Roger Ailes Can’t Imagine Why Anyone Thinks Fox News Has an Agenda

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Fox News chief Roger Ailes knew Karl Rove’s election night meltdown was television gold the second it started. Having given up on Mitt Romney’s chances, he had already gone home. “I turn on the TV and the first thing I see is Rove saying something like ‘you called Ohio too early.’ And I thought, ‘What the? What is this?’” Ailes explained to TV Newser in a rare interview. “So I quickly called [EVP of News] Michael Clemente and I said, ‘Michael whatever you do, don’t go to commercial. Don’t leave the screen.” In Ailes’s mind, he values good TV above all else, and doesn’t comprehend how people could consider him a partisan. “I didn’t want the public or our competitors to say we somehow panicked and didn’t confront the truth on camera,” Ailes said of that fateful early November night. “As it turned out Rove was wrong. He backed down. Our guys were right. We stayed with it. Megyn did her famous walk down the hall. And it all worked out.” (As a Fox insider told New York’s Gabriel Sherman, “This is Fox News, so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go… Read full this story

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