The Media

Report: Fox News Chief Used Network Budget to Stalk Enemies

As the supreme leader of Fox News, former CEO Roger Ailes had control over the Fox News budget and he apparently used that control to stalk his personal enemies.

According to a report from New York Magazine, Ailes used the Fox News budget to pay for the services of private investigators and stalkers who followed and harassed people on behalf of Roger Ailes.

via Media Matters

[New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman] reported that Ailes used revenue from Fox’s budget to hire consultants, operatives, and detectives that “reported only to him” and would work in a special “Black Room” to conduct operations “against people he targeted both inside and outside the company.” Sherman wrote that “Targets of the campaigns included journalists” such as Sherman himself and reporters from Gawker. He also wrote that multiple Fox employees participated in these operations, including Fox contributor and Ailes lawyer Peter Johnson Jr. and Fox contributor Bo Diehl, and that Fox’s CFO “approved budget expenditures throughout this period,” along with Fox’s general counsel.

Ailes used Fox News employees to harass other Fox News employees, for Christ's sake.

This all comes on top of reports that Ailes essentially used Fox News as his own sex-trafficking operation. Ailes used the network's recruiting operation to funnel young women into his office where he coerced and pressured them into sexual encounters according to a growing list of his victims.

Ailes received a golden parachute of over $60 million to leave the network.

To say that Ailes' tenure at Fox News was Nixonian would be more than just a metaphor. Ailes produced television for Nixon.