Vanity Fair author--and failed venture capitalist and failed would-be news mogul--Michael Wolff caused quite a splash in October when he alleged a big split between News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and his friend and colleague, Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
In widely publicized--the MSM couldn't get enough of it--excerpts of his semi-authorized biography, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch , Wolff asserted that Murdoch, influenced by his new wife and her chic Manhattan friends, had grown embarrassed by Ailes and Fox News. Indeed, that Murdoch himself had changed. As Wolff put it, "Here’s the headline: Rupert Murdoch is becoming a liberal—sort of."
Wolff continued:
He’s come to like the liberals more than the conservatives. Bono and Tony Blair and the Google guys and Nicole Kidman and David Geffen are his and Wendi’s circle. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and real-estate scion and New York Observer owner Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are regular invites to the Murdochs’ for dinner. Liking Wendi’s friends so much better than his own (actually, he really had never had any friends), he finds himself with an increasingly divided temperament.
And Wolff zeroed in on Murdoch & Ailes:
It’s life with Wendi versus life with Fox. (And, too, it’s The Wall Street Journal—and maybe The New York Times—versus Fox.)
Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.
As noted, Wolff had a lot of access to Murdoch and to his extended family. So the "news" that Murdoch was weary of Ailes and Fox reverberated around the political-media world.
In fact, Murdoch protested loudly that Wolff's characterizations were inaccurate. But the beast was loose, the buzz was out there: Ailes was on the way out; some even said that Fox would be transformed into another liberal network, like CNN, or a lefty network, like MSNBC.
But now comes news that makes me wonder if any of Wolff's book is accurate, beyond the page numbers. The headline of the News Corp. press release reads, in big type: "NEWS CORPORATION SIGNS ROGER AILES TO NEW FIVE YEAR CONTRACT." And here's a money quote from Murdoch:
In making the announcement, Mr. Murdoch said, "Roger has done a remarkable job building FOX News into a force in journalism and built a great asset for News Corporation. I have complete confidence in his talent and his editorial judgment. Under his leadership, I believe that FOX Business Network will become the strongest competitor in financial television news."
In other words, the whole thrust of Wolff's take on Murdoch has been proven to be incorrect--by Murdoch himself. By word and deed, Murdoch has reaffirmed his confidence in Ailes. As the News Corp. press release adds:
The new agreement states that Mr. Ailes will continue to oversee FOX News, FOX Television Stations (FTS), FOX Business Network (FBN), My Network TV and Twentieth Television. He will also continue serving as a senior advisor to Mr. Murdoch on television and news matters.
One can like or dislike Murdoch and Ailes, but what's undeniable is that the two men like each other--and they just made their professional connection crystal clear.
Also, The Cable Gamer reckons that the emphasis on Fox Business News is important--and a signal that Ailes will focus on FBN during his next hitch. Watch out, CNBC!
But that's for the future. The issue for now is the pathetic Michael Wolff, and how he blew a story, big time--or, more likely, got it wrong on purpose, just to sell some books to Fox-hating liberals. So I, for one, want my money back, the money that I paid for his obviously worthless book. It wasn't a tell-all, it was a tell-it-wrong.
UPDATE: The always valuable TV Newser adds another angle this afternoon, noting the misreporting of The Huffington Post:
Today's announcement that Roger Ailes has signed a new deal with News Corp. rips to shreds this Huffington Post post. Back in June, Charles Warner wrote:
I had lunch last week with a good friend who is wired into the media business, and the first thing he asked me when we sat down was, "Have you heard that Roger Ailes is out at FOX?" "No, I haven't heard a thing,' I said, 'but it makes sense.' Murdoch is no dummy and he sees the shift in the country's tastes and mood.'"
With friends like that...
Anyway, we asked Fox News for a response to Warner's reporting gossip. A spokesperson tells TVNewser, "Perhaps it's time for Charlie to leave the stage and ride off into the sunset before he embarrasses himself any further.
Sorry Charlie!
