"Roger Ailes says he's not going anywhere, and News Corp.'s Chase Carey concurs"--That's headline from Joe Flint, writing in The Los Angeles Times "Company Town" blog this morning.
So Michael Wolff, Lloyd Grove, and Tina Brown will all have to find something else to spin. Those three New Yorkers--part of what remains of the liberal establishment, weakened as it has been by the new media--have been doing their best to push the storyline that Matthew Freud's rogue quote about Ailes and Fox, which appeared in an otherwise lionizing profile in Sunday's New York Times,, was somehow a big indicator of the future. Freud is Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law, but Murdoch has six children, four of them married--so, Mr. Freud, get in line.
The LA Times' Flint seems to have pursued all the angles, getting glowing quotes from COO Carey: “News Corp. is 100% behind Roger Ailes -- we hope and expect he will continue to lead Fox News well into the future”
And then Flint went even went further:
Company Town has learned that Ailes has communicated with both Elisabeth Murdoch and James Murdoch -- the latter the only Murdoch sibling currently working at the company -- since Freud's remarks were published. "There is nothing to the idea that I have any problem with the children. The entire Murdoch family has been nothing but supportive."
OK, so that's your standard corporate knockdown of a bogus story-meme. But what makes the story--and Ailes--so interesting is Ailes' own sense of humor, and his total fearlessness. Here's more from Flint's story:
As for Freud, Ailes isn't expecting to bump into him anytime soon. "I'm obviously not going to be invited to his house ... with him home anyway." Ailes cracked that the PR man, who is a descendant of Sigmund Freud, "needs to see a psychiatrist."
"See a psychiatrist." Tee hee. Freud won't like it, but Ailes obviously doesn't care. If you're at the pinnacle of business, politics, and media, as the Times said, you can't worry about making everyone like you--especially when they threw the first punch.
But since Freud is clearly the loser in this transaction--he is clearly alone in his anti-Ailes feelings inside the Murdoch clan--maybe he should seek some help.
