Artwork by GARY BEDARD
FRESH AIR
Fox News CEO and President Roger Ailes has succeeded in turning a television news network into an unprecedented force. Fox News is the most dominant media organization in America, generating more than a billion 
dollars in profit and earning the highest ratings of any cable news network. Gabriel Sherman writes about Ailes’ success with Fox News in his new book, The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News — And Divided A Country.He tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross, “Fox News is a complete expression of [Ailes’] world view. He said an interview … he ‘built this network from his life experience,’ and it’s true. It’s amazing how this giant media organization is run as the expression of one man and his rule inside the company is absolute. {…] “One of Ailes’ lasting legacies will be that for millions of Americans, news is now no longer viewed as a way to be informed about the world; it’s a way of gathering information that advances your side. … The subtitle of my book is Roger Ailes Divided A Country. The resentments and the antagonisms that are surfaced on Fox have cleaved our culture. The right has Fox [News]; MSNBC counter-programmed to Fox; the Internet is now populated with all brand of sites that present news from different ideological positions. Ultimately, we’ve lost this notion that journalism should be separate from politics. … Now, politics and journalism have been fused and Roger Ailes has been at the center of that transformation,” says Sherman. MORE