![]() The documentary dubs Ailes a “kingmaker,” chronicling his crowning of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. Clinton’s DNA on his ex-intern’s blue dress became Fox’s “money shot.” As commentators observe in the doc: “We were kicking the networks’ asses” and “We were there to rile up the crazies.”Īmong Divide and Conquer’s talking heads are former Fox personalities like Glenn Beck, who opens the documentary and recurs throughout it, and journalists Alisyn Camerota and David Shuster. In keeping with the channel’s obsession with sex, it was the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal, and Fox’s lurid, sensationalistic coverage of it, that put Fox News on the map-and eventually at the top of cable news ratings. It describes the cable network’s sexualized culture, featuring female anchors and correspondents who’d prove to be the abusive Ailes’ undoing. The film is the best exposé on Fox since Robert Greenwald’s 2004 Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Through copious clips from Fox and other outlets of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Shepard Smith and others, Bloom’s one hour, forty-seven-minute documentary does a deep dive into Fox News, as well as Ailes’ private world. In 1996, Australian rightwing media mogul Rupert Murdoch created the Fox “News” Channel, with Ailes at its helm. Ironically, with Bill Gates’ involvement, the channel morphed into what is now liberal MSNBC. In keeping with the channel’s obsession with sex, it was the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal, and Fox’s lurid, sensationalistic coverage of it, that put Fox News on the map.Īiles finally got the opportunity to launch his pro-GOP cable channel in 1993 when America's Talking hit the airwaves. And other racist appeals created by Ailes helped Bush overcome frontrunner Dukakis’s lead and defeat him in the 1988 presidential election. Although Ailes did not directly create this infamous spot, Joe Conason recently reported that Ailes Communications associates were involved in the Horton ad. This fear-mongering commercial charged that Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis, allowed a black man convicted of murder out of prison on weekends, enabling him to assault and rape whites. Bush, is the infamous Willie Horton TV ad. In the meantime, riding the Nixon victory wave, Ailes became a hired gun consultant for GOP politicians running for office, such as Ronald Reagan and Rudolph Giuliani.īut perhaps the starkest example of Ailes’ style, recalled in a film fortuitously released just days after the death of George H.W. In 1968, Ailes originated the idea of a pro-Republican television network, twenty-five years before it came to fruition. (The film doesn’t mention the role Tricky Dick’s sabotaging of LBJ’s proposed Vietnam peace talks played in Nixon’s beating Democrat Hubert Humphrey.) As Joe McGinniss wrote in The Selling of the President, this media makeover repackaged and rebranded Nixon, peddling him like a product and largely securing his successful candidacy. (“Deutschland, Deutschland uber Ailes”?)ĭivide and Conquer reveals that the Ohio-born Ailes, who died in 2017, was a hemophiliac, which thwarted his military aspirations but did nothing to blunt his ambition.Īiles went from producing The Mike Douglas Show, then America’s only network afternoon talk show, to convincing Richard Nixon when he appeared as a guest on the program to hire him as a “media adviser” for his 1968 presidential campaign. But Bloom’s film cites another cinematic inspiration for Ailes’s life work: Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi agitprop film Triumph of the Will. Indeed, at one point, the theme music for the “Master of Suspense’s” TV series is played to underscore how Ailes likewise milked fear to manipulate a mass audience. She also co-helmed the 2017 showbiz biopic Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.Īiles, the jowly, portly former hatchet man for Nixon, the GOP, and Fox News, physically resembled Alfred Hitchcock. ![]() It’s essential viewing for anyone intrigued by how the media manipulating minds via fear mongering.īloom previously produced We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, made in 2013 before Julian Assange was accused of helping the Russians steal the election for Trump. Roger Ailes made a career stoking racism on Fox News and as Nixon’s communications adviser.ĭirector Alexis Bloom’s Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes is a gripping documentary about what’s ailing America’s news media. ![]()
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