Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Ed and I just wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know that today we're bringing you a very special
Speaker 1: episode of Slate's award winning podcast, slow Burn. The podcast
Speaker 1: is back with a new season titled The Rise of
Speaker 1: Fox News. Hosted by Josh Levin. This season looks at
Speaker 1: the early years of the Fox News Channel, when it
Speaker 1: went from bumbling to seemingly invincible, the moment Fox actually
Speaker 1: became Fox during the two thousand election, Fox News would
Speaker 1: captivate the nation and arguably change the fate of American
Speaker 1: democracy forever. You'll hear from Fox insiders who have never
Speaker 1: spoken out before, sharing some shocking details about their time
Speaker 1: at the station. And you'll hear from some activists and
Speaker 1: comedians and even me about my time at the Daily Show,
Speaker 1: where we tried to call out Fox News from time
Speaker 1: to time. So keep listening for the first episode of
Speaker 1: slow Burn The Rise of Fox News, and then follow
Speaker 1: and listen to the entire season wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
Speaker 3: Mike Schneider was getting ready for one of the biggest
Speaker 3: moments of his journalism career. It was November nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: and he was about to anchor election night coverage on
Speaker 3: a national television network. There was only one problem. Even
Speaker 3: his biggest fans had no clue he was still on TV.
Speaker 2: What they would say to me is where you been.
Speaker 3: Mike had been an anchor and correspondent on The Today Show,
Speaker 3: Good Morning America, and Nightline over decades. He'd built his
Speaker 3: name as a solid old school journalist.
Speaker 2: Be honest, be fair, don't be boring, but don't hype
Speaker 2: anything up. Just go tell the story. It also didn't
Speaker 2: hurt that he looked the part I had a face
Speaker 2: where grandma's thought that their daughters might be interested in
Speaker 2: seeing young mister Schneider.
Speaker 3: By the mid nineties, Mike wasn't quite as fresh faced
Speaker 3: as he used to be. But just when his time
Speaker 3: as a TV news star seemed to be running out,
Speaker 3: he'd gotten an opportunity he hadn't expected.
Speaker 4: Our news sources, your source for news Fox News Channel.
Speaker 2: Roger came to me and he said, listen, I would
Speaker 2: like you to anchor our newscaster record every evening.
Speaker 3: Roger was Roger Ale's, the chairman and CEO of the
Speaker 3: brand new Fox News Channel, and he wanted Mike front
Speaker 3: and center.
Speaker 2: So I want to know why, I mean, maybe part
Speaker 2: of its ego. I'm looking for a compliment. I don't know,
Speaker 2: and he said, because I think you're one of the
Speaker 2: best anchors in the country, and because you have a
Speaker 2: reputation for fairness.
Speaker 3: Mike knew that Ales had a reputation for pushing his
Speaker 3: conservative views, but that fairness line hit his ear just right.
Speaker 2: If they really wanted to do this, and they really
Speaker 2: wanted to do it right, I felt, Okay, let's see
Speaker 2: where they want to take this thing, and then we're
Speaker 2: off to the races.
Speaker 4: And it was the way you want it, when you
Speaker 4: want it. Fishneighter Report weeknights, Fox News Channel.
Speaker 3: But when Fox News debuted on the fall of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, it wasn't available on some of the country's
Speaker 3: biggest cable systems, including Time Warner in Manhattan. That's why
Speaker 3: Mike's fans didn't know that he was still on TV.
Speaker 2: We used to watch you on AVC or NVC. Where
Speaker 2: are you, Ben? What are you doing? And I'd say,
Speaker 2: on the Fox News Channel, where can I see it?
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 3: But on November fifth, nineteen ninety six, everything was supposed
Speaker 3: to change.
Speaker 2: On election night, we would be on the air with
Speaker 2: comprehensive coverage a full traditional election night show.
Speaker 3: That Election Night with Bob Dole challenging Bill Clinton, would
Speaker 3: be Fox News's first big showcase, a chance for this
Speaker 3: cable TV upstart to prove it was a serious player.
Speaker 3: The plan was for the whole show to get simul
Speaker 3: asked on the Fox broadcast network, the channel that showed
Speaker 3: NFL games and The Simpsons. Pretty Much anyone with a
Speaker 3: TV could watch broadcast Fox. That meant Mike and the
Speaker 3: cable Fox News channel would get a massive promotional boost.
Speaker 2: The idea of me and the anchor chair that night.
Speaker 2: I was jazzed.
Speaker 3: Then what actually happened on Election Night?
Speaker 2: That was a shit show.
Speaker 3: Imagine something that could go wrong on a live television show.
Speaker 3: It probably happened to Fox News on Election Night. The
Speaker 3: actual broadcast signal kept fizzling, the sound went in and out.
Speaker 3: When Mike and his co anchor Katherine Kryer tried to
Speaker 3: go live to a reporter in Arkansas, it just didn't work.
Speaker 3: After only a few minutes, they had to abandon everything
Speaker 3: and just roll a half hour of taped footage about
Speaker 3: congressional races in complete.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I'll tell you what was happening off camera. In
Speaker 2: those days, you would have a phone on the set. Well,
Speaker 2: you'd pick it up to talk to the producer and
Speaker 2: control room, and I said, what are we doing next?
Speaker 2: What are we doing next? What are we doing next?
Speaker 2: And they get back to you a minute, get back
Speaker 2: to you in a minute. And I said, Okay, if
Speaker 2: nobody's going to answer this phone, I guess we don't
Speaker 2: need the phone. So I ripped the phone off the
Speaker 2: wall and I threw it across the studio.
Speaker 3: Made a point when I asked you to picture what
Speaker 3: could go wrong on live TV. You may have imagined
Speaker 3: some bad technical glitches and a frustrated anchor. But something
Speaker 3: else happened that night that I'm guessing you haven't thought of.
Speaker 3: Remember how Mike had been promised that his big election
Speaker 3: special would get shown on the broadcast Fox network. Well
Speaker 3: that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Tonight Fox presents a special movie presentation. Do you remember
Speaker 2: the movie that they should?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: God, I don't know this election day, America is going
Speaker 2: to the dogs with two hundred pounds of shedding. Truly betoved,
Speaker 2: Oh Charles Groden film, Holy shit, some bites into your
Speaker 2: Election Night on NonStop Fox.
Speaker 3: Mike didn't get totally drowned out by a drooling Saint Bernard.
Speaker 3: Twice an hour during commercial breaks, the Fox News hosts
Speaker 3: would pop in to give updates on the race.
Speaker 2: You could see that mister Clinton has now amassed three
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven electoral votes according to our account.
Speaker 3: Roger Ayles claimed he was fine with getting preempted by
Speaker 3: a dog movie because it wasn't a dramatic presidential race anyway.
Speaker 3: But critics weren't buying the span. They called Fox News disorganized, incompetent,
Speaker 3: and laughably inept. Ales and Fox's billionaire founder Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 3: had been touting their grand ambitions to take over TV news,
Speaker 3: but chances were it wasn't going to survive long enough
Speaker 3: to redeem itself.
Speaker 6: Viewership is dismal, and some analysts say that Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 6: has overreached again.
Speaker 3: That's how things looked in nineteen ninety six, but Fox
Speaker 3: News Channel wouldn't stay inept or invisible for long. Four
Speaker 3: years later, it was on the air all over the country.
Speaker 3: It looked and sounded different than its TV rivals, full
Speaker 3: of eye catching graphics and blaring sound effects, and when
Speaker 3: the next big election came, around in November two thousand,
Speaker 3: Fox would captivate the nation and just maybe changed the
Speaker 3: fate of American democracy.
Speaker 7: Who will be the next president?
Speaker 8: You has died?
Speaker 7: He had two days elected him day coverage owner on
Speaker 7: the Fox News Channel.
Speaker 3: This is Slow Burn, Season ten, The Rise of Fox News.
Speaker 3: I'm Your Host Josh Levigne. In just a few years,
Speaker 3: the Fox News Channel went from non existent to bumbling
Speaker 3: to seemingly invincible. Its sudden, shocking emergence as a cultural
Speaker 3: force and political kingmaker transformed the country and left a
Speaker 3: mark on all of us along the way. Today, as
Speaker 3: another election approaches, Fox's future prospects feel totally uncertain. It's
Speaker 3: been buoyed by its codependent relationship with Donald Trump and
Speaker 3: nearly sunk by peddling his election lies. It's been outflanked
Speaker 3: to the right by insurgent TV news challengers, and it's
Speaker 3: now imperiled by a Murdoch family succession drama that recently
Speaker 3: spilled into public view. What is clear, almost three decades
Speaker 3: into the country's Fox News era, is that Fox's fate
Speaker 3: and America's are bound together. This series is about how
Speaker 3: that happened and how it almost didn't. Over the next
Speaker 3: six episodes. I'm going to tell you about a crucial
Speaker 3: inflection point in the nation's history, the moment between two
Speaker 3: thousand and two thousand and four when Fox News first
Speaker 3: surge to power and a whole bunch of people rose
Speaker 3: up to try and stop it. You'll hear from the hosts, reporters,
Speaker 3: and producers who built Fox News, many who've never spoken
Speaker 3: publicly about what they saw and what they created.
Speaker 9: And I said, I don't give a good god fuck
Speaker 9: who you are.
Speaker 3: You are not going to kick a garbage can at
Speaker 3: my head. You'll also hear from Fox's biggest antagonists, the
Speaker 3: political operatives, journalists, and comedians who attacked it, investigated it,
Speaker 3: and tried to mock it into submission.
Speaker 9: Here we were like scrappy little fighters and we're going
Speaker 9: to take them down, and they were like, oh, look
Speaker 9: cute they are.
Speaker 3: And you'll hear from Fox's victims who are still coming
Speaker 3: to terms with how a cable news channel upended their lives.
Speaker 10: Maybe they couldn't find anything wrong with the actual work
Speaker 10: I was doing, so they went after me.
Speaker 3: But first in two thousand, with one of the tightest
Speaker 3: presidential elections ever hanging in the balance, Fox News made
Speaker 3: a call that divided America, maybe forever.
Speaker 11: If there were any more surprises that could take place tonight,
Speaker 11: it seems impossible to imagine.
Speaker 3: This is episode one we report, you can say. Caroline
Speaker 3: Brunner came to New York in the mid nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: with dreams of becoming a star.
Speaker 12: I wanted to be an actor. I had an internship
Speaker 12: at a soap opera, at Guiding Light, and I thought
Speaker 12: that was fab.
Speaker 3: Acting felt totally thrilling, but also risky and unreliable. So
Speaker 3: Caroline quickly changed course and set her sights on a
Speaker 3: different career.
Speaker 12: Television news kind of gave me the same sort of
Speaker 12: buzz that I felt when I would go on stage.
Speaker 12: There was action and there was things happening, and it
Speaker 12: was interesting and it was challenging.
Speaker 3: Caroline got a job at NBC News and loved it,
Speaker 3: but when that role ended, she couldn't find anything else.
Speaker 3: She was desperate to get back into the industry. Somewhere
Speaker 3: at her college reunion, she spotted a woman who she
Speaker 3: knew worked in TV news. Caroline approached Colds and basically
Speaker 3: begged for help.
Speaker 12: And she said, how resourceful are you? And I said,
Speaker 12: I can be very resourceful. She's like, find me a
Speaker 12: ball of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes Menthols within
Speaker 12: fifteen minutes and we'll.
Speaker 3: Talk hard liquor smoking. A nearly impossible deadline. It was
Speaker 3: like she was working in TV news already, and Caroline
Speaker 3: nailed the assignment. After she handed over the bourbon and
Speaker 3: the Menthols, she got a personal referral to Fox News.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine, she landed a job as a
Speaker 3: Fox production assistant in the Washington DC bureau.
Speaker 12: When you're dealing with something like NBC and that behemoth,
Speaker 12: it was a lot harder to get the ship to
Speaker 12: change course. Whereas Fox, if something wasn't working, they would
Speaker 12: change it immediately.
Speaker 13: I do better when things are not like said in Stone, operationally,
Speaker 13: and you're kind of creating things as you go.
Speaker 3: Jim Mills was working at c SPAN when he heard
Speaker 3: that a new thing called Fox News Channel was staffing
Speaker 3: up in Washington, DC. It was going to be young
Speaker 3: and swashed, not bound by the stale conventions of classic
Speaker 3: TV news.
Speaker 13: That's going to be kick ass, and I want to
Speaker 13: be part of it. I needed to be the guy
Speaker 13: they hired for Capitol Hill.
Speaker 3: Jim spent his days chatting up politicians and staffers, scouring
Speaker 3: the Capitol building for tidbits to pass along to Fox's
Speaker 3: on camera reporters. He was also a Fox News evangelist,
Speaker 3: telling everyone on the hill what the channel was and
Speaker 3: what it wasn't.
Speaker 13: It took forever to get people to notice that we
Speaker 13: were a separate network than Homer Simpson. I had to
Speaker 13: go around and go into offices physically turning their TVs
Speaker 13: to Channel eighteen so they could see that we have
Speaker 13: a whole network here.
Speaker 10: He was always up on the hill occasionally. It was
Speaker 10: very exciting when he walked into the bureau, was like
Speaker 10: Jim Mills is here.
Speaker 3: Ann McGinn worked in DC too. She'd started out at
Speaker 3: ABC News but quickly found herself stuck with no room
Speaker 3: for advancement. Then a couple of her mentors, including Kochi Robs,
Speaker 3: suggested she look at Fox.
Speaker 10: See what this whole cable thing's about, and then the
Speaker 10: line was and when they fail, when they closed down,
Speaker 10: come back to ABC.
Speaker 3: Whether or not. Fox News crashed and burned and would
Speaker 3: have a lot of opportunities. Unlike its broadcast competitors, Fox
Speaker 3: was non union, which meant there were basically no restrictions
Speaker 3: on which people could do what jobs. As a newbie
Speaker 3: in Fox's DC bureau, and worked long hours learning how
Speaker 3: to edit tape and work with satellite.
Speaker 10: Feats with non union I was great cheap labor. But
Speaker 10: when you're in your twenties and it's a startup and
Speaker 10: it's fun and you are learning, you can rationalize the
Speaker 10: low pay.
Speaker 3: And Jim and Caroline were the workhorses for Fox's daytime
Speaker 3: and early evening programming blocks. They worked exclusively on hard news,
Speaker 3: and none of them saw their work through an ideological lens. Well,
Speaker 3: Fox News Channel was founded by well known conservatives. Anne
Speaker 3: didn't see that kind of partisan lean in the newsroom.
Speaker 10: Within the Washington bureau, there were so many more Democrats working,
Speaker 10: at least behind the scenes than non Democrats.
Speaker 3: Anne and Jim both told me they were middle of
Speaker 3: the road politically back then. Caroline Tilton more to the left.
Speaker 3: In DC. She worked alongside one of Fox's highest profile
Speaker 3: conservative journalists, brit Hume, the anchor of the nightly newscast
Speaker 3: Special Report. Not long after Caroline started, she heard him
Speaker 3: demand that Fox be more fair to Hillary Clinton. During
Speaker 3: Clinton's two thousand center race. Someone had sent along an
Speaker 3: unflattering photo of her to use in an on air graphic.
Speaker 12: So he's like, you absolutely remake that graphic. You make
Speaker 12: her look as good as she can. Is not your
Speaker 12: job to make her look bad.
Speaker 3: To be clear, this was happening on the news side
Speaker 3: of Fox News. The primetime opinion shows were a totally
Speaker 3: separate operation with a very different approach. Well, brit Hume
Speaker 3: insisted on being impartial towards Hillary Clinton. Conservative host Sean
Speaker 3: Hannity aired conspiracy theories about her connection to a White
Speaker 3: House staffer who died by suicide in the.
Speaker 14: Article you talk about affairs of not only the President,
Speaker 14: but of Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 7: With Vince Foster, at least David.
Speaker 13: We were the news gatherers. Those shows were the opinion page,
Speaker 13: and they got a little batshit crazy sometimes.
Speaker 3: The batshit crazy stuff. Was easy for Jim to ignore her.
Speaker 3: He was busy on Capitol Hill doing actual journalism, and
Speaker 3: as the political calendar flipped to two thousand, he felt
Speaker 3: like Fox and its campaign reporters were holding their own.
Speaker 13: We just did kick ass coverage of the two thousand election.
Speaker 13: Carl Cameron and Jim Angle, I mean, they were doing
Speaker 13: some great work.
Speaker 6: Carl what feeling do you get from the Bush campaign?
Speaker 6: Is this feeling of confidence anxiety?
Speaker 11: Well, it's funny, actually, the Texas governor today said, you
Speaker 11: don't like to feel confident in this business. And that's
Speaker 11: the only sort of moment of deprecating humility that we've
Speaker 11: heard in a while. This is a very cocky campaign.
Speaker 13: We had some great reporters out there doing what I
Speaker 13: was doing, which was being first, being scrappy, being competitive.
Speaker 10: Here we are sitting next to the other guys, ABCCBSCNN.
Speaker 10: It just felt like we belong.
Speaker 3: And Jim and Caroline all say that Fox's politics didn't
Speaker 3: affect their day to day work. They had free reign
Speaker 3: to look into whatever stories they wanted without the layers
Speaker 3: of bureaucracy that weighed down other networks. At least that's
Speaker 3: what they thought. But just days before the presidential election,
Speaker 3: Fox's journalistic values would get put to the test. A
Speaker 3: long buried secret from a candidate's past threatened to leak out.
Speaker 3: It was a story that could prove Fox News's neutrality
Speaker 3: or demonstrate that a Fox's editorial independence was just a mirage.
Speaker 3: And the guy who instigated everything was a Democrat from Maine.
Speaker 3: Who called a Republican from Texas a big wiener.
Speaker 15: My name is Tom Connolly and an attorney. I've been
Speaker 15: practicing now for forty two years.
Speaker 3: Tom Connolly is a defense lawyer and his clients are
Speaker 3: usually in desperate straits.
Speaker 15: Severe severe mental illness, and severe violence.
Speaker 16: Real hard, hard cases.
Speaker 4: You know whoa.
Speaker 3: Tom was active in the main Democratic Party and the
Speaker 3: delegate to the two thousand Democratic National Convention. He was
Speaker 3: always looking for a chance to speak out against the
Speaker 3: death penalty and Reaganomics. So when the fiscally conservative capital
Speaker 3: punishment endorsing George W. Bush started campaigning for president, Tom
Speaker 3: had to give him a piece of his mind.
Speaker 15: One of the first stops was in Maine, so I
Speaker 15: went over to protest it.
Speaker 3: Tom found a spot in the crowd and waited for
Speaker 3: his moment.
Speaker 15: So he comes out and turns around the big limo
Speaker 15: and he's got the window down, and there he is.
Speaker 15: I'll see him, and so I yelled, you big wiener,
Speaker 15: and he yelled back at me.
Speaker 2: Who you call him?
Speaker 3: Wiener boy?
Speaker 15: Is what he said, and he drove away.
Speaker 3: That wiener boy incident kicked off a grassroots anti Bush campaign.
Speaker 3: Tom launched a wiener boy website and made ws for
Speaker 3: Wiener bunts that featured a drawing of Bush stuffed inside
Speaker 3: a hot dog bun. Despite Tom's best efforts, the whole
Speaker 3: Wiener thing didn't really catch on. Bush got the Republican nomination,
Speaker 3: and as the election drew closer, he had even odds
Speaker 3: to win the presidency.
Speaker 6: The Bush and Gore campaigns don't agree on much, but
Speaker 6: tonight they do agree on this.
Speaker 7: The race goes to the wire.
Speaker 3: But Tom was about to learn something with the potential
Speaker 3: to throw the election into chaos. On the afternoon of Thursday,
Speaker 3: November second, he was in court defending a client when
Speaker 3: a friend approached him with some information.
Speaker 15: Did you know George Bush had a drunk drive in
Speaker 15: charge hearing me?
Speaker 13: I said no.
Speaker 15: He said yeah. I said no, he said yeah.
Speaker 10: I said really, He said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Even though his friend said yeah at least three times.
Speaker 3: Tom wanted to confirm it for himself, so he called
Speaker 3: up the Clerk of court in Biddeford, an old milltown
Speaker 3: not far from the Bush family's summer estate and Kennebunkport, Maine.
Speaker 15: So you can need a check for a closed file
Speaker 15: and she said okay, sure, Tom, about you and I
Speaker 15: said George Bush. She says, I know that, Like she
Speaker 15: was waiting for this call.
Speaker 14: You know, the.
Speaker 3: Clerk facts Tom what She had a document from nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy six showing that George W. Bush had pleaded guilty
Speaker 3: to a misdemeanor for operating a vehicle under the influence
Speaker 3: and paid a small fine. Although Bush's hard drinking past
Speaker 3: wasn't a secret, he had never revealed this arrest publicly.
Speaker 3: And now this powerful, potentially election changing intel had fallen
Speaker 3: into the hands of the w is for Wiener.
Speaker 15: Guy, And I thought, why hasn't this come out? And
Speaker 15: so I'm telling anybody that would listen, Hey, did you know?
Speaker 15: Did you know?
Speaker 3: One of the people who listened was a local TV
Speaker 3: reporter who happened to be hanging around the courthouse that afternoon.
Speaker 3: Tom told her what he knew, and then he waited
Speaker 3: for the fallout.
Speaker 15: At six o'clock that night, I just watched local news
Speaker 15: and I remember thinking, huh, it's not even on there.
Speaker 3: What Tom didn't know is that his story was now
Speaker 3: in the hands of a national news network.
Speaker 4: Fox News Channel. We report, you decide.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Fox News Channel learned about George W.
Speaker 3: Bush's trunk driving conviction mostly by dumb luck. On November two,
Speaker 3: two thousand, a reporter for a local Fox station got
Speaker 3: a tip from Tom Connolly about Bush's dui. Her station
Speaker 3: then got in touch with its corporate sibling, Fox News
Speaker 3: and asked for help confirming the story.
Speaker 10: The internal conversation it was a healthy debate, as it
Speaker 10: should be in any newsroom about does this matter? Is
Speaker 10: this fair?
Speaker 3: Ann McGahn worked on the team that coordinated special coverage
Speaker 3: for Fox News primaries, political conventions, and in just five
Speaker 3: days election night. She knew that revealing Bush's drunk driving
Speaker 3: arrest could have massive ramifications if Fox chose to report it.
Speaker 10: Are we going into gossipy territory? Is it relevant? Is
Speaker 10: it sensational? It concerned me slightly, maybe more than slightly.
Speaker 3: Ann was a respected producer, but way too junior to
Speaker 3: have any real say. This decision came quickly from the
Speaker 3: very top, from Roger Ayles. Fox was going with the story.
Speaker 11: Fox News has learned that in nineteen seventy six, Governor
Speaker 11: Bush was arrested in Maine and charged with driving under
Speaker 11: the influence of liquor. The date of the charge October fifteenth,
Speaker 11: nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: Six, Fox's reporter inside the Bush campaign, Carl Cameron broke
Speaker 3: the news. CNN, MSNBC and all the broadcast networks scrambled
Speaker 3: to catch up, and everyone had the same question. Had
Speaker 3: Fox News Channel just sunk the Republican presidential candidate.
Speaker 14: There's never been a bigger surprise this leak in the game.
Speaker 1: This whole episode has added a dose of uncertainty to
Speaker 1: the Bush campaign at the worst possible moment.
Speaker 6: The question tonight is whether Bush's decision to keep his
Speaker 6: arrest from the public will hurt him politically.
Speaker 2: Hey, honest. Second, George W.
Speaker 3: Bush spoke for himself later that evening and told a
Speaker 3: gaggle of journalists that everything Fox had reported was true.
Speaker 17: I oftentimes said that years ago, I made some mistakes.
Speaker 17: I occasionally drank too much, and I did on that night,
Speaker 17: and I regret that it happened, but it did. I've
Speaker 17: learned my lesson.
Speaker 3: Bush sounded vulnerable, his presidential ambitions, possibly thwarted by the
Speaker 3: network everyone had assumed would be his biggest ally, but
Speaker 3: he didn't just apologize for his mistakes. He also wondered
Speaker 3: about the motives of who ever had peddled this scoop.
Speaker 17: I think it. I think that's an interesting question. Why now,
Speaker 17: four days before an election, I got my suspicious Thank
Speaker 17: you all, I've got my suspicious.
Speaker 3: Bush was basically giving the national media an assignment figure
Speaker 3: out where the dui story came from. It didn't take
Speaker 3: long to find an answer.
Speaker 7: Thomas Connolly of flamboyant Portland, lawyer and active Democrat.
Speaker 4: He now operates an outlandish anti Bush website called w
Speaker 4: is for Wiener.
Speaker 3: When Fox News first reported the dui the focus was
Speaker 3: on Bush's drinking and whether he'd hidden his arrest from voters.
Speaker 3: Now that Tom had been identified as the source. Producer
Speaker 3: Ann McGann watched that focus shift.
Speaker 10: You saw Fox's coverage change a bit. It was softening.
Speaker 3: Twenty four hours after he broke the news of Bush's arrest,
Speaker 3: Fox's Carl Cameron reported another story, this one focused almost
Speaker 3: entirely on Tom and his Democratic Party ties. Cameron was
Speaker 3: squarely on the news side of Fox News, not an
Speaker 3: opinion slinger like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But now
Speaker 3: he was suggesting that the dui story very well could
Speaker 3: have been a Democratic plot, and that Tom Connolly had
Speaker 3: been part of the plotting. Is it fair to call
Speaker 3: it a what you did a political dirty trick? Not
Speaker 3: at all dirty trick?
Speaker 6: Telling the truth.
Speaker 15: No dirty trick is if I sat on and knew
Speaker 15: about it in August or something, and then snuck it
Speaker 15: out at the last minute.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a dirty trick.
Speaker 7: Maybe it's not.
Speaker 2: It's called the truth.
Speaker 3: Is Tom Drumore scrutiny. George W. Bush did an exclusive
Speaker 3: sit down with Carl Cameron and essentially thanked him and
Speaker 3: Fox for looking into where the Dui story came from.
Speaker 17: I understand through your reporting and others that a Democrat
Speaker 17: official has in Maine put this information out.
Speaker 3: A couple of hours later, Bill O'Reilly told his viewers
Speaker 3: that it was now clear that Fox News had no partisanate,
Speaker 3: that the channels reporting on George W. Bush's arrest proved that.
Speaker 3: What he didn't say is that Fox then helped Bush
Speaker 3: by deflating its own scoop. So why did Fox change course?
Speaker 3: O'Reilly offered one possible answer. He said that he'd gotten
Speaker 3: more than five thousand letters about the Dui story, many
Speaker 3: of them from viewers who were angry that Fox News
Speaker 3: had put Bush in a negative light. Fox's most loyal
Speaker 3: audience members didn't want journalistic neutrality. They wanted their candidate
Speaker 3: to win. Ann McGinn hadn't been at Fox News for
Speaker 3: the network's first presidential election, the one with Beethoven, the
Speaker 3: slabbering Saint Bernard, and Mike Schneider ripping the phone off
Speaker 3: the wall. By the time she got to Fox, that
Speaker 3: early catastrophe had become a part of workplace lore.
Speaker 10: Folks who were there in ninety six, you could see
Speaker 10: that they just wanted to put their head in their hand,
Speaker 10: kind of like, wow, that was so bad.
Speaker 3: On November seventh, two thousand, Anne would be one of
Speaker 3: the producers in Fox's New York control room, and she
Speaker 3: felt certain that this time there wouldn't be any kind
Speaker 3: of debacle.
Speaker 10: It was just like, Okay, look how far we've come.
Speaker 10: We actually know what we're doing now. There was a
Speaker 10: confidence I felt.
Speaker 3: In two thousand, Fox's election special would be hosted by
Speaker 3: the network's two star anchors.
Speaker 7: Now God Great Human follows on, We're continuing election night coverage.
Speaker 7: That's clear and consids on America's number one network for
Speaker 7: political coverage.
Speaker 3: Sean Hannity's primetime opinion show would get preempted on election night,
Speaker 3: but that afternoon, Anne and her boss saw the conservative
Speaker 3: host coming out of his office. Ann says that as
Speaker 3: they passed each other, Hannity made a prediction about the
Speaker 3: presidential race.
Speaker 10: I think our guys got this, and I had a
Speaker 10: physical reaction. My head snapped back, and I thought, our guy,
Speaker 10: who's our guy? We have no guy, but I know
Speaker 10: exactly who Sean Hannity was referring to, and I thought
Speaker 10: it was very sumptuous that he was assuming that we
Speaker 10: all had the same guy.
Speaker 3: A Fox News spokesperson says, Sean Hannity has no recollection
Speaker 3: of this, but no matter which candidate Hannity or the
Speaker 3: rest of Fox preferred, election night would come down to
Speaker 3: how America voted.
Speaker 7: As the country desires, We'll bring you up to the
Speaker 7: minute results with a special eye on the exit polls
Speaker 7: and the crucial electoral vote county.
Speaker 3: The broadcast networks, CNN and Fox News all relied on
Speaker 3: the same source for their state by state vote totals,
Speaker 3: a group called Voter News Service. While all the channels
Speaker 3: had the same data, they still made their own calls,
Speaker 3: relying on in house decision teams to crunch the numbers
Speaker 3: and project which candidate had won. These decision desks were
Speaker 3: typically kept separate from the rest of the newsroom to
Speaker 3: avoid outside influence, and they were seen as basically infallible.
Speaker 17: If we say somebody's carriage state, you can pretty much
Speaker 17: take it to the bank book it if that's true.
Speaker 3: The Fox Control only heard from the decision team through
Speaker 3: an intermediary who gave Ann's boss a heads up whenever
Speaker 3: a call got made.
Speaker 10: Results are in this is what it is Fox News Projects.
Speaker 3: At Fox those projections would trigger an on screen graphic
Speaker 3: and sound effect, the wiz Bang New.
Speaker 10: Hampshire Roll the whiz Bang Delaware. Oh, I love the
Speaker 10: wiz Bag. It would wiz in and like do a
Speaker 10: turn and then there's like a star effect at the
Speaker 10: bottom to make it look very pretty and official and patriotic.
Speaker 2: Sh sh that was great.
Speaker 3: The Knight's first consequential whiz Bang came around seven to
Speaker 3: fifty pm Eastern time.
Speaker 6: We've just been able to make a call in the
Speaker 6: state of Florida and Fox News Projects at al Gore
Speaker 6: will carry the state of Florida's.
Speaker 3: Fox News wasn't going out on a limb there. They
Speaker 3: made their call after CBS, CNN, and NBC.
Speaker 6: He wins the twenty five electoral votes.
Speaker 17: It turns out that Governor Jeb Bush was not his
Speaker 17: brothers keeper.
Speaker 3: After all those announcements, Gore wins Florida felt like a
Speaker 3: settled fact, and it seemed like the election could be
Speaker 3: trending his way. But then two hours later everything got unsettled.
Speaker 6: Florida is now too close to call with the networks.
Speaker 14: Give us the networks, take it away.
Speaker 17: Computer and data problem one of the CBS News Election
Speaker 17: night headlines of the hour.
Speaker 3: The numbers from voter News service had been off, and
Speaker 3: the network decision teams weren't so infallible after all. By
Speaker 3: this point it was clear that whoever really won Florida
Speaker 3: was going to win the White House, and Fox's Bridge
Speaker 3: Hume sounded totally uncertain about when the night might end.
Speaker 6: The decision desks all over the place are looking at this,
Speaker 6: scratching her heads and unable to call this race.
Speaker 3: As Tuesday night turned to Wednesday morning, it felt like
Speaker 3: nothing was going to break the deadlock. But at two
Speaker 3: sixteen am Eastern, the wiz Bang banged again.
Speaker 6: Is now projects w Bush the winner in Florida, and
Speaker 6: thus it appears the winner of the presidency of the
Speaker 6: United States Fox News projection.
Speaker 3: This time, Fox was taking the lead projecting Florida for
Speaker 3: Bush before any of the other networks, and Bridge Hume
Speaker 3: didn't sound totally convinced.
Speaker 6: I must tell you, everybody, after all of this, all
Speaker 6: night long, I feel a little bit apprehensive about the
Speaker 6: whole thing.
Speaker 2: I have no.
Speaker 6: Reason to doubt our decision desk, but but there it is.
Speaker 3: At Bush headquarters in Austin, Texas, the candidate's chief strategist,
Speaker 3: Carl Rove, was feeling wary too. When that call came
Speaker 3: across the screen. Rove said, it's just Fox, but it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be just Fox for long. Within minutes, everyone in
Speaker 3: TV news that made the exact same call.
Speaker 2: Oh, something's happened.
Speaker 6: George Bush is the president of the Black of the
Speaker 6: United States.
Speaker 18: Florida goes Bush.
Speaker 7: The presidency is Bush. That's it. Unless there is a
Speaker 7: terrible calamity. George W. Bush, by our projections, is going
Speaker 7: to be the next president of the United States.
Speaker 3: Victory Party in Austin was ecstatic about their candidates projected
Speaker 3: when and the network that called it first and Fox
Speaker 3: anchor paula Is on wanted to make sure her channel
Speaker 3: got the credit it deserved.
Speaker 19: We're gonna take some time out now for some shameless
Speaker 19: self promotion. You want to know what these folks are
Speaker 19: waving at on the JumboTron themselves? They are seeing themselves
Speaker 19: on the Fox News channel feed the way, a lot
Speaker 19: of these folks found out that the president.
Speaker 3: Elect at Gore headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. It wouldn't stop raining,
Speaker 3: and the Democratic nominee was certain it was all over.
Speaker 20: Gore had to call and concede.
Speaker 3: Jenny Bachis was the communications director for the Democratic National
Speaker 3: Committee on election eight, she was in the Gore campaign's
Speaker 3: war room.
Speaker 20: Gore was going to go get his speech, which was
Speaker 20: probably like five minutes away, and that's just when all
Speaker 20: chaos broke loose.
Speaker 6: The Florida Secretary of State says, the margin in Florida,
Speaker 6: get this, folks.
Speaker 3: Six When Fox had called Florida for Bush, his lead
Speaker 3: was in the tens of thousands. Now with the margin
Speaker 3: shrinking down to almost nothing, it felt absurd for Gore
Speaker 3: to give up on the presidency.
Speaker 20: And I'm like, can I call the networks? Can I
Speaker 20: call the networks?
Speaker 3: Jenny got the go ahead and told one of her
Speaker 3: network contacts that Gore was taking back his concession.
Speaker 20: And she said, are you fucking sure? And I said,
Speaker 20: I'm fucking sure, and I gotta go.
Speaker 11: Vice President Al Gore has called Governor Bush and retracted
Speaker 11: his concession because he is now of the mind that
Speaker 11: things could be turning yet again in Florida.
Speaker 3: The truth is, no one should have called Florida for
Speaker 3: George W.
Speaker 2: Bush.
Speaker 3: The margin was just too narrow and the chances of
Speaker 3: a data air were just too high. The Associated Press
Speaker 3: understood that and decided that they couldn't make a projection.
Speaker 3: But Fox News and its television rivals all screw root
Speaker 3: up twice. Fox's second retraction came after CBS, ABC and
Speaker 3: NBC had already pulled back their calls. It was around
Speaker 3: four AM as gores campaign chairman called out Fox and
Speaker 3: everyone else for giving the race to Bush.
Speaker 6: It now appears that their call was premature. Now returning
Speaker 6: the state of Florida through the too close to Call
Speaker 6: column in light of developments there, it would take.
Speaker 3: A recount and a whole slew of bitter legal fights
Speaker 3: before a real winner could be declared. The whiplash on
Speaker 3: election night had sewed chaos, anger, and confusion. There was
Speaker 3: plenty of blame to go around to Voter News Service,
Speaker 3: whose data had helped lead the TV networks astray, to
Speaker 3: the networks themselves for caring more about being first than
Speaker 3: being right, and to Fox News in particular for leading
Speaker 3: the way and declaring that Bush had won.
Speaker 14: But it mattered that Fox News was the first network
Speaker 14: They called not only Florida for Bush, but the country
Speaker 14: for Bush, and it has shaped the way we perceive things.
Speaker 14: Is sort of like, you know, Bush was the presumed
Speaker 14: president Gores trying to snatch something away.
Speaker 3: A lot of people wanted to know how Fox News
Speaker 3: had made such an important decision, one that had created
Speaker 3: the impression that the election was over soon. They'd all
Speaker 3: be focusing on the man who ran the Fox Decision team.
Speaker 2: His name was John.
Speaker 3: Ellis, and he was George W. Bush's first cousin. Let's
Speaker 3: take a quick break. John Prescott Ellis grew up in
Speaker 3: Conquered Massachusetts, the grandson of a US senator. He roomed
Speaker 3: with A Kennedy at the private Milton Academy, then moved
Speaker 3: on to Yale. After college, she got a job at
Speaker 3: NBC as a producer in their election nit, but he
Speaker 3: stepped down in nineteen eighty nine after his uncle, George
Speaker 3: Herbert Walker Bush got elected president to avoid the appearance
Speaker 3: of a conflict of interest. Ellis's relationship with Fox News
Speaker 3: began after the channel's first election fiasco, the one in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six. Here's Ellis in an interview with c SPAN.
Speaker 16: They had what Roger Ayles felt was not a very
Speaker 16: good night, so he asked me to come in and
Speaker 16: sort of do the decision desk team to professionalize the
Speaker 16: operation there.
Speaker 3: Ellis ran the decision team during the nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 3: midterms and the two thousand primaries, but his work didn't
Speaker 3: draw much scrutiny. Fox producer Ann mcghinn remembers hearing something
Speaker 3: about his family connections, but it didn't seem like a
Speaker 3: huge problem.
Speaker 10: He was related in some way to the Bush family,
Speaker 10: but then hearing that he is qualified in his own right,
Speaker 10: felt like, Okay, we'll give the benefit of the doubt,
Speaker 10: and what kind of effect could that have on an election?
Speaker 7: Anyway?
Speaker 3: No one had expected the two thousand election to come
Speaker 3: down to a couple hundred votes, or that Fox's call
Speaker 3: in Florida would be so pivotal. But even so, the
Speaker 3: makeup of the Fox News decision desk wasn't getting much
Speaker 3: attention until six days after the election, when John Ellis
Speaker 3: spoke with a reporter. Here's Ellis in a twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three podcast.
Speaker 5: I did an interview with what I the person I
Speaker 5: thought was a friend of mine from the New Yorker.
Speaker 5: That came out, and there was a lot of drama
Speaker 5: because I'm related to the Bush family.
Speaker 3: That New Yorker piece was written by Jane Mayer, and
Speaker 3: Ellis seemed excited to relive his election calling adventures. How
Speaker 3: the afternoon exit polls had looked so bleak for Bush
Speaker 3: that he'd pantomimed a next slash and Roger ALS's office,
Speaker 3: How he'd watched the numbers in Florida flip in Bush's favor,
Speaker 3: How it was so cool to be on the phone
Speaker 3: that night with his two cousins, the governor and the
Speaker 3: president elect. It was a short article, less than seven
Speaker 3: hundred words, but when it got published, the whole world
Speaker 3: knew where John Ellis worked and who was in his
Speaker 3: family tree.
Speaker 10: It does not look good for Fox News.
Speaker 12: I mean, that's just the trip.
Speaker 15: I watched Fox all night and I think it was
Speaker 15: misinformation for us to be told things.
Speaker 18: And it turns out that your analysts say it was
Speaker 18: the cousin of George Bush.
Speaker 13: It makes me very very concerned.
Speaker 3: Before election day and even for a few days after,
Speaker 3: almost no one knew or cared that Bush's cousin was
Speaker 3: running the Fox News decision team. Now, the whole thing
Speaker 3: seemed totally bizarre and scandalous, like if the home plate
Speaker 3: umpire in the World Series game was cousins with one
Speaker 3: of the starting pitchers. Sleet's then editor Michael Kinsley thought
Speaker 3: it was all pretty rich.
Speaker 9: If it had been a cousin of Al Gore sitting
Speaker 9: there making this call, Republicans would be burning up the
Speaker 9: phone lines and spreading all sorts of conspiracy theory.
Speaker 3: The person who made the strongest case against John Ellis
Speaker 3: was John Ellis. Along with his decision desk work, Ellis
Speaker 3: had a regular column in The Boston Globe. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine, he told his readers that he wouldn't write
Speaker 3: about the upcoming presidential race. He said, there is no
Speaker 3: way for you to know if I am telling you
Speaker 3: the truth about George W. Bush's presidential campaign, because in
Speaker 3: his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.
Speaker 8: He's too biased to write an opinion column, but he's
Speaker 8: somehow hirable to make some of the most important news
Speaker 8: decisions at the Fox News Channel. I don't see how
Speaker 8: that quite works out.
Speaker 3: After The New Yorker published its story about Ellis, Fox
Speaker 3: pleaded ignorance about his election night phone calls. One of
Speaker 3: Fox's editorial leaders, John Moody, said he hadn't known that
Speaker 3: the guy running the channel's decision desk had been chatting
Speaker 3: up his cousins. In an internal memo, Moody wrote that
Speaker 3: Ellis's status was under review. Meanwhile, totally absolved itself of wrongdoing.
Speaker 3: John Moody said it would have been a strange not
Speaker 3: to hire Ellis because of who he is related to
Speaker 3: as to hire him because of his relatives. Seriously, that
Speaker 3: was their argument, that it would have been just as
Speaker 3: unethical not to employ George W. Bush's cousin. Finally, Fox
Speaker 3: explained that the head of its decision desk wasn't really
Speaker 3: the one in charge. That John Moody, not John Ellis,
Speaker 3: had given the ultimate sign off on the Florida call.
Speaker 9: This was sort of one of the earliest instances of
Speaker 9: night being day dealing with Fox at times.
Speaker 3: David Fokenflick is now a media correspondent for in PR,
Speaker 3: but in two thousand he was on that beat for
Speaker 3: The Baltimore Sun. Back then, David heard all of Fox's
Speaker 3: span about John Ellis's role on election night, but he
Speaker 3: also knew that they were scrambling behind the scenes to
Speaker 3: rewrite the LS narrative.
Speaker 9: I get these furious calls from a guy who worked
Speaker 9: for Fox.
Speaker 3: It just so happened that the ball Tamar Sun had
Speaker 3: assigned a freelancer to embed with the Fox News decision
Speaker 3: team on election Night. Now Fox PR wanted David to
Speaker 3: command that reporter to say publicly that John Ellis had
Speaker 3: not been calling the shots.
Speaker 9: He wasn't saying I need a favor. He said, this
Speaker 9: is what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: That Baltimore Sun freelancer had left early on election night
Speaker 3: and hadn't gotten much information, but she had passed along
Speaker 3: one important thing. John Ellis had told her directly that
Speaker 3: he was the one making the calls for Fox News.
Speaker 3: That's what David said to Fox PR, and Fox PR
Speaker 3: didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 9: This was met with a fiery blast. You know you're
Speaker 9: trying to fuck us over, and the answer is no,
Speaker 9: I'm telling you this is what she observed. This was
Speaker 9: for years a reference point and a grievance point with
Speaker 9: Fox every time I did some reporting.
Speaker 2: They didn't like.
Speaker 3: But even if John Ellis did make the Florida call personally,
Speaker 3: there was still a big unanswered question had he intentionally
Speaker 3: cooked the books for his first cousin. Ellis declined to
Speaker 3: talk to us for this podcast, but over the last
Speaker 3: twenty four years he said emphatically that he didn't do
Speaker 3: anything nefarious.
Speaker 16: It's hard to imagine how preposterous conspiracy theories are until
Speaker 16: you find yourself at the center of one.
Speaker 3: In December two thousand, Ellis wrote his own blow by
Speaker 3: blow account of election night. In that article, he said
Speaker 3: that Fox's decision to call Florida for Bush was totally
Speaker 3: empirical that based on the vote counts, al Gore simply
Speaker 3: could not overcome the math. But another member of the
Speaker 3: Fox decision team later said that Ellis wasn't looking at
Speaker 3: the numbers when he made the call. She said he
Speaker 3: was actually on the phone with his cousin, Jeb, the
Speaker 3: governor of Florida, and according to her. When Ellis hung up,
Speaker 3: he announced to the rest of the team, Jebby says,
Speaker 3: we got it. Jebby says, we got it. But Fox
Speaker 3: News wasn't the only NAE work to call Florida for Bush,
Speaker 3: just the first. So was Fox really responsible for everyone
Speaker 3: else falling in line? Ellis said this in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: If I'd never realized I had the power to make
Speaker 5: CBS call for a Bush and make NBC call for.
Speaker 3: Bush, Ellis didn't have the power to make CBS do anything.
Speaker 3: When Fox made its call at two sixteen am, the
Speaker 3: leader of the combined CBS and CNN decision desks declined
Speaker 3: to follow suit, saying Fox has an agenda, don't forget.
Speaker 3: But NBC made a different decision. When the head of
Speaker 3: that decision desk heard about Fox's projection, he immediately hung
Speaker 3: up a phone call, saying, sorry, gotta go. Fox just
Speaker 3: called it. NBC would declare Bush the President elect a
Speaker 3: minute and a half after Fox did. Just twenty two
Speaker 3: seconds after that, CBS and CNN called it too. The
Speaker 3: network's clearly he felt competitive pressure instigated by Fox News's call.
Speaker 3: Maybe if Fox didn't call the race first, nobody would
Speaker 3: have jumped the gun, and we could have lived in
Speaker 3: a world where neither candidate was the presumed president elect.
Speaker 9: Other networks were definitely influenced by the fact that someone
Speaker 9: had gone first and said, in this fraught moment, George W.
Speaker 9: Bush will be the next president of the United States. What
Speaker 9: you hear in journalism all the time is you want
Speaker 9: to be first, but it's more important to be right.
Speaker 9: What you see all the time is you want to
Speaker 9: be first, and yes, we'd like to be right.
Speaker 3: Here's where I come down. It was totally nuts for
Speaker 3: Fox News to put John Ellis in charge of its
Speaker 3: decision desk. It was also nuts for Ellis not to
Speaker 3: recuse himself and to be chatting it up with George
Speaker 3: and Jeb Bush all night. But I don't believe that
Speaker 3: Fox or Ellis had some kind of secret plan to
Speaker 3: steal the presidency. So why was John Ellis running the
Speaker 3: Fox News decision team during the two thousand election. Think
Speaker 3: Fox was sending two different signals. The first was to
Speaker 3: a potential Republican administration, showing that the network would be
Speaker 3: full of friendly faces. The second signal went out to
Speaker 3: Fox's media peers.
Speaker 9: It was a kind of a wink at the rest
Speaker 9: of the establishment press, saying we can create our own
Speaker 9: counter establishment. And by the way, if you guys are
Speaker 9: going to get all pious about it, screw you. It's
Speaker 9: them saying, hey, we don't have to live by your rules.
Speaker 9: You know, we write our own rules.
Speaker 3: Fox's rule breaking did inspire a bunch of piousness about
Speaker 3: ethics and morals and all that high and mighty journalism
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. Congress also took an interest in how
Speaker 3: Fox and everyone else in TV news bungled the election.
Speaker 3: In his testimony in Washington, d C. In two thousand
Speaker 3: and one, Roger Ailes actually said he was sorry.
Speaker 6: Our lengthy and critical self examination shows that we let
Speaker 6: our viewers down.
Speaker 11: I apologize for making those bad projections that night.
Speaker 3: It will not happen again. Ales may have apologized, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't admitting that Fox did anything wrong. He said
Speaker 3: that those bad projections were caused by bad numbers from
Speaker 3: Voter News Service. In his written testimony, Ales added that
Speaker 3: John Ellis was a consummate professional, and he said that
Speaker 3: Ellis's frequent phone calls to his cousins on election night
Speaker 3: were nothing more than a good journalist talking to his
Speaker 3: very high level sources, or to put it in another way,
Speaker 3: screw you. Ellis would ultimately resign his position leading the
Speaker 3: Fox News decision desk, but the role he played in
Speaker 3: the two thousand election loomed large for Fox's critics, including
Speaker 3: the Daily Shows John Stewart.
Speaker 9: Mister Bocle has forced network higher ups to change their
Speaker 9: slogan from we report you decide to we report you
Speaker 9: can suck it.
Speaker 20: That was sort of the beginning of the Democratic axiom
Speaker 20: that Fox News is the axis of all evil.
Speaker 3: Democratic spokesperson Jenny back Guests says the two thousand election
Speaker 3: and the recount that followed made her see the world differently.
Speaker 3: She believed that Fox News was a destructive influence on
Speaker 3: American life. She was also jealous of its power and reach.
Speaker 20: The Republicans had a motor in their motor boat that
Speaker 20: was a cable news station that was taking their talking
Speaker 20: points and pushing it out or approaching the news of
Speaker 20: the day from that perspective, we didn't have that.
Speaker 10: I started wising up during the recount.
Speaker 3: Fox News producer Anne McGahn had been scandalized when she
Speaker 3: heard Sean Hannity say that George W. Bush was our guy.
Speaker 3: Now she started picking up that vibe everywhere at Fox.
Speaker 10: It became much more apparent how the organization felt. I
Speaker 10: just was left with this constant feeling of people really
Speaker 10: hope that this is going to go towards Bush.
Speaker 11: A special edition of The O'Reilly Factor is on tonight.
Speaker 7: It looks like George W.
Speaker 3: Bush has it is on election night, Fox News called
Speaker 3: Florida ninety seconds before anyone else the legal wrangling started.
Speaker 3: Bill O'Reilly declared that Bush had won more than two
Speaker 3: weeks before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
Speaker 11: This whole thing in Florida was about hustle and calculation
Speaker 11: on the part of al Gore's team.
Speaker 14: They brilliantly executed a plan that almost gave the vice
Speaker 14: president to win.
Speaker 3: During the Florida recount, Fox News's audience grew four hundred
Speaker 3: and forty percent to an average of more than a
Speaker 3: million daily viewers. When the numbers settled back down, Fox's
Speaker 3: audience was still bigger than MSNBC's basically permanently, and it
Speaker 3: was closing in on CNN. Fox News now had a
Speaker 3: loyal army of fans, and when they called in to
Speaker 3: Fox's weekend media criticism show. They expressed their gratitude for
Speaker 3: what they were seeing and hearing.
Speaker 4: You're the only ones who give a fair and balanced
Speaker 4: news of the election.
Speaker 18: I did choose Box channel surfing because I felt that
Speaker 18: they were touching the closest to the truth.
Speaker 10: I really can only stand a turn on Fox News
Speaker 10: to hear the coverage because it seems to be the
Speaker 10: only network that reports it in a fair manner.
Speaker 12: We would get messages from people saying, we've burnt the
Speaker 12: Fox News icon into our TV screens because we have
Speaker 12: an on all day, so when you turn off the TV,
Speaker 12: you'd still see Fox News burned into the glass.
Speaker 3: Fox producer Caroline Brunner.
Speaker 12: That was a turning point for me, realizing that things
Speaker 12: were a bit different. The Fox News bug, the logo,
Speaker 12: it started moving because otherwise it was burning into screens.
Speaker 3: That Fox News logo started spinning in the summer of
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, a few months into the Bush presidency,
Speaker 3: in less than five years after the channel got off
Speaker 3: the ground. At that point, Anne and Caroline and a
Speaker 3: bunch more of the Fox staffers we spoke with said
Speaker 3: they still believed in each other, but they knew that
Speaker 3: Fox News was becoming a different place, that a whole,
Speaker 3: big universe of Americans believed in Fox in a different
Speaker 3: way than they did.
Speaker 13: I would travel around and I would tell people. They'd ask,
Speaker 13: what do you do?
Speaker 3: I worked for Fox News Capitol Hill producer Jim Mills,
Speaker 3: and it's oh, man.
Speaker 2: Fox, I love Fox.
Speaker 13: That's all I watch. And I would say to them,
Speaker 13: don't do that to your brain.
Speaker 3: Coming up this season on Slowburn, so we.
Speaker 1: Just expect to do fine balanced journalists.
Speaker 17: I said to Roger, the last thing you are at
Speaker 17: fair and balanced.
Speaker 2: That should have been my slogan.
Speaker 9: It was like, oh, I'm living in a Vanity Fair article.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is insanity.
Speaker 9: He writes it in his book. He tries to make
Speaker 9: me out.
Speaker 7: No no, no, no, no no no, that's shut up. Yeah
Speaker 7: you thirty five minutes.
Speaker 8: Shut up.
Speaker 9: There were moments where I'm like, wait, are you fucking serious?
Speaker 1: You know, sending a woman out to pretend to date
Speaker 1: me was just idiotic.
Speaker 18: I can tell you this now.
Speaker 5: Roger was my source.
Speaker 3: And why do you feel comfortable saying this publicly?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 10: Well, I don't think people really asked.
Speaker 3: And next time, before Fox News, Roger Ales launched another
Speaker 3: cable network, a channel that was a political and strange
Speaker 3: and that he believed would be a huge success.
Speaker 18: Roger would stand on a soapbox in the middle of
Speaker 18: the newsroom. He's giving us our marching orders, and we
Speaker 18: want to do it right for this guy.
Speaker 3: We couldn't make slow Burn without support from our members,
Speaker 3: and I strongly urge you to sign up for Slave
Speaker 3: Plus today. You'll get all kinds of perks, including ad
Speaker 3: free listening, and member exclusive episodes of slow Burn. In
Speaker 3: this week's Plus episode, you'll hear more fascinating stories about
Speaker 3: the two thousand election from NPR media correspondent David fokenfleg
Speaker 3: He talked about John Ellis in the Fox News Decision Desk,
Speaker 3: sparring with the Fox PR team and stopping the pressis
Speaker 3: on election ning. Join now by clicking Try Free at
Speaker 3: the top of the Slowburn Show, Ope on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or visits Slate dot com slash Slowburn Plus to get
Speaker 3: access wherever you listen. This season of slow Burn was
Speaker 3: written and reported by me Josh Levine, an executive produced
Speaker 3: by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad,
Speaker 3: Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson. With help from Patrick Fort,
Speaker 3: Jacob Finston, and Julia Russo. Derek john is Slowburn's executive producer.
Speaker 3: This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary fry
Speaker 3: Merrit Jacob a senior technical director. Mix and sound designed
Speaker 3: by Joe plored Our theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrado.
Speaker 3: Derek Johnson created the artwork for this season. We had
Speaker 3: production help from Chris Sinclair, Josh Neil and Hillary Niles.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Murray Edelman, David Moore, Leon Napok,
Speaker 3: Julia Turner, and Lauren Levine, and to Slate's Evan Chung,
Speaker 3: Madeline ducharm Forrest Wickman, Christina Cattererucci, Greg Lavalley, Ben Richmond,
Speaker 3: Seth Brown, Katie Rayford, Caitlin Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Emily Hodgkins,
Speaker 3: Ivy Li Simonas, Joshua Metcalf, Heidee straw Moon, and Alicia Montgomery,
Speaker 3: Slate's VP of Adria. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
Speaker 3: next week.