All The Rage

Filmmaker Alexis Bloom’s Divide and Conquer reveal show Roger Ailes saw America’s division and weaponized it. And how he ruled Fox News with everyday acts of abuse

- Zach Schonfeld ​​​​​​​

IN 1967, A YOUNG TELEVISION producer approached Richard Nixon to chat about the value of TV in politics. Having lost a presidential bid to the telegenic John F. Kennedy seven years earlier, Nixon hired him—and won the White House.

That man, Roger Ailes, would eventually build Fox News into a wildly profitable right-wing media empire and set the stage for a bloviating reality TV star to land in the White House. But behind the scenes, he was a source of terror for some of the network’s female employees, allegedly harassing numerous staffers—including on-air stars like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly—and blacklisting some who declined to sleep with him.

The pattern came to light in 2016, when Carlson filed a lawsuit against him. About 10 more women came forward to allege sexual misconduct, and 21st Century Fox paid out $45 million in settlements to the women. “The casualness of his cruelty was shocking,” says filmmaker Alexis Bloom, whose new documentary, Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, is being released December 7.

The film gives insight into Ailes’s lonely early life in Ohio and his rise as a ruthless political consultant during the Reagan era. With opinion-driven cable news in its in fancy, he sensed an opportunity for a network that would not just speak to white conservatives but also arouse their outrage and racial resentment. Yet Divide is most fascinating when it traces Ailes’s downfall—including on-camera interviews with the crisis communications gurus who were summoned to his house after he was ousted from Fox News in 2016. Ailes, a lifelong hemophiliac who regarded the condition as a time bomb, died last year while the documentary was in progress, but the 24-hour outrage machine he created lives on.

In an interview with Newsweek, Bloom described what she learned about Ailes’s life, behavior toward women and intense paranoia.