Roger Ailes recently resigned as Fox News CEO after a number of allegations about ongoing sexual harassment from current and former employees. Now, the allegations are spreading to his handling of the company’s finances and the way Ailes may have been using his budget. According to a new report from New York Magazine, Ailes is being accused of using portions of Fox’s budget to carry out smear campaigns and attacks on his personal and corporate enemies. New York Magazine notes that they spoke with a senior Fox source who claims “Fox News dismissed five consultants whom Ailes had hired to do work that was more about advancing his own agenda than Fox’s.”
The publication’s piece alleges that Ailes used a small enough percentage of overall Fox revenues that either nobody noticed or nobody cared about the extracurricular expenditures’ effect on the bottom line. He used this treasure chest to attack reporters, stalk enemies or journalists, and hire political operatives and private detectives that indiscriminately did his bidding. All of these practices were allegedly done out of the “Black Room” in the News Corp building which is the most wannabe super villain nickname to name a room.
The official statement from the Ailes’ camp is that “These allegations are totally false.” But if these early reports are any indication, we may hear more updates in the future.
CORRECTION: In our initial reporting on this story, we noted that “at least one staffer at Fox has already been let go after a review unearthed the fact that he was not actually doing work for Fox, but mostly for Ailes directly.” This was an unintentional mischaracterization as it was consultants that were let go in this particular scenario and not Fox News staffers. Our story has been updated to reflect the appropriate information.
(Via New York Magazine)