Ailes Mess At Fox Keeps Growing

It has become more and more apparent that Roger Ailes ran Fox News more as his personal fiefdom than as a businessmen. Recent reports indicate that Ailes had a team of people on the Fox News payroll whose only job was to investigate and collect information on those individual with whom Ailes had a vendetta or whom he considered enemies. Some of those investigated were apparently other Fox News employees as well as journalists and others with whom Ailes feuded. It also appears that there were other Fox executives who clearly knew of Ailes’ improper behavior but stayed silent either out of fear of retaliation or the fact they were being paid rather handsomely to ignore it. Ailes ran the company using fear and intimidation mixed with a heavy dose of sexual harassment. And anyone who challenged that culture in any way was either intimidated or paid off handsomely to keep quiet, as the recently revealed $3.15 million settlement with Laurie Luhn shows. While those payoffs are not nearly as egregious as the acts that provoked them, they may be a bit of a concern to NewsCorp, now 20th Century Fox, shareholders who might wonder how much of Fox News’ money went to pay to cover up Ailes own personal misconduct. And it tends to indicate that the whole corporate structure at Fox is so rotten that it may need to be rebuilt from the ground up.