TV.

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Speaker 2: What they would say to me is where you been.

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Speaker 3: Mike had been an anchor and correspondent on The Today Show,

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Speaker 3: Good Morning America, and Nightline over decades. He'd built his

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Speaker 3: name as a solid old school journalist.

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Speaker 2: Be honest, be fair, don't be boring, but don't hype

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Speaker 2: anything up. Just go tell the story. It also didn't

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Speaker 2: hurt that he looked the part I had a face

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Speaker 2: where grandma's thought that their daughters might be interested in

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Speaker 2: seeing young mister Schneider.

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Speaker 3: By the mid nineties, Mike wasn't quite as fresh faced

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Speaker 3: as he used to be. But just when his time

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Speaker 3: as a TV news star seemed to be running out,

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Speaker 3: he'd gotten an opportunity he hadn't expected.

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Speaker 4: Our news sources, your source for news Fox News Channel.

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Speaker 2: Roger came to me and he said, listen, I would

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Speaker 2: like you to anchor our newscaster record every evening.

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Speaker 3: Roger was Roger Ale's, the chairman and CEO of the

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Speaker 3: brand new Fox News Channel, and he wanted Mike front

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Speaker 3: and center.

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Speaker 2: So I want to know why, I mean, maybe part

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Speaker 2: of its ego. I'm looking for a compliment. I don't know,

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Speaker 2: and he said, because I think you're one of the

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Speaker 2: best anchors in the country, and because you have a

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Speaker 2: reputation for fairness.

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Speaker 3: Mike knew that Ales had a reputation for pushing his

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Speaker 3: conservative views, but that fairness line hit his ear just right.

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Speaker 2: If they really wanted to do this, and they really

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Speaker 2: wanted to do it right, I felt, Okay, let's see

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Speaker 2: where they want to take this thing, and then we're

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Speaker 2: off to the races.

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Speaker 4: And it was the way you want it, when you

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Speaker 4: want it. Fishneighter Report weeknights, Fox News Channel.

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Speaker 3: But when Fox News debuted on the fall of nineteen

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Speaker 3: ninety six, it wasn't available on some of the country's

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Speaker 3: biggest cable systems, including Time Warner in Manhattan. That's why

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Speaker 3: Mike's fans didn't know that he was still on TV.

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Speaker 2: We used to watch you on AVC or NVC. Where

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Speaker 2: are you, Ben? What are you doing? And I'd say,

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Speaker 2: on the Fox News Channel, where can I see it?

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Speaker 2: You can't.

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Speaker 3: But on November fifth, nineteen ninety six, everything was supposed

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Speaker 3: to change.

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Speaker 2: On election night, we would be on the air with

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Speaker 2: comprehensive coverage a full traditional election night show.

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Speaker 3: That Election Night with Bob Dole challenging Bill Clinton, would

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Speaker 3: be Fox News's first big showcase, a chance for this

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Speaker 3: cable TV upstart to prove it was a serious player.

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Speaker 3: The plan was for the whole show to get simul

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Speaker 3: asked on the Fox broadcast network, the channel that showed

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Speaker 3: NFL games and The Simpsons. Pretty Much anyone with a

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Speaker 3: TV could watch broadcast Fox. That meant Mike and the

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Speaker 3: cable Fox News channel would get a massive promotional boost.

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Speaker 2: The idea of me and the anchor chair that night.

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Speaker 2: I was jazzed.

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Speaker 3: Then what actually happened on Election Night?

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Speaker 2: That was a shit show.

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Speaker 3: Imagine something that could go wrong on a live television show.

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Speaker 3: It probably happened to Fox News on Election Night. The

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Speaker 3: actual broadcast signal kept fizzling, the sound went in and out.

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Speaker 3: When Mike and his co anchor Katherine Kryer tried to

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Speaker 3: go live to a reporter in Arkansas, it just didn't work.

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Speaker 3: After only a few minutes, they had to abandon everything

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Speaker 3: and just roll a half hour of taped footage about

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Speaker 3: congressional races in complete.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, I'll tell you what was happening off camera. In

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Speaker 2: those days, you would have a phone on the set. Well,

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Speaker 2: you'd pick it up to talk to the producer and

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Speaker 2: control room, and I said, what are we doing next?

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Speaker 2: What are we doing next? What are we doing next?

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Speaker 2: And they get back to you a minute, get back

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Speaker 2: to you in a minute. And I said, Okay, if

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Speaker 2: nobody's going to answer this phone, I guess we don't

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Speaker 2: need the phone. So I ripped the phone off the

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Speaker 2: wall and I threw it across the studio.

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Speaker 3: Made a point when I asked you to picture what

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Speaker 3: could go wrong on live TV. You may have imagined

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Speaker 3: some bad technical glitches and a frustrated anchor. But something

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Speaker 3: else happened that night that I'm guessing you haven't thought of.

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Speaker 3: Remember how Mike had been promised that his big election

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Speaker 3: special would get shown on the broadcast Fox network. Well

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Speaker 3: that didn't happen.

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Speaker 2: Tonight Fox presents a special movie presentation. Do you remember

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Speaker 2: the movie that they should?

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Speaker 5: Oh?

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Speaker 2: God, I don't know this election day, America is going

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Speaker 2: to the dogs with two hundred pounds of shedding. Truly betoved,

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Speaker 2: Oh Charles Groden film, Holy shit, some bites into your

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Speaker 2: Election Night on NonStop Fox.

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Speaker 3: Mike didn't get totally drowned out by a drooling Saint Bernard.

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Speaker 3: Twice an hour during commercial breaks, the Fox News hosts

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Speaker 3: would pop in to give updates on the race.

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Speaker 2: You could see that mister Clinton has now amassed three

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Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven electoral votes according to our account.

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Speaker 3: Roger Ayles claimed he was fine with getting preempted by

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Speaker 3: a dog movie because it wasn't a dramatic presidential race anyway.

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Speaker 3: But critics weren't buying the span. They called Fox News disorganized, incompetent,

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Speaker 3: and laughably inept. Ales and Fox's billionaire founder Rupert Murdoch

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Speaker 3: had been touting their grand ambitions to take over TV news,

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Speaker 3: but chances were it wasn't going to survive long enough

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Speaker 3: to redeem itself.

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Speaker 6: Viewership is dismal, and some analysts say that Rupert Murdoch

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Speaker 6: has overreached again.

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Speaker 3: That's how things looked in nineteen ninety six, but Fox

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Speaker 3: News Channel wouldn't stay inept or invisible for long. Four

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Speaker 3: years later, it was on the air all over the country.

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Speaker 3: It looked and sounded different than its TV rivals, full

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Speaker 3: of eye catching graphics and blaring sound effects, and when

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Speaker 3: the next big election came, around in November two thousand,

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Speaker 3: Fox would captivate the nation and just maybe changed the

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Speaker 3: fate of American democracy.

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Speaker 7: Who will be the next president?

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Speaker 8: You has died?

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Speaker 7: He had two days elected him day coverage owner on

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Speaker 7: the Fox News Channel.

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Speaker 3: This is Slow Burn, Season ten, The Rise of Fox News.

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Speaker 3: I'm Your Host Josh Levigne. In just a few years,

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Speaker 3: the Fox News Channel went from non existent to bumbling

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Speaker 3: to seemingly invincible. Its sudden, shocking emergence as a cultural

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Speaker 3: force and political kingmaker transformed the country and left a

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Speaker 3: mark on all of us along the way. Today, as

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Speaker 3: another election approaches, Fox's future prospects feel totally uncertain. It's

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Speaker 3: been buoyed by its codependent relationship with Donald Trump and

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Speaker 3: nearly sunk by peddling his election lies. It's been outflanked

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Speaker 3: to the right by insurgent TV news challengers, and it's

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Speaker 3: now imperiled by a Murdoch family succession drama that recently

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Speaker 3: spilled into public view. What is clear, almost three decades

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Speaker 3: into the country's Fox News era, is that Fox's fate

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Speaker 3: and America's are bound together. This series is about how

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Speaker 3: that happened and how it almost didn't. Over the next

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Speaker 3: six episodes. I'm going to tell you about a crucial

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Speaker 3: inflection point in the nation's history, the moment between two

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Speaker 3: thousand and two thousand and four when Fox News first

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Speaker 3: surge to power and a whole bunch of people rose

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Speaker 3: up to try and stop it. You'll hear from the hosts, reporters,

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Speaker 3: and producers who built Fox News, many who've never spoken

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Speaker 3: publicly about what they saw and what they created.

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Speaker 9: And I said, I don't give a good god fuck

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Speaker 9: who you are.

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Speaker 3: You are not going to kick a garbage can at

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Speaker 3: my head. You'll also hear from Fox's biggest antagonists, the

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Speaker 3: political operatives, journalists, and comedians who attacked it, investigated it,

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Speaker 3: and tried to mock it into submission.

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Speaker 9: Here we were like scrappy little fighters and we're going

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Speaker 9: to take them down, and they were like, oh, look

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Speaker 9: cute they are.

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Speaker 3: And you'll hear from Fox's victims who are still coming

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Speaker 3: to terms with how a cable news channel upended their lives.

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Speaker 10: Maybe they couldn't find anything wrong with the actual work

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Speaker 10: I was doing, so they went after me.

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Speaker 3: But first in two thousand, with one of the tightest

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Speaker 3: presidential elections ever hanging in the balance, Fox News made

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Speaker 3: a call that divided America, maybe forever.

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Speaker 11: If there were any more surprises that could take place tonight,

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Speaker 11: it seems impossible to imagine.

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Speaker 3: This is episode one we report, you can say. Caroline

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Speaker 3: Brunner came to New York in the mid nineteen nineties

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Speaker 3: with dreams of becoming a star.

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Speaker 12: I wanted to be an actor. I had an internship

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Speaker 12: at a soap opera, at Guiding Light, and I thought

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Speaker 12: that was fab.

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Speaker 3: Acting felt totally thrilling, but also risky and unreliable. So

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Speaker 3: Caroline quickly changed course and set her sights on a

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Speaker 3: different career.

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Speaker 12: Television news kind of gave me the same sort of

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Speaker 12: buzz that I felt when I would go on stage.

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Speaker 12: There was action and there was things happening, and it

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Speaker 12: was interesting and it was challenging.

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Speaker 3: Caroline got a job at NBC News and loved it,

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Speaker 3: but when that role ended, she couldn't find anything else.

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Speaker 3: She was desperate to get back into the industry. Somewhere

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Speaker 3: at her college reunion, she spotted a woman who she

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Speaker 3: knew worked in TV news. Caroline approached Colds and basically

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Speaker 3: begged for help.

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Speaker 12: And she said, how resourceful are you? And I said,

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Speaker 12: I can be very resourceful. She's like, find me a

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Speaker 12: ball of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes Menthols within

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Speaker 12: fifteen minutes and we'll.

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Speaker 3: Talk hard liquor smoking. A nearly impossible deadline. It was

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Speaker 3: like she was working in TV news already, and Caroline

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Speaker 3: nailed the assignment. After she handed over the bourbon and

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Speaker 3: the Menthols, she got a personal referral to Fox News.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine, she landed a job as a

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Speaker 3: Fox production assistant in the Washington DC bureau.

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Speaker 12: When you're dealing with something like NBC and that behemoth,

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Speaker 12: it was a lot harder to get the ship to

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Speaker 12: change course. Whereas Fox, if something wasn't working, they would

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Speaker 12: change it immediately.

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Speaker 13: I do better when things are not like said in Stone, operationally,

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Speaker 13: and you're kind of creating things as you go.

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Speaker 3: Jim Mills was working at c SPAN when he heard

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Speaker 3: that a new thing called Fox News Channel was staffing

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Speaker 3: up in Washington, DC. It was going to be young

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Speaker 3: and swashed, not bound by the stale conventions of classic

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Speaker 3: TV news.

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Speaker 13: That's going to be kick ass, and I want to

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Speaker 13: be part of it. I needed to be the guy

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Speaker 13: they hired for Capitol Hill.

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Speaker 3: Jim spent his days chatting up politicians and staffers, scouring

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Speaker 3: the Capitol building for tidbits to pass along to Fox's

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Speaker 3: on camera reporters. He was also a Fox News evangelist,

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Speaker 3: telling everyone on the hill what the channel was and

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Speaker 3: what it wasn't.

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Speaker 13: It took forever to get people to notice that we

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Speaker 13: were a separate network than Homer Simpson. I had to

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Speaker 13: go around and go into offices physically turning their TVs

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Speaker 13: to Channel eighteen so they could see that we have

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Speaker 13: a whole network here.

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Speaker 10: He was always up on the hill occasionally. It was

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Speaker 10: very exciting when he walked into the bureau, was like

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Speaker 10: Jim Mills is here.

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Speaker 3: Ann McGinn worked in DC too. She'd started out at

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Speaker 3: ABC News but quickly found herself stuck with no room

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Speaker 3: for advancement. Then a couple of her mentors, including Kochi Robs,

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Speaker 3: suggested she look at Fox.

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Speaker 10: See what this whole cable thing's about, and then the

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Speaker 10: line was and when they fail, when they closed down,

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Speaker 10: come back to ABC.

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Speaker 3: Whether or not. Fox News crashed and burned and would

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Speaker 3: have a lot of opportunities. Unlike its broadcast competitors, Fox

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Speaker 3: was non union, which meant there were basically no restrictions

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Speaker 3: on which people could do what jobs. As a newbie

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Speaker 3: in Fox's DC bureau, and worked long hours learning how

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Speaker 3: to edit tape and work with satellite.

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Speaker 10: Feats with non union I was great cheap labor. But

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Speaker 10: when you're in your twenties and it's a startup and

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Speaker 10: it's fun and you are learning, you can rationalize the

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Speaker 10: low pay.

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Speaker 3: And Jim and Caroline were the workhorses for Fox's daytime

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Speaker 3: and early evening programming blocks. They worked exclusively on hard news,

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Speaker 3: and none of them saw their work through an ideological lens. Well,

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Speaker 3: Fox News Channel was founded by well known conservatives. Anne

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Speaker 3: didn't see that kind of partisan lean in the newsroom.

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Speaker 10: Within the Washington bureau, there were so many more Democrats working,

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Speaker 10: at least behind the scenes than non Democrats.

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Speaker 3: Anne and Jim both told me they were middle of

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Speaker 3: the road politically back then. Caroline Tilton more to the left.

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Speaker 3: In DC. She worked alongside one of Fox's highest profile

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Speaker 3: conservative journalists, brit Hume, the anchor of the nightly newscast

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Speaker 3: Special Report. Not long after Caroline started, she heard him

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Speaker 3: demand that Fox be more fair to Hillary Clinton. During

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Speaker 3: Clinton's two thousand center race. Someone had sent along an

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Speaker 3: unflattering photo of her to use in an on air graphic.

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Speaker 12: So he's like, you absolutely remake that graphic. You make

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Speaker 12: her look as good as she can. Is not your

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Speaker 12: job to make her look bad.

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Speaker 3: To be clear, this was happening on the news side

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Speaker 3: of Fox News. The primetime opinion shows were a totally

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Speaker 3: separate operation with a very different approach. Well, brit Hume

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Speaker 3: insisted on being impartial towards Hillary Clinton. Conservative host Sean

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Speaker 3: Hannity aired conspiracy theories about her connection to a White

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Speaker 3: House staffer who died by suicide in the.

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Speaker 14: Article you talk about affairs of not only the President,

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Speaker 14: but of Hillary Clinton.

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Speaker 7: With Vince Foster, at least David.

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Speaker 13: We were the news gatherers. Those shows were the opinion page,

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Speaker 13: and they got a little batshit crazy sometimes.

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Speaker 3: The batshit crazy stuff. Was easy for Jim to ignore her.

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Speaker 3: He was busy on Capitol Hill doing actual journalism, and

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Speaker 3: as the political calendar flipped to two thousand, he felt

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Speaker 3: like Fox and its campaign reporters were holding their own.

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Speaker 13: We just did kick ass coverage of the two thousand election.

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Speaker 13: Carl Cameron and Jim Angle, I mean, they were doing

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Speaker 13: some great work.

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Speaker 6: Carl what feeling do you get from the Bush campaign?

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Speaker 6: Is this feeling of confidence anxiety?

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Speaker 11: Well, it's funny, actually, the Texas governor today said, you

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Speaker 11: don't like to feel confident in this business. And that's

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Speaker 11: the only sort of moment of deprecating humility that we've

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Speaker 11: heard in a while. This is a very cocky campaign.

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Speaker 13: We had some great reporters out there doing what I

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Speaker 13: was doing, which was being first, being scrappy, being competitive.

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Speaker 10: Here we are sitting next to the other guys, ABCCBSCNN.

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Speaker 10: It just felt like we belong.

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Speaker 3: And Jim and Caroline all say that Fox's politics didn't

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Speaker 3: affect their day to day work. They had free reign

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Speaker 3: to look into whatever stories they wanted without the layers

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Speaker 3: of bureaucracy that weighed down other networks. At least that's

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Speaker 3: what they thought. But just days before the presidential election,

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Speaker 3: Fox's journalistic values would get put to the test. A

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Speaker 3: long buried secret from a candidate's past threatened to leak out.

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Speaker 3: It was a story that could prove Fox News's neutrality

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Speaker 3: or demonstrate that a Fox's editorial independence was just a mirage.

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Speaker 3: And the guy who instigated everything was a Democrat from Maine.

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Speaker 3: Who called a Republican from Texas a big wiener.

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Speaker 15: My name is Tom Connolly and an attorney. I've been

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Speaker 15: practicing now for forty two years.

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Speaker 3: Tom Connolly is a defense lawyer and his clients are

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Speaker 3: usually in desperate straits.

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Speaker 15: Severe severe mental illness, and severe violence.

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Speaker 16: Real hard, hard cases.

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Speaker 4: You know whoa.

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Speaker 3: Tom was active in the main Democratic Party and the

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Speaker 3: delegate to the two thousand Democratic National Convention. He was

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Speaker 3: always looking for a chance to speak out against the

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Speaker 3: death penalty and Reaganomics. So when the fiscally conservative capital

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Speaker 3: punishment endorsing George W. Bush started campaigning for president, Tom

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Speaker 3: had to give him a piece of his mind.

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Speaker 15: One of the first stops was in Maine, so I

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Speaker 15: went over to protest it.

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Speaker 3: Tom found a spot in the crowd and waited for

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Speaker 3: his moment.

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Speaker 15: So he comes out and turns around the big limo

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Speaker 15: and he's got the window down, and there he is.

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Speaker 15: I'll see him, and so I yelled, you big wiener,

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Speaker 15: and he yelled back at me.

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Speaker 2: Who you call him?

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Speaker 3: Wiener boy?

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Speaker 15: Is what he said, and he drove away.

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Speaker 3: That wiener boy incident kicked off a grassroots anti Bush campaign.

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Speaker 3: Tom launched a wiener boy website and made ws for

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Speaker 3: Wiener bunts that featured a drawing of Bush stuffed inside

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Speaker 3: a hot dog bun. Despite Tom's best efforts, the whole

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Speaker 3: Wiener thing didn't really catch on. Bush got the Republican nomination,

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Speaker 3: and as the election drew closer, he had even odds

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Speaker 3: to win the presidency.

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Speaker 6: The Bush and Gore campaigns don't agree on much, but

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Speaker 6: tonight they do agree on this.

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Speaker 7: The race goes to the wire.

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Speaker 3: But Tom was about to learn something with the potential

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Speaker 3: to throw the election into chaos. On the afternoon of Thursday,

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Speaker 3: November second, he was in court defending a client when

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Speaker 3: a friend approached him with some information.

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Speaker 15: Did you know George Bush had a drunk drive in

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Speaker 15: charge hearing me?

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Speaker 13: I said no.

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Speaker 15: He said yeah. I said no, he said yeah.

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Speaker 10: I said really, He said.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Even though his friend said yeah at least three times.

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Speaker 3: Tom wanted to confirm it for himself, so he called

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Speaker 3: up the Clerk of court in Biddeford, an old milltown

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Speaker 3: not far from the Bush family's summer estate and Kennebunkport, Maine.

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Speaker 15: So you can need a check for a closed file

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Speaker 15: and she said okay, sure, Tom, about you and I

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Speaker 15: said George Bush. She says, I know that, Like she

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Speaker 15: was waiting for this call.

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Speaker 14: You know, the.

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Speaker 3: Clerk facts Tom what She had a document from nineteen

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Speaker 3: seventy six showing that George W. Bush had pleaded guilty

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Speaker 3: to a misdemeanor for operating a vehicle under the influence

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Speaker 3: and paid a small fine. Although Bush's hard drinking past

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Speaker 3: wasn't a secret, he had never revealed this arrest publicly.

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Speaker 3: And now this powerful, potentially election changing intel had fallen

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Speaker 3: into the hands of the w is for Wiener.

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Speaker 15: Guy, And I thought, why hasn't this come out? And

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Speaker 15: so I'm telling anybody that would listen, Hey, did you know?

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Speaker 15: Did you know?

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Speaker 3: One of the people who listened was a local TV

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Speaker 3: reporter who happened to be hanging around the courthouse that afternoon.

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Speaker 3: Tom told her what he knew, and then he waited

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Speaker 3: for the fallout.

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Speaker 15: At six o'clock that night, I just watched local news

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Speaker 15: and I remember thinking, huh, it's not even on there.

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Speaker 3: What Tom didn't know is that his story was now

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Speaker 3: in the hands of a national news network.

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Speaker 4: Fox News Channel. We report, you decide.

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Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Fox News Channel learned about George W.

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Speaker 3: Bush's trunk driving conviction mostly by dumb luck. On November two,

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Speaker 3: two thousand, a reporter for a local Fox station got

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Speaker 3: a tip from Tom Connolly about Bush's dui. Her station

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Speaker 3: then got in touch with its corporate sibling, Fox News

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Speaker 3: and asked for help confirming the story.

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Speaker 10: The internal conversation it was a healthy debate, as it

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Speaker 10: should be in any newsroom about does this matter? Is

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Speaker 10: this fair?

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Speaker 3: Ann McGahn worked on the team that coordinated special coverage

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Speaker 3: for Fox News primaries, political conventions, and in just five

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Speaker 3: days election night. She knew that revealing Bush's drunk driving

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Speaker 3: arrest could have massive ramifications if Fox chose to report it.

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Speaker 10: Are we going into gossipy territory? Is it relevant? Is

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Speaker 10: it sensational? It concerned me slightly, maybe more than slightly.

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Speaker 3: Ann was a respected producer, but way too junior to

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Speaker 3: have any real say. This decision came quickly from the

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Speaker 3: very top, from Roger Ayles. Fox was going with the story.

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Speaker 11: Fox News has learned that in nineteen seventy six, Governor

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Speaker 11: Bush was arrested in Maine and charged with driving under

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Speaker 11: the influence of liquor. The date of the charge October fifteenth,

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Speaker 11: nineteen seventy.

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Speaker 3: Six, Fox's reporter inside the Bush campaign, Carl Cameron broke

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Speaker 3: the news. CNN, MSNBC and all the broadcast networks scrambled

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Speaker 3: to catch up, and everyone had the same question. Had

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Speaker 3: Fox News Channel just sunk the Republican presidential candidate.

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Speaker 14: There's never been a bigger surprise this leak in the game.

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Speaker 1: This whole episode has added a dose of uncertainty to

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Speaker 1: the Bush campaign at the worst possible moment.

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Speaker 6: The question tonight is whether Bush's decision to keep his

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Speaker 6: arrest from the public will hurt him politically.

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Speaker 2: Hey, honest. Second, George W.

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Speaker 3: Bush spoke for himself later that evening and told a

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Speaker 3: gaggle of journalists that everything Fox had reported was true.

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Speaker 17: I oftentimes said that years ago, I made some mistakes.

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Speaker 17: I occasionally drank too much, and I did on that night,

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Speaker 17: and I regret that it happened, but it did. I've

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Speaker 17: learned my lesson.

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Speaker 3: Bush sounded vulnerable, his presidential ambitions, possibly thwarted by the

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Speaker 3: network everyone had assumed would be his biggest ally, but

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Speaker 3: he didn't just apologize for his mistakes. He also wondered

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Speaker 3: about the motives of who ever had peddled this scoop.

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Speaker 17: I think it. I think that's an interesting question. Why now,

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Speaker 17: four days before an election, I got my suspicious Thank

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Speaker 17: you all, I've got my suspicious.

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Speaker 3: Bush was basically giving the national media an assignment figure

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Speaker 3: out where the dui story came from. It didn't take

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Speaker 3: long to find an answer.

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Speaker 7: Thomas Connolly of flamboyant Portland, lawyer and active Democrat.

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Speaker 4: He now operates an outlandish anti Bush website called w

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Speaker 4: is for Wiener.

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Speaker 3: When Fox News first reported the dui the focus was

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Speaker 3: on Bush's drinking and whether he'd hidden his arrest from voters.

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Speaker 3: Now that Tom had been identified as the source. Producer

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Speaker 3: Ann McGann watched that focus shift.

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Speaker 10: You saw Fox's coverage change a bit. It was softening.

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Speaker 3: Twenty four hours after he broke the news of Bush's arrest,

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Speaker 3: Fox's Carl Cameron reported another story, this one focused almost

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Speaker 3: entirely on Tom and his Democratic Party ties. Cameron was

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Speaker 3: squarely on the news side of Fox News, not an

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Speaker 3: opinion slinger like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But now

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Speaker 3: he was suggesting that the dui story very well could

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Speaker 3: have been a Democratic plot, and that Tom Connolly had

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00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:14,800
Speaker 3: been part of the plotting. Is it fair to call

443
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 3: it a what you did a political dirty trick? Not

444
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:19,360
Speaker 3: at all dirty trick?

445
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 6: Telling the truth.

446
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 15: No dirty trick is if I sat on and knew

447
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 15: about it in August or something, and then snuck it

448
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:26,119
Speaker 15: out at the last minute.

449
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a dirty trick.

450
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 7: Maybe it's not.

451
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 2: It's called the truth.

452
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 3: Is Tom Drumore scrutiny. George W. Bush did an exclusive

453
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 3: sit down with Carl Cameron and essentially thanked him and

454
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,080
Speaker 3: Fox for looking into where the Dui story came from.

455
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 17: I understand through your reporting and others that a Democrat

456
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 17: official has in Maine put this information out.

457
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 3: A couple of hours later, Bill O'Reilly told his viewers

458
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 3: that it was now clear that Fox News had no partisanate,

459
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 3: that the channels reporting on George W. Bush's arrest proved that.

460
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 3: What he didn't say is that Fox then helped Bush

461
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:12,000
Speaker 3: by deflating its own scoop. So why did Fox change course?

462
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,879
Speaker 3: O'Reilly offered one possible answer. He said that he'd gotten

463
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 3: more than five thousand letters about the Dui story, many

464
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 3: of them from viewers who were angry that Fox News

465
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 3: had put Bush in a negative light. Fox's most loyal

466
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 3: audience members didn't want journalistic neutrality. They wanted their candidate

467
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 3: to win. Ann McGinn hadn't been at Fox News for

468
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 3: the network's first presidential election, the one with Beethoven, the

469
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 3: slabbering Saint Bernard, and Mike Schneider ripping the phone off

470
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,199
Speaker 3: the wall. By the time she got to Fox, that

471
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 3: early catastrophe had become a part of workplace lore.

472
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 10: Folks who were there in ninety six, you could see

473
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 10: that they just wanted to put their head in their hand,

474
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 10: kind of like, wow, that was so bad.

475
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 3: On November seventh, two thousand, Anne would be one of

476
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 3: the producers in Fox's New York control room, and she

477
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 3: felt certain that this time there wouldn't be any kind

478
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 3: of debacle.

479
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 10: It was just like, Okay, look how far we've come.

480
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 10: We actually know what we're doing now. There was a

481
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 10: confidence I felt.

482
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 3: In two thousand, Fox's election special would be hosted by

483
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 3: the network's two star anchors.

484
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 7: Now God Great Human follows on, We're continuing election night coverage.

485
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:25,920
Speaker 7: That's clear and consids on America's number one network for

486
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 7: political coverage.

487
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 3: Sean Hannity's primetime opinion show would get preempted on election night,

488
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 3: but that afternoon, Anne and her boss saw the conservative

489
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 3: host coming out of his office. Ann says that as

490
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 3: they passed each other, Hannity made a prediction about the

491
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 3: presidential race.

492
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 10: I think our guys got this, and I had a

493
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 10: physical reaction. My head snapped back, and I thought, our guy,

494
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 10: who's our guy? We have no guy, but I know

495
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 10: exactly who Sean Hannity was referring to, and I thought

496
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 10: it was very sumptuous that he was assuming that we

497
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 10: all had the same guy.

498
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 3: A Fox News spokesperson says, Sean Hannity has no recollection

499
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 3: of this, but no matter which candidate Hannity or the

500
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 3: rest of Fox preferred, election night would come down to

501
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 3: how America voted.

502
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 7: As the country desires, We'll bring you up to the

503
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 7: minute results with a special eye on the exit polls

504
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 7: and the crucial electoral vote county.

505
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 3: The broadcast networks, CNN and Fox News all relied on

506
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 3: the same source for their state by state vote totals,

507
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 3: a group called Voter News Service. While all the channels

508
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 3: had the same data, they still made their own calls,

509
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 3: relying on in house decision teams to crunch the numbers

510
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 3: and project which candidate had won. These decision desks were

511
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,159
Speaker 3: typically kept separate from the rest of the newsroom to

512
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 3: avoid outside influence, and they were seen as basically infallible.

513
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 17: If we say somebody's carriage state, you can pretty much

514
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 17: take it to the bank book it if that's true.

515
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 3: The Fox Control only heard from the decision team through

516
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 3: an intermediary who gave Ann's boss a heads up whenever

517
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 3: a call got made.

518
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 10: Results are in this is what it is Fox News Projects.

519
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 3: At Fox those projections would trigger an on screen graphic

520
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,439
Speaker 3: and sound effect, the wiz Bang New.

521
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 10: Hampshire Roll the whiz Bang Delaware. Oh, I love the

522
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 10: wiz Bag. It would wiz in and like do a

523
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 10: turn and then there's like a star effect at the

524
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:30,959
Speaker 10: bottom to make it look very pretty and official and patriotic.

525
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 2: Sh sh that was great.

526
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 3: The Knight's first consequential whiz Bang came around seven to

527
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 3: fifty pm Eastern time.

528
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 6: We've just been able to make a call in the

529
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 6: state of Florida and Fox News Projects at al Gore

530
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 6: will carry the state of Florida's.

531
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 3: Fox News wasn't going out on a limb there. They

532
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 3: made their call after CBS, CNN, and NBC.

533
00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 6: He wins the twenty five electoral votes.

534
00:28:57,760 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 17: It turns out that Governor Jeb Bush was not his

535
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 17: brothers keeper.

536
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 3: After all those announcements, Gore wins Florida felt like a

537
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,040
Speaker 3: settled fact, and it seemed like the election could be

538
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 3: trending his way. But then two hours later everything got unsettled.

539
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 6: Florida is now too close to call with the networks.

540
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 14: Give us the networks, take it away.

541
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 17: Computer and data problem one of the CBS News Election

542
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 17: night headlines of the hour.

543
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 3: The numbers from voter News service had been off, and

544
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 3: the network decision teams weren't so infallible after all. By

545
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 3: this point it was clear that whoever really won Florida

546
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:38,200
Speaker 3: was going to win the White House, and Fox's Bridge

547
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 3: Hume sounded totally uncertain about when the night might end.

548
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 6: The decision desks all over the place are looking at this,

549
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 6: scratching her heads and unable to call this race.

550
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 3: As Tuesday night turned to Wednesday morning, it felt like

551
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 3: nothing was going to break the deadlock. But at two

552
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 3: sixteen am Eastern, the wiz Bang banged again.

553
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 6: Is now projects w Bush the winner in Florida, and

554
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 6: thus it appears the winner of the presidency of the

555
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 6: United States Fox News projection.

556
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 3: This time, Fox was taking the lead projecting Florida for

557
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 3: Bush before any of the other networks, and Bridge Hume

558
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 3: didn't sound totally convinced.

559
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 6: I must tell you, everybody, after all of this, all

560
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 6: night long, I feel a little bit apprehensive about the

561
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:20,400
Speaker 6: whole thing.

562
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 2: I have no.

563
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:24,959
Speaker 6: Reason to doubt our decision desk, but but there it is.

564
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 3: At Bush headquarters in Austin, Texas, the candidate's chief strategist,

565
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 3: Carl Rove, was feeling wary too. When that call came

566
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 3: across the screen. Rove said, it's just Fox, but it

567
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 3: wouldn't be just Fox for long. Within minutes, everyone in

568
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 3: TV news that made the exact same call.

569
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 2: Oh, something's happened.

570
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 6: George Bush is the president of the Black of the

571
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 6: United States.

572
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 18: Florida goes Bush.

573
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 7: The presidency is Bush. That's it. Unless there is a

574
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 7: terrible calamity. George W. Bush, by our projections, is going

575
00:30:55,840 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 7: to be the next president of the United States.

576
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 3: Victory Party in Austin was ecstatic about their candidates projected

577
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 3: when and the network that called it first and Fox

578
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 3: anchor paula Is on wanted to make sure her channel

579
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 3: got the credit it deserved.

580
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 19: We're gonna take some time out now for some shameless

581
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 19: self promotion. You want to know what these folks are

582
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 19: waving at on the JumboTron themselves? They are seeing themselves

583
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 19: on the Fox News channel feed the way, a lot

584
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 19: of these folks found out that the president.

585
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 3: Elect at Gore headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. It wouldn't stop raining,

586
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 3: and the Democratic nominee was certain it was all over.

587
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 20: Gore had to call and concede.

588
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 3: Jenny Bachis was the communications director for the Democratic National

589
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 3: Committee on election eight, she was in the Gore campaign's

590
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 3: war room.

591
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 20: Gore was going to go get his speech, which was

592
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 20: probably like five minutes away, and that's just when all

593
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 20: chaos broke loose.

594
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 6: The Florida Secretary of State says, the margin in Florida,

595
00:31:57,680 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 6: get this, folks.

596
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 3: Six When Fox had called Florida for Bush, his lead

597
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 3: was in the tens of thousands. Now with the margin

598
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 3: shrinking down to almost nothing, it felt absurd for Gore

599
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 3: to give up on the presidency.

600
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 20: And I'm like, can I call the networks? Can I

601
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:16,480
Speaker 20: call the networks?

602
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 3: Jenny got the go ahead and told one of her

603
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 3: network contacts that Gore was taking back his concession.

604
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 20: And she said, are you fucking sure? And I said,

605
00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 20: I'm fucking sure, and I gotta go.

606
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 11: Vice President Al Gore has called Governor Bush and retracted

607
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 11: his concession because he is now of the mind that

608
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 11: things could be turning yet again in Florida.

609
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 3: The truth is, no one should have called Florida for

610
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 3: George W.

611
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 2: Bush.

612
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 3: The margin was just too narrow and the chances of

613
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 3: a data air were just too high. The Associated Press

614
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 3: understood that and decided that they couldn't make a projection.

615
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 3: But Fox News and its television rivals all screw root

616
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 3: up twice. Fox's second retraction came after CBS, ABC and

617
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 3: NBC had already pulled back their calls. It was around

618
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,239
Speaker 3: four AM as gores campaign chairman called out Fox and

619
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 3: everyone else for giving the race to Bush.

620
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 6: It now appears that their call was premature. Now returning

621
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 6: the state of Florida through the too close to Call

622
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 6: column in light of developments there, it would take.

623
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 3: A recount and a whole slew of bitter legal fights

624
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 3: before a real winner could be declared. The whiplash on

625
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 3: election night had sewed chaos, anger, and confusion. There was

626
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 3: plenty of blame to go around to Voter News Service,

627
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 3: whose data had helped lead the TV networks astray, to

628
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 3: the networks themselves for caring more about being first than

629
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 3: being right, and to Fox News in particular for leading

630
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 3: the way and declaring that Bush had won.

631
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 14: But it mattered that Fox News was the first network

632
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 14: They called not only Florida for Bush, but the country

633
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 14: for Bush, and it has shaped the way we perceive things.

634
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 14: Is sort of like, you know, Bush was the presumed

635
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:15,440
Speaker 14: president Gores trying to snatch something away.

636
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 3: A lot of people wanted to know how Fox News

637
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 3: had made such an important decision, one that had created

638
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 3: the impression that the election was over soon. They'd all

639
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 3: be focusing on the man who ran the Fox Decision team.

640
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 2: His name was John.

641
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 3: Ellis, and he was George W. Bush's first cousin. Let's

642
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 3: take a quick break. John Prescott Ellis grew up in

643
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 3: Conquered Massachusetts, the grandson of a US senator. He roomed

644
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 3: with A Kennedy at the private Milton Academy, then moved

645
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 3: on to Yale. After college, she got a job at

646
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 3: NBC as a producer in their election nit, but he

647
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 3: stepped down in nineteen eighty nine after his uncle, George

648
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 3: Herbert Walker Bush got elected president to avoid the appearance

649
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:12,800
Speaker 3: of a conflict of interest. Ellis's relationship with Fox News

650
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 3: began after the channel's first election fiasco, the one in

651
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six. Here's Ellis in an interview with c SPAN.

652
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 16: They had what Roger Ayles felt was not a very

653
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:26,719
Speaker 16: good night, so he asked me to come in and

654
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 16: sort of do the decision desk team to professionalize the

655
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:30,399
Speaker 16: operation there.

656
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 3: Ellis ran the decision team during the nineteen ninety eight

657
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 3: midterms and the two thousand primaries, but his work didn't

658
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 3: draw much scrutiny. Fox producer Ann mcghinn remembers hearing something

659
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 3: about his family connections, but it didn't seem like a

660
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 3: huge problem.

661
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 10: He was related in some way to the Bush family,

662
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 10: but then hearing that he is qualified in his own right,

663
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,240
Speaker 10: felt like, Okay, we'll give the benefit of the doubt,

664
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 10: and what kind of effect could that have on an election?

665
00:35:59,520 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 7: Anyway?

666
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 3: No one had expected the two thousand election to come

667
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 3: down to a couple hundred votes, or that Fox's call

668
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 3: in Florida would be so pivotal. But even so, the

669
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 3: makeup of the Fox News decision desk wasn't getting much

670
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:17,760
Speaker 3: attention until six days after the election, when John Ellis

671
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 3: spoke with a reporter. Here's Ellis in a twenty twenty

672
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 3: three podcast.

673
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 5: I did an interview with what I the person I

674
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 5: thought was a friend of mine from the New Yorker.

675
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 5: That came out, and there was a lot of drama

676
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 5: because I'm related to the Bush family.

677
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 3: That New Yorker piece was written by Jane Mayer, and

678
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 3: Ellis seemed excited to relive his election calling adventures. How

679
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 3: the afternoon exit polls had looked so bleak for Bush

680
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,840
Speaker 3: that he'd pantomimed a next slash and Roger ALS's office,

681
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 3: How he'd watched the numbers in Florida flip in Bush's favor,

682
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 3: How it was so cool to be on the phone

683
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:57,799
Speaker 3: that night with his two cousins, the governor and the

684
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 3: president elect. It was a short article, less than seven

685
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 3: hundred words, but when it got published, the whole world

686
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 3: knew where John Ellis worked and who was in his

687
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 3: family tree.

688
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:10,800
Speaker 10: It does not look good for Fox News.

689
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:11,919
Speaker 12: I mean, that's just the trip.

690
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 15: I watched Fox all night and I think it was

691
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 15: misinformation for us to be told things.

692
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 18: And it turns out that your analysts say it was

693
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 18: the cousin of George Bush.

694
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 13: It makes me very very concerned.

695
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 3: Before election day and even for a few days after,

696
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 3: almost no one knew or cared that Bush's cousin was

697
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 3: running the Fox News decision team. Now, the whole thing

698
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 3: seemed totally bizarre and scandalous, like if the home plate

699
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,399
Speaker 3: umpire in the World Series game was cousins with one

700
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:49,439
Speaker 3: of the starting pitchers. Sleet's then editor Michael Kinsley thought

701
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 3: it was all pretty rich.

702
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:53,280
Speaker 9: If it had been a cousin of Al Gore sitting

703
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 9: there making this call, Republicans would be burning up the

704
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 9: phone lines and spreading all sorts of conspiracy theory.

705
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 3: The person who made the strongest case against John Ellis

706
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 3: was John Ellis. Along with his decision desk work, Ellis

707
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 3: had a regular column in The Boston Globe. In nineteen

708
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:13,839
Speaker 3: ninety nine, he told his readers that he wouldn't write

709
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 3: about the upcoming presidential race. He said, there is no

710
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 3: way for you to know if I am telling you

711
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 3: the truth about George W. Bush's presidential campaign, because in

712
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 3: his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.

713
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 8: He's too biased to write an opinion column, but he's

714
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 8: somehow hirable to make some of the most important news

715
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:36,319
Speaker 8: decisions at the Fox News Channel. I don't see how

716
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 8: that quite works out.

717
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 3: After The New Yorker published its story about Ellis, Fox

718
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 3: pleaded ignorance about his election night phone calls. One of

719
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 3: Fox's editorial leaders, John Moody, said he hadn't known that

720
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 3: the guy running the channel's decision desk had been chatting

721
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:56,239
Speaker 3: up his cousins. In an internal memo, Moody wrote that

722
00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:02,400
Speaker 3: Ellis's status was under review. Meanwhile, totally absolved itself of wrongdoing.

723
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 3: John Moody said it would have been a strange not

724
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 3: to hire Ellis because of who he is related to

725
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 3: as to hire him because of his relatives. Seriously, that

726
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 3: was their argument, that it would have been just as

727
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 3: unethical not to employ George W. Bush's cousin. Finally, Fox

728
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 3: explained that the head of its decision desk wasn't really

729
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 3: the one in charge. That John Moody, not John Ellis,

730
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:30,279
Speaker 3: had given the ultimate sign off on the Florida call.

731
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 9: This was sort of one of the earliest instances of

732
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,240
Speaker 9: night being day dealing with Fox at times.

733
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 3: David Fokenflick is now a media correspondent for in PR,

734
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:42,319
Speaker 3: but in two thousand he was on that beat for

735
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 3: The Baltimore Sun. Back then, David heard all of Fox's

736
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 3: span about John Ellis's role on election night, but he

737
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 3: also knew that they were scrambling behind the scenes to

738
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 3: rewrite the LS narrative.

739
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 9: I get these furious calls from a guy who worked

740
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 9: for Fox.

741
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 3: It just so happened that the ball Tamar Sun had

742
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 3: assigned a freelancer to embed with the Fox News decision

743
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 3: team on election Night. Now Fox PR wanted David to

744
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 3: command that reporter to say publicly that John Ellis had

745
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 3: not been calling the shots.

746
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 9: He wasn't saying I need a favor. He said, this

747
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 9: is what's going to happen.

748
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 3: That Baltimore Sun freelancer had left early on election night

749
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 3: and hadn't gotten much information, but she had passed along

750
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 3: one important thing. John Ellis had told her directly that

751
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 3: he was the one making the calls for Fox News.

752
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 3: That's what David said to Fox PR, and Fox PR

753
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 3: didn't want to hear it.

754
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,759
Speaker 9: This was met with a fiery blast. You know you're

755
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 9: trying to fuck us over, and the answer is no,

756
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 9: I'm telling you this is what she observed. This was

757
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 9: for years a reference point and a grievance point with

758
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 9: Fox every time I did some reporting.

759
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:50,799
Speaker 2: They didn't like.

760
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 3: But even if John Ellis did make the Florida call personally,

761
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 3: there was still a big unanswered question had he intentionally

762
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:05,840
Speaker 3: cooked the books for his first cousin. Ellis declined to

763
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 3: talk to us for this podcast, but over the last

764
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 3: twenty four years he said emphatically that he didn't do

765
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:13,080
Speaker 3: anything nefarious.

766
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 16: It's hard to imagine how preposterous conspiracy theories are until

767
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 16: you find yourself at the center of one.

768
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 3: In December two thousand, Ellis wrote his own blow by

769
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,759
Speaker 3: blow account of election night. In that article, he said

770
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 3: that Fox's decision to call Florida for Bush was totally

771
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 3: empirical that based on the vote counts, al Gore simply

772
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 3: could not overcome the math. But another member of the

773
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 3: Fox decision team later said that Ellis wasn't looking at

774
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 3: the numbers when he made the call. She said he

775
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 3: was actually on the phone with his cousin, Jeb, the

776
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 3: governor of Florida, and according to her. When Ellis hung up,

777
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 3: he announced to the rest of the team, Jebby says,

778
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 3: we got it. Jebby says, we got it. But Fox

779
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:01,760
Speaker 3: News wasn't the only NAE work to call Florida for Bush,

780
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 3: just the first. So was Fox really responsible for everyone

781
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 3: else falling in line? Ellis said this in twenty twenty three.

782
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:13,879
Speaker 5: If I'd never realized I had the power to make

783
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 5: CBS call for a Bush and make NBC call for.

784
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:21,720
Speaker 3: Bush, Ellis didn't have the power to make CBS do anything.

785
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 3: When Fox made its call at two sixteen am, the

786
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 3: leader of the combined CBS and CNN decision desks declined

787
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:33,040
Speaker 3: to follow suit, saying Fox has an agenda, don't forget.

788
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 3: But NBC made a different decision. When the head of

789
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:44,359
Speaker 3: that decision desk heard about Fox's projection, he immediately hung

790
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 3: up a phone call, saying, sorry, gotta go. Fox just

791
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 3: called it. NBC would declare Bush the President elect a

792
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 3: minute and a half after Fox did. Just twenty two

793
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:58,880
Speaker 3: seconds after that, CBS and CNN called it too. The

794
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 3: network's clearly he felt competitive pressure instigated by Fox News's call.

795
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 3: Maybe if Fox didn't call the race first, nobody would

796
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 3: have jumped the gun, and we could have lived in

797
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 3: a world where neither candidate was the presumed president elect.

798
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 9: Other networks were definitely influenced by the fact that someone

799
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 9: had gone first and said, in this fraught moment, George W.

800
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 9: Bush will be the next president of the United States. What

801
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 9: you hear in journalism all the time is you want

802
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 9: to be first, but it's more important to be right.

803
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 9: What you see all the time is you want to

804
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 9: be first, and yes, we'd like to be right.

805
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:37,680
Speaker 3: Here's where I come down. It was totally nuts for

806
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 3: Fox News to put John Ellis in charge of its

807
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 3: decision desk. It was also nuts for Ellis not to

808
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 3: recuse himself and to be chatting it up with George

809
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 3: and Jeb Bush all night. But I don't believe that

810
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 3: Fox or Ellis had some kind of secret plan to

811
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:56,239
Speaker 3: steal the presidency. So why was John Ellis running the

812
00:43:56,280 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 3: Fox News decision team during the two thousand election. Think

813
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,759
Speaker 3: Fox was sending two different signals. The first was to

814
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 3: a potential Republican administration, showing that the network would be

815
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 3: full of friendly faces. The second signal went out to

816
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 3: Fox's media peers.

817
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 9: It was a kind of a wink at the rest

818
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 9: of the establishment press, saying we can create our own

819
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,759
Speaker 9: counter establishment. And by the way, if you guys are

820
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 9: going to get all pious about it, screw you. It's

821
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 9: them saying, hey, we don't have to live by your rules.

822
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 9: You know, we write our own rules.

823
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 3: Fox's rule breaking did inspire a bunch of piousness about

824
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 3: ethics and morals and all that high and mighty journalism

825
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. Congress also took an interest in how

826
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 3: Fox and everyone else in TV news bungled the election.

827
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 3: In his testimony in Washington, d C. In two thousand

828
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 3: and one, Roger Ailes actually said he was sorry.

829
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 6: Our lengthy and critical self examination shows that we let

830
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 6: our viewers down.

831
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,839
Speaker 11: I apologize for making those bad projections that night.

832
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 3: It will not happen again. Ales may have apologized, but

833
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 3: he wasn't admitting that Fox did anything wrong. He said

834
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:09,839
Speaker 3: that those bad projections were caused by bad numbers from

835
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:13,800
Speaker 3: Voter News Service. In his written testimony, Ales added that

836
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 3: John Ellis was a consummate professional, and he said that

837
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 3: Ellis's frequent phone calls to his cousins on election night

838
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 3: were nothing more than a good journalist talking to his

839
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 3: very high level sources, or to put it in another way,

840
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 3: screw you. Ellis would ultimately resign his position leading the

841
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,759
Speaker 3: Fox News decision desk, but the role he played in

842
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 3: the two thousand election loomed large for Fox's critics, including

843
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 3: the Daily Shows John Stewart.

844
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 9: Mister Bocle has forced network higher ups to change their

845
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 9: slogan from we report you decide to we report you

846
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 9: can suck it.

847
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 20: That was sort of the beginning of the Democratic axiom

848
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 20: that Fox News is the axis of all evil.

849
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 3: Democratic spokesperson Jenny back Guests says the two thousand election

850
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 3: and the recount that followed made her see the world differently.

851
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 3: She believed that Fox News was a destructive influence on

852
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:12,440
Speaker 3: American life. She was also jealous of its power and reach.

853
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 20: The Republicans had a motor in their motor boat that

854
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,880
Speaker 20: was a cable news station that was taking their talking

855
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 20: points and pushing it out or approaching the news of

856
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:23,879
Speaker 20: the day from that perspective, we didn't have that.

857
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:27,279
Speaker 10: I started wising up during the recount.

858
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,840
Speaker 3: Fox News producer Anne McGahn had been scandalized when she

859
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 3: heard Sean Hannity say that George W. Bush was our guy.

860
00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 3: Now she started picking up that vibe everywhere at Fox.

861
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 10: It became much more apparent how the organization felt. I

862
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 10: just was left with this constant feeling of people really

863
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 10: hope that this is going to go towards Bush.

864
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 11: A special edition of The O'Reilly Factor is on tonight.

865
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:53,880
Speaker 7: It looks like George W.

866
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 3: Bush has it is on election night, Fox News called

867
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 3: Florida ninety seconds before anyone else the legal wrangling started.

868
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 3: Bill O'Reilly declared that Bush had won more than two

869
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 3: weeks before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

870
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 11: This whole thing in Florida was about hustle and calculation

871
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:12,080
Speaker 11: on the part of al Gore's team.

872
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:15,959
Speaker 14: They brilliantly executed a plan that almost gave the vice

873
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 14: president to win.

874
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 3: During the Florida recount, Fox News's audience grew four hundred

875
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 3: and forty percent to an average of more than a

876
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 3: million daily viewers. When the numbers settled back down, Fox's

877
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 3: audience was still bigger than MSNBC's basically permanently, and it

878
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 3: was closing in on CNN. Fox News now had a

879
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:38,239
Speaker 3: loyal army of fans, and when they called in to

880
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:42,239
Speaker 3: Fox's weekend media criticism show. They expressed their gratitude for

881
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:43,880
Speaker 3: what they were seeing and hearing.

882
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 4: You're the only ones who give a fair and balanced

883
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 4: news of the election.

884
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 18: I did choose Box channel surfing because I felt that

885
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 18: they were touching the closest to the truth.

886
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 10: I really can only stand a turn on Fox News

887
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:57,799
Speaker 10: to hear the coverage because it seems to be the

888
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 10: only network that reports it in a fair manner.

889
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 12: We would get messages from people saying, we've burnt the

890
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 12: Fox News icon into our TV screens because we have

891
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:12,879
Speaker 12: an on all day, so when you turn off the TV,

892
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 12: you'd still see Fox News burned into the glass.

893
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 3: Fox producer Caroline Brunner.

894
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 12: That was a turning point for me, realizing that things

895
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 12: were a bit different. The Fox News bug, the logo,

896
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 12: it started moving because otherwise it was burning into screens.

897
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 3: That Fox News logo started spinning in the summer of

898
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, a few months into the Bush presidency,

899
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 3: in less than five years after the channel got off

900
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 3: the ground. At that point, Anne and Caroline and a

901
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:44,839
Speaker 3: bunch more of the Fox staffers we spoke with said

902
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 3: they still believed in each other, but they knew that

903
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,720
Speaker 3: Fox News was becoming a different place, that a whole,

904
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,240
Speaker 3: big universe of Americans believed in Fox in a different

905
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 3: way than they did.

906
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 13: I would travel around and I would tell people. They'd ask,

907
00:48:58,560 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 13: what do you do?

908
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:02,800
Speaker 3: I worked for Fox News Capitol Hill producer Jim Mills,

909
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 3: and it's oh, man.

910
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 2: Fox, I love Fox.

911
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 13: That's all I watch. And I would say to them,

912
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 13: don't do that to your brain.

913
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:20,839
Speaker 3: Coming up this season on Slowburn, so we.

914
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:23,880
Speaker 1: Just expect to do fine balanced journalists.

915
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 17: I said to Roger, the last thing you are at

916
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 17: fair and balanced.

917
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 2: That should have been my slogan.

918
00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 9: It was like, oh, I'm living in a Vanity Fair article.

919
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:33,759
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is insanity.

920
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 9: He writes it in his book. He tries to make

921
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:36,480
Speaker 9: me out.

922
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 7: No no, no, no, no no no, that's shut up. Yeah

923
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 7: you thirty five minutes.

924
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 8: Shut up.

925
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 9: There were moments where I'm like, wait, are you fucking serious?

926
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: You know, sending a woman out to pretend to date

927
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:51,279
Speaker 1: me was just idiotic.

928
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 18: I can tell you this now.

929
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:54,240
Speaker 5: Roger was my source.

930
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 3: And why do you feel comfortable saying this publicly?

931
00:49:57,680 --> 00:49:57,919
Speaker 2: Now?

932
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 10: Well, I don't think people really asked.

933
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:08,200
Speaker 3: And next time, before Fox News, Roger Ales launched another

934
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 3: cable network, a channel that was a political and strange

935
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 3: and that he believed would be a huge success.

936
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:18,799
Speaker 18: Roger would stand on a soapbox in the middle of

937
00:50:19,160 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 18: the newsroom. He's giving us our marching orders, and we

938
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 18: want to do it right for this guy.

939
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 3: We couldn't make slow Burn without support from our members,

940
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:34,279
Speaker 3: and I strongly urge you to sign up for Slave

941
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 3: Plus today. You'll get all kinds of perks, including ad

942
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 3: free listening, and member exclusive episodes of slow Burn. In

943
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:44,279
Speaker 3: this week's Plus episode, you'll hear more fascinating stories about

944
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 3: the two thousand election from NPR media correspondent David fokenfleg

945
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 3: He talked about John Ellis in the Fox News Decision Desk,

946
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,240
Speaker 3: sparring with the Fox PR team and stopping the pressis

947
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 3: on election ning. Join now by clicking Try Free at

948
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 3: the top of the Slowburn Show, Ope on Apple Podcasts,

949
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,920
Speaker 3: or visits Slate dot com slash Slowburn Plus to get

950
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 3: access wherever you listen. This season of slow Burn was

951
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 3: written and reported by me Josh Levine, an executive produced

952
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:19,799
Speaker 3: by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad,

953
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:23,240
Speaker 3: Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson. With help from Patrick Fort,

954
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 3: Jacob Finston, and Julia Russo. Derek john is Slowburn's executive producer.

955
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:31,680
Speaker 3: This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary fry

956
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 3: Merrit Jacob a senior technical director. Mix and sound designed

957
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 3: by Joe plored Our theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrado.

958
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 3: Derek Johnson created the artwork for this season. We had

959
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:47,400
Speaker 3: production help from Chris Sinclair, Josh Neil and Hillary Niles.

960
00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Murray Edelman, David Moore, Leon Napok,

961
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 3: Julia Turner, and Lauren Levine, and to Slate's Evan Chung,

962
00:51:55,800 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 3: Madeline ducharm Forrest Wickman, Christina Cattererucci, Greg Lavalley, Ben Richmond,

963
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 3: Seth Brown, Katie Rayford, Caitlin Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Emily Hodgkins,

964
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 3: Ivy Li Simonas, Joshua Metcalf, Heidee straw Moon, and Alicia Montgomery,

965
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 3: Slate's VP of Adria. Thanks for listening. We'll see you

966
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 3: next week.