Monica Lewinsky Writes Obit For Roger Ailes, Who Built Fox News Off Her Scandal
Monica Lewinsky Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Monica Lewinsky said the late Roger Ailes’ success in building Fox News was directly related to his capitalizing on the affair involving the former White House intern and then-President Bill Clinton.
Ailes, the former head of Fox News forced out under the cloud of a sexual harassment scandal, died last week at 77.
“This is not another obituary for Roger Ailes,” Lewinsky wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times published Tuesday. “It is, I hope, instead an obituary for the culture he purveyed — a culture that affected me profoundly and personally.”
Ailes, Lewinsky charges, took the story of her affair with Clinton and the subsequent trial and “made certain his anchors hammered it ceaselessly, 24 hours a day.”
“As the past year has revealed, thanks to brave women like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, it is clear that at Fox, this culture of exploitation wasn’t limited to the screen,” wrote Lewinsky. “The irony of Mr. Ailes’s career at Fox — that he harnessed a sex scandal to build a cable juggernaut and then was brought down by his own — was not lost on anyone who has been paying attention.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
