The Rise of Fox News | 1. We Report. You Can Suck It.

Summary

Slow Burn Podcast Episode Summary Title: The Rise of Fox News | Episode 1: We Report. You Can Suck It
Host: Josh Levine
Release Date: September 18, 2024
Podcast Series: Slow Burn, Season 10

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1. Introduction to Fox News' Early Days

In the inaugural episode of Slow Burn’s 10th season, host Josh Levine delves into the tumultuous beginnings of the Fox News Channel, a pivotal moment in American media and political history. This episode, titled "We Report. You Can Suck It," recounts Fox News' rise from obscurity to a dominant force in cable news, focusing on key events between 2000 and 2004 that cemented its influence.

2. Mike Schneider and the 1996 Election Night Debacle

The story begins in November 1996 with Mike Schneider, an experienced journalist preparing to anchor a significant election night broadcast for the newly launched Fox News Channel. Despite his credentials from major networks like ABC and NBC, Schneider's presence on Fox went largely unnoticed due to limited cable distribution.

Notable Quote:
Mike Schneider reflects on his approach to journalism:
"Be honest, be fair, don't be boring, but don't hype anything up. Just go tell the story."
(00:56)

Schneider was cautiously optimistic when Roger Ailes, Fox News' chairman and CEO, personally recruited him to lead the evening newscast, emphasizing Schneider's reputation for fairness (02:06). However, the 1996 election night turned into a fiasco with technical difficulties disrupting the live broadcast.

Notable Incident:
Schneider’s frustration with the production team led him to physically remove a non-responsive phone from the set, symbolizing his dissatisfaction with the behind-the-scenes chaos.
(04:13)

3. Building the Fox News Team

Following the 1996 debacle, Fox News worked diligently to establish itself as a credible news source. By 2000, the channel had expanded its reach nationwide and revamped its presentation style with dynamic graphics and sound effects, setting the stage for the pivotal 2000 presidential election.

Key figures like Caroline Bruner, Jim Mills, and Anne McGinn emerged as dedicated Fox News staffers who believed in the channel's mission of delivering hard news without overt ideological bias. They operated in a flexible, non-union environment that allowed for rapid changes and innovative storytelling.

Notable Quote:
Jim Mills describes the culture at Fox News:
"It's going to be kick ass and I want to be part of it. I needed to be the guy they hired for Capitol Hill."
(12:09)

4. The 2000 Presidential Election and the DUI Scandal

As the 2000 election approached, Fox News positioned itself to play a significant role in the coverage of one of the tightest presidential races in history. A critical moment arose when Tom Connolly, a Democratic attorney and activist, discovered a previously undisclosed DUI conviction of Republican candidate George W. Bush from 1976.

Notable Quote:
Tom Connolly recounts his confrontation with Bush:
"So I yelled, you big wiener. And he yelled back at me, 'Who you calling wiener boy?'"
(17:55)

Connolly's revelation threatened to change the dynamics of the election, especially as it coincided with the intense media scrutiny on election night.

5. John Ellis and the Decision Desk Controversy

A central figure in the election night coverage was John Ellis, George W. Bush's first cousin, who ran Fox News' decision desk. Ellis was responsible for making live projections about election results, a role that placed him at the heart of the controversy when Fox News prematurely called Florida for Bush at 2:16 AM Eastern Time, hours before other networks.

Notable Quote:
Jane Mayer, author of the critical New Yorker piece on Ellis, highlights the conflict of interest:
"He's too biased to write an opinion column, but he's somehow hireable to make some of the most important news decisions at the Fox News Channel. I don't see how that quite works out."
(40:27)

6. Election Night Chaos and Call to Bush

On election night, Fox News' premature call led to widespread confusion and influenced other networks to follow suit, resulting in a cascade of early projections that ultimately contributed to the disputed outcome. The channel's simultaneous shift from calling Florida for Gore to for Bush underscored the flaws in their decision-making process.

Notable Quote:
Josh Levine assesses the situation:
"It was totally nuts for Fox News to put John Ellis in charge of its decision desk. It was also nuts for Ellis not to recuse himself and to be chatting it up with George and Jeb Bush all night."
(45:35)

7. Aftermath and Fox News' Transformation

The fallout from the 2000 election debacle forced Fox News to re-evaluate its practices. Roger Ailes publicly apologized, attributing the errors to flawed data from Voter News Service, yet the incident raised significant concerns about Fox News' journalistic integrity and impartiality.

Notable Quote:
Roger Ailes offers an apology:
"Our lengthy and critical self-examination shows that we let our viewers down. I apologize for making those bad projections that night. It will not happen again."
(46:50)

Despite the turmoil, the incident inadvertently boosted Fox News' popularity, especially among conservative viewers who saw the channel as a fair alternative to the mainstream media.

8. Reactions and Cultural Impact

The 2000 election night debacle solidified Fox News' reputation as a formidable player in the media landscape. The network's ability to attract a loyal audience grew exponentially, setting the stage for its future influence on American politics and culture. Critics, including prominent figures like Jon Stewart, began to view Fox News as a central antagonist in the media ecosystem, further polarizing public opinion.

Notable Quote:
Jon Stewart reflects on the impact:
"That was sort of the beginning of the Democratic axiom that Fox News is the axis of all evil."
(47:50)

Conclusion

This episode of Slow Burn meticulously chronicles the early challenges and strategic maneuvers that propelled Fox News from a struggling new channel to a powerhouse in American media. Through firsthand accounts, notable quotes, and critical analysis, Josh Levine underscores how pivotal moments, particularly the 2000 election, shaped the trajectory of both Fox News and the broader political landscape.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "Be honest, be fair, don't be boring, but don't hype anything up. Just go tell the story." – Mike Schneider (00:56)

• "If they really wanted to do this and they really wanted to do it right, I felt, okay, let's see where they want to take this thing. And then we're off to the races." – Mike Schneider (02:13)

• "And I said, I don't give a good God fuck who you are. You are not going to kick a garbage can at my head." – Bill (08:21)

• "Here we were like scrappy little fighters and we're gonna take them down." – Tom Connolly (08:37)

• "Are you fucking sure? And I said, I'm fucking sure and I gotta go." – Bill (33:37)

This structured summary provides a comprehensive overview of the episode, capturing key events, personal accounts, and the significant impact Fox News had on American media and politics during its formative years.

Transcript

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[Bill]

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[Josh Levine]

Schneider was getting ready for one of the biggest moments of his journalism career. It was November 1996, and he was about to anchor election night coverage on a national television network. There was only one problem. Even his biggest fans had no clue he was still on tv.

[Mike Schneider]

What they would say to me is, where you been?

[Josh Levine]

Mike had been an anchor and correspondent on the Today show, Good Morning America, and Nightline. Over decades, he'd built his name as a solid old school journalist.

[Mike Schneider]

Be honest, be fair, don't be boring, but don't hype anything up. Just go tell the story.

[Josh Levine]

It also didn't hurt that he looked the part.

[Mike Schneider]

I had a face where grandmas thought that their daughters might be interested in seeing young Mr. Schneider.

[Josh Levine]

By the mid-90s, Mike wasn't quite as fresh faced as he used to be. But just when his time as a TV news star seemed to be running out, he'd gotten an opportunity he hadn't expected.

[Fox News Channel]

Our news sources, your source for news, Fox News Channel.

[Mike Schneider]

Roger came to me and he said, listen, I would like you to anchor our newscast of record every evening.

[Josh Levine]

Roger was Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of the brand new Fox News Channel. And he wanted Mike front and center.

[Mike Schneider]

So I want to know why. I mean, maybe part of its ego. I'm looking for a compliment.

[Josh Levine]

I don't know.

[Mike Schneider]

And he said, because I think you're one of the best anchors in the country and because you have a reputation for fairness.

[Josh Levine]

Mike knew that Ailes had a reputation for pushing his conservative views. But that fairness line hit his ear just right.

[Mike Schneider]

If they really wanted to do this and they really wanted to do it right, I felt, okay, let's see where they want to take this thing. And then we're off to the races.

[Fox News Channel]

News the way you want it, when you want it. The Schneider Report weeknights Fox News channel.

[Josh Levine]

But when Fox News debuted in the fall of 1996, it wasn't available on some of the country's biggest cable systems, including Time Warner in Manhattan. That's why Mike's fans didn't know that he was still on tv.

[Mike Schneider]

We used to Watch you on ABC or NBC. Where you been? What are you doing? And I'd say on the Fox News Channel. Where can I see it? You can't.

[Josh Levine]

But on November 5, 1996, everything was supposed to change.

[Mike Schneider]

On election night, we would be on the air with comprehensive coverage. A full traditional election night show.

[Josh Levine]

That election night with Bob Dole challenging Bill Clinton would be Fox News first big showcase. A chance for this cable TV upstart to prove it was a serious player. The plan was for the whole show to get simulcast on the Fox broadcast network, the channel that showed NFL games and the Simpsons. Pretty much anyone with a TV could watch broadcast Fox. That meant Mike and the cable Fox News channel would get a massive promotional boost.

[Mike Schneider]

The idea of me in the anchor chair that night, I was jazzed.

[Josh Levine]

Then what actually happened on election night.

[Mike Schneider]

That was a shit show.

[Josh Levine]

Imagine something that could go wrong on a live television show. It probably happened to Fox News on election night. The actual broadcast signal kept fizzling. The sound went in and out. When Mike and his co anchor Katherine Cryer tried to go live to a reporter in Arkansas, it just didn't work. After only a few minutes, they had to abandon everything and just roll a half hour of taped footage about congressional races.

[Mike Schneider]

In complete honesty, I'll tell you what was happening off camera. In those days, you would have a phone on the set where you'd pick it up to talk to the producer in control room. And I said, what are we doing next? What are we doing next? What are we doing next? And they I'll get back to you in a minute. Get back to you in a minute. And I said, okay, if nobody's gonna answer this phone, I guess we don't need the phone. So I ripped the phone off the wall and I threw it across the studio. Made a point.

[Josh Levine]

When I asked you to picture what could go wrong on live tv. You may have imagined some bad technical glitches and a frustrated anchor. But something else happened that night that I'm guessing you haven't thought of. Remember how Mike had been promised that his big election special would get shown on the broadcast Fox network? Well, that didn't happen.

[Fox News Channel]

Tonight, Fox presents a special movie presentation.

[Josh Levine]

Do you remember the movie that they showed?

[Mike Schneider]

Oh, God, I don't know.

[Josh Levine]

This election day, America is going to the dogs.

[Mike Schneider]

Beethoven with 200 pounds of shedding, drooling Beethoven. Oh, the Charles Grodin film. Holy.

[Fox News Channel]

Put some bite into your election night.

[Josh Levine]

On non stop Foss. Mike didn't get totally drowned out by a drooling saint. Bernard. Twice an hour during commercial breaks, the Fox News hosts would pop in to give updates on the race.

[Mike Schneider]

You can see that Mr. Clinton has now amassed 367 electoral votes.

[Josh Levine]

According to our account, Roger Ailes claimed he was fine with getting preempted by a dog movie because it wasn't a dramatic presidential race anyway. But critics weren't buying the spin. They called Fox News disorganized, incompetent and laughably inept. Ailes and Fox's billionaire founder Rupert Murdoch had been touting their grand ambitions to take over TV news, but chances were it wasn't going to survive long enough to redeem itself.

[Fox News Channel]

Viewership is dismal and some analysts say that Rupert Murdoch has overreached again.

[Josh Levine]

That's how things looked in 1996. But Fox News Channel wouldn't stay inept or invisible for long. Four years later, it was on the air all over the country. It looked and sounded different than its TV rivals, full of eye catching graphics and blaring sound effects. And when the next big election came around in November 2000, Fox would captivate the nation and just maybe change the fate of American democracy.

[Fox News Channel]

Who will be the next president? You decide in two days. Election day coverage only on the FOX News Channel.

[Josh Levine]

This is slow burn, season 10, the rise of Fox News. I'm your host, Josh Levine. In just a few years, the Fox News Channel went from non existent to bumbling to seemingly invincible. Its sudden, shocking emergence as a cultural force and political kingmaker transformed the country and left a mark on all of us along the way. Today, as another election approaches, Fox's future prospects feel totally uncertain. It's been buoyed by its codependent relationship with Donald Trump and nearly sunk by peddling his election lies. It's been outflanked to the right by insurgent TV news challengers and it's now imperiled by a Murdoch family succession drama that recently spilled into public view. What is clear almost three decades into the country's Fox News era, is that Fox's fate and America's are bound together. This series is about how that happened and how it almost didn't. Over the next six episodes, I'm going to tell you about a crucial inflection point in the nation's history. The moment between 2000 and 2004 when Fox News first surged to power and a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it. You'll hear from the hosts, reporters and producers who built Fox News, many who've never spoken publicly about what they saw and what they created.

[Bill]

And I said, I don't give a good God fuck who you are. You are not going to kick a garbage can at my head.

[Josh Levine]

You'll also hear from Fox's biggest antagonists, the political operatives, journalists, and comedians who attacked it, investigated it, and tried to mock it into submission.

[Tom Connolly]

Here we were like scrappy little fighters and we're gonna take them down.

[Josh Levine]

And they were like, oh, look how cute they are. And you'll hear from Fox's victims who are still coming to terms with how a cable news channel upended their lives.

[Bill]

Maybe they couldn't find anything wrong with the actual work I was doing, so they went after me.

[Josh Levine]

But first, in 2000, with one of the tightest presidential elections ever hanging in the balance, Fox News made a call that divided America, maybe forever.

[Fox News Channel]

If there were any more surprises that could take place tonight, it seems seems impossible to imagine.

[Josh Levine]

This is episode one, we report. You can suck it.

[Bill]

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[Bill]

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[Josh Levine]

I'm James McComb reporting live from home.

[Fox News Channel]

In my bathrobe in slippers. Tonight we're talking Dunkin Poehler, Peppermint coffee. Gene's here with the latest. Gene, do you copy?

[Bill]

The home with Duncan is Where youe Wanna Be.

[Josh Levine]

Caroline Bruner came to New York in the mid-1990s with dreams of becoming a star.

[Ad]

I wanted to be an actor. I'd had an internship at a soap opera at Guiding Light, and I thought that was fab.

[Josh Levine]

Acting felt totally thrilling, but also risky and unreliable. So Caroline quickly changed course and set her sights on a different career.

[Ad]

Television news kind of gave me the same sort of buzz that I felt when I would go on stage. There was action and there was things happening and it was interesting and it was challenging.

[Josh Levine]

Caroline got a job at NBC News and loved it. But when that role ended, she couldn't find anything else. She was desperate to get back into the industry. Somewhere at her college reunion, she spotted a woman who she knew worked in TV news. Caroline approached her colds and basically begged for help.

[Ad]

And she said, how resourceful are you? And I said, I can be very resourceful. She's like, find me a bottle of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes, menthols within 15 minutes and we'll talk hard.

[Josh Levine]

Liquor, smoking, a nearly impossible deadline. It was like she was working in TV news already. And Caroline nailed the assignment. After she handed over the bourbon and the menthols, she got a personal referral to Fox News. In 1999, she landed a job as a Fox production assistant in the Washington D.C. bureau.

[Ad]

When you're dealing with something like NBC and that behemoth, it was a lot harder to get the ship to change course. Whereas Fox, if something wasn't working, they would change it immediately.

[Jim Mills]

I do better when things are not like set in stone operationally and you're kind of creating things as you go.

[Josh Levine]

Jim Mills was working at C Span when he heard that a new thing called Fox News Channel was staffing up in Washington D.C. it was going to be young and swashbuckling, not bound by the stale conventions of classic TV news.

[Jim Mills]

It's going to be kick ass and I want to be part of it. I needed to be the guy they hired for Capitol Hill.

[Josh Levine]

Jim spent his days chatting up politicians and staffers, scouring the Capitol building for tidbits to pass along to Fox's on camera reporters. He was also a Fox News evangelist, telling everyone on the Hill what the channel was and what it wasn't.

[Jim Mills]

It took forever to get people to notice that we were a separate network than Homer Simpson. I had to go around and go into offices physically turning their TVs to channel 18 so they could see that we have a whole network here.

[Bill]

He was always up on the Hill occasionally. It was very exciting. When he walked into the bureau, he was like, Jim Mills is here.

[Josh Levine]

Anne McGinn worked in D.C. too. She'd started out at ABC News, but quickly found herself stuck with no room for advancement. Then a couple of her mentors, including Cokie Roberts, suggested she look at Fox.

[Bill]

See what this whole cable thing's about. And then the line was, and when they fail, when they close down, come back to abc.

[Josh Levine]

Whether or not Fox News crashed and burned and would have a lot of opportunities. Unlike its broadcast competitors, Fox was non union, which meant there were basically no restrictions on which people could do what jobs. As a newbie in Fox's D.C. bureau, Ann worked long hours learning how to edit tape and work with satellite feeds.

[Bill]

With non union, I was great cheap labor. But when you're in your 20s and it's a startup and it's fun and you are learning, you can rationalize the low pay.

[Josh Levine]

Anne, Jim and Caroline were the workhorses for Fox's daytime and early evening programming blocks. They worked exclusively on hard news and none of them saw their work through an ideological lens. While Fox News Channel was founded by well known conservatives, Ann didn't see that kind of partisan lean in the newsroom.

[Bill]

Within the Washington bureau. There were so many more Democrats working at least behind the scenes than non Democrats.

[Josh Levine]

Anne and Jim both told me they were middle of the road politically Back then. Caroline tilted Moore to the left in D.C. she worked alongside one of Fox's highest profile conservative journalists, Brit Hume, the anchor of the nightly newscast Special Report. Not long after Caroline started, she heard him demand that Fox be more fair to Hillary Clinton. During Clinton's 2000 cinerace, someone had sent along an unflattering photo of her to use in an on air graphic.

[Ad]

So he's like, you absolutely remake that graphic. You make her look as good as she can. It is not your job to make her look bad.

[Josh Levine]

To be clear, this was happening on the news side of Fox News. The primetime opinion shows were a totally separate operation with a very different approach. While Brit Hume insisted on being impartial towards Hillary Clinton, conservative host Sean Hannity aired conspiracy theories about her connection to a White House staffer who died by suicide.

[Fox News Channel]

In the article, you talk about affairs of not only the president but of Hillary Clinton with Vince Foster at least David.

[Jim Mills]

We were the news gatherers. Those shows were the opinion page and they got a little batshit crazy sometimes.

[Josh Levine]

The batshit crazy stuff was easy for Jim to ignore. He was busy on Capitol Hill doing actual journalism. And as the political calendar flipped to 2000, he felt like Fox and its campaign reporters were holding their own.

[Jim Mills]

We just did kick ass coverage of the 2000 election. Carl Cameron and Jim Angle, I mean they were doing some great work.

[Fox News Channel]

Carl, what feeling do you get from the Bush campaign is this feeling of confidence, anxiety? Well, it's funny actually, the Texas governor today said, you don't like to feel confident in this business. And that's the only sort of moment of self deprecating humility that we've heard in a while. This is a very cocky campaign.

[Jim Mills]

We had some great reporters out there doing what I was doing, which was being first, being scrappy, being competitive.

[Bill]

Here we are sitting next to the other guys. Abc, cbs, cnn. It just felt like we belong.

[Josh Levine]

And Jim and Caroline all say that Fox's politics didn't affect their day to day work. They had free reign to look into whatever stories they wanted. Without the layers of bureaucracy that weighed down other networks. At least that's what they thought. But just days before the presidential election, Fox's journalistic values would get put to the test. A long buried secret from a candidate's past threatened to leak out. It was a story that could prove Fox News neutrality or demonstrate that at Fox, editorial independence was just a mirage. And the guy who instigated everything was a Democrat from Maine who called a Republican from Texas a big wiener.

[Tom Connolly]

My name is Tom Connolly and I'm an attorney. I've been practicing now for 42 years.

[Josh Levine]

Tom Connolly is a defense lawyer and his clients are usually in desperate straits.

[Tom Connolly]

Severe mental illness and severe violence. Real hard, hard cases and, you know, whoa.

[Josh Levine]

Tom was active in the main Democratic party and a delegate to the 2000 Democratic National Convention. He was always looking for a chance to speak out against the death penalty and Reaganomics. So when the fiscally conservative capital punishment endorsing George W. Bush started campaigning for president, Tom had to give him a piece of his mind.

[Tom Connolly]

One of the first stops was in Maine. So I went over to protest it.

[Josh Levine]

Tom found a spot in the crowd and waited for his moment.

[Tom Connolly]

So he comes out and turns around in the big limo and he's got the window down and there he is. I see him and so I yell, you big wiener. And he yelled back at me, who you calling wiener boy? Is what he said, and he drove away.

[Josh Levine]

That wiener boy incident kicked off a grassroots anti Bush campaign. Tom launched a wiener boy website and made w as for wiener buttons that featured a drawing of Bush stuffed inside a hot dog bun. Despite Tom's best efforts, the whole Weiner thing didn't really catch on. Bush got the Republican nomination, and as the election drew closer, he had even odds to win the presidency.

[Fox News Channel]

The Bush and Gore campaigns don't agree on much, but tonight they do agree on this. The race goes to the wire.

[Josh Levine]

But Tom was about to learn something with the potential to throw the election into chaos. On the afternoon of Thursday, November 2, he was in court defending a client when a friend approached him with some information.

[Tom Connolly]

Did you know George Bush had a drunk driving charge here in Maine? I said no. He said, yeah. I said no. He said, yeah. I said, really? He said yeah.

[Josh Levine]

Even though his friend said yeah at least three times, Tom wanted to confirm it for himself. So he called up the clerk of court in Biddeford, an old mill town not far from the Bush family's summer estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

[Tom Connolly]

So I said, can you check for a closed file? And she said, okay, sure, Tom. And I said, george Bush. She says, I know that. Like she was waiting for this call, you know.

[Josh Levine]

The clerk faxed Tom what she had, a document from 1976 showing that George W. Bush had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for operating a vehicle under the influence and paid a small fine. Although Bush's hard drinking past wasn't a secret, he'd never revealed this arrest publicly. And now this powerful, potentially election changing intel had fallen into the hands of the W is for wiener guy.

[Tom Connolly]

And I thought, why hasn't this come out? And so I'm telling anybody that would listen, hey, did you know? Did you know?

[Josh Levine]

One of the people who listened was a local TV reporter who happened to be hanging around the courthouse that afternoon. Tom told her what he knew, and then he waited for the fallout.

[Tom Connolly]

At 6:00 that night, I just watched local news and I remember thinking, ha, it's not even on there.

[Josh Levine]

What Tom didn't know is that his story was now in the hands of a national news network, Fox News Channel.

[Fox News Channel]

We report.

[Mike Schneider]

You decide.

[Josh Levine]

We'll be right back.

[Bill]

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[Josh Levine]

Fox News Channel learned about George W. Bush's drunk driving conviction, mostly by dumb luck. On November 2, 2000, a reporter for a local Fox station got a tip from Tom Connelly about Bush's dui. Her station then got in touch with its corporate sibling, Fox News, and asked for help confirming the story.

[Bill]

The internal conversation was a healthy debate, as it should be in any newsroom about does this matter? Is this fair?

[Josh Levine]

Ann McGinn worked on the team that coordinated special coverage for Fox News primaries, political conventions, and in just five days, election night. She knew that revealing Bush's drunk driving arrest could have massive ramifications if Fox chose to report it.

[Bill]

Are we going into gossipy territory? Is it relevant? Is it sensational? It concerned me slightly. Maybe more than slightly.

[Josh Levine]

Anne was a respected producer, but way too junior to have any real say. This decision came quickly from the very top, from Roger Ailes. Fox was going with the story.

[Fox News Channel]

Fox News has Learned that in 1976, Governor Bush was arrested in Maine and charged with driving under the influence of liquor. The date of the charge, October 15, 1976.

[Josh Levine]

Fox's reporter inside the Bush campaign, Carl Cameron, broke the news. Cnn, MSNBC and all the broadcast network scrambled to catch up. And everyone had the same. Had Fox News Channel just sunk the Republican presidential candidate?

[Fox News Channel]

There's never been a bigger surprise this late in the game. This whole episode has added a dose of uncertainty to the Bush campaign at the worst possible moment. The question tonight is whether Bush's decision to keep his arrest from the public will hurt him politically.

[Josh Levine]

Hang on a second. George W. Bush spoke for himself later that evening and told a gaggle of journalists that everything Fox had reported was true.

[Fox News Channel]

I oftentimes said that years ago I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much and I did on that night. And I regret that it happened, but it did. I've learned my lesson.

[Josh Levine]

Bush sounded vulnerable, his presidential ambitions possibly thwarted by the network everyone had assumed would be his biggest ally. But he didn't just apologize for his mistakes. He also wondered about the motives of whoever had peddled this scoop.

[Fox News Channel]

I think that's an interesting question. Why now, four days before an election? I got my suspicions. Thank you all. I've got my suspicions.

[Josh Levine]

Bush was basically giving the national media an assignment. Figure out where the DUI story came from. It didn't take long to find an answer.

[Fox News Channel]

Thomas Connolly, a flamboyant Portland lawyer and active Democrat. He now operates an outlandish anti Bush website called W isforwiener.

[Josh Levine]

When Fox News first reported the dui, the focus was on Bush's drinking and whether he'd hidden his arrest from voters. Now that Tom had been identified as the source, producer Ann McGinn watched that focus shift.

[Bill]

You saw Fox's coverage change a bit. It was softening.

[Josh Levine]

24 hours after he broke the news of Bush's arrest, Fox's Carl Cameron reported another story. This one focused almost entirely on Tom and his Democratic Party ties. Cameron was squarely on the news side of Fox News, not an opinion slinger like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But now he was suggesting that the DUI story very well could have been a Democratic plot and that Tom Connolly had been part of the plotting. Is it fair to call it a What, you did a political dirty trick?

[Tom Connolly]

Not at all. Dirty trick? Telling the truth? No. A dirty trick is if I sat on it and knew about it in August or something and then snuck it out at the last minute. Maybe that's a dirty trick, maybe it's not. It's called the truth.

[Josh Levine]

As Tom drew more scrutiny, George W. Bush did an exclusive sit down with Carl Cameron and essentially thanked him and Fox for looking into where the DUI story came from.

[Fox News Channel]

I understand through your reporting and others that a Democrat official has in Maine put this information out.

[Josh Levine]

A couple of Hours later, Bill O'Reilly told his viewers that it was now clear that Fox News had no partisan agenda, that the channel's reporting on George W. Bush's arrest proved that. What he didn't say is that Fox then helped Bush by deflating its own scoop. So why did fox change course? O'Reilly offered one possible answer. He said that he'd gotten more than 5,000 letters about the DUI story, many of them from viewers who were angry that Fox News had put Bush in a negative light. Fox's most loyal audience members didn't want journalistic neutrality. They wanted their candidate to win. Anne McGinn hadn't been at Fox News for the network's first presidential election, the one with beethoven the slobbering St. Bernard and Mike Schneider ripping the phone off the wall. By the time she got to Fox, that early catastrophe had become a part of workplace lore.

[Bill]

Folks who were there in 96, you could see that they just wanted to put, like, their head in their hand, kind of like, wow, that was so bad.

[Josh Levine]

On November 7, 2000, Anne would be one of the producers in Fox's New York control room. And she felt certain that this time there wouldn't be any kind of debacle.

[Bill]

It was just like, okay, look how far we've come. We actually know what we're doing now. There was a confidence I felt.

[Josh Levine]

In 2000, Fox's election special would be hosted by the network's two star anchors.

[Fox News Channel]

Count on Brit Hume and Paula's on for continuing election night coverage. That's clear and concise on America's number one network. For political coverage.

[Josh Levine]

Sean Hannity's primetime opinion show would get preempted on election night. But that afternoon, Ann and her boss saw the conservative host coming out of his office. Ann says that as they passed each other, Hannity made a prediction about the presidential race.

[Bill]

I think our guys got this, and I had a physical reaction. My head snapped back and I thought, our guy who's Our guy. We have no guy. But I knew exactly who Sean Hannity was referring to and I thought it was very presumptuous that he was assuming that we all had the same guy.

[Josh Levine]

A Fox News spokesperson says Sean Hannity has no recollection of this. But no matter which candidate Hannity or the rest of Fox preferred, election night would come down to how America voted.

[Fox News Channel]

As the country decides, we'll bring you up to the minute results with a special eye on the exit polls and the crucial electoral vote count.

[Josh Levine]

The broadcast networks CNN and Fox News all relied on the same source for their state by state vote totals, a group called Voter News Service. While all the channels had the same data, they still made their own calls, relying on in house decision teams to crunch the numbers and project which candidate had won. These decision desks were typically kept separate from the rest of the newsroom to avoid outside influence and they were seen as basically infallible.

[Fox News Channel]

If we say somebody has carried a state, you can pretty much take it to the bank, book it.

[Josh Levine]

If that's true, the Fox control room only heard from the decision team through an intermediary who gave Anne's boss a heads up whenever a call got made.

[Bill]

Results are in. This is what it is. Fox News projects at Fox.

[Josh Levine]

Those projections would trigger an on screen graphic and sound effect. The whiz bang New Hampshire roll.

[Bill]

The whiz bang Delaware. Oh, I love the whiz bank. It would whiz in and like do a turn and then there's like a star effect at the bottom to make it look very pretty and official and patriotic.

[Josh Levine]

That was great. The night's first consequential whiz bang came around 7:50pm Eastern time.

[Fox News Channel]

We've just been able to make a call in the state of Florida and Fox News projects that Al Gore will carry the state of Florida.

[Josh Levine]

Fox News wasn't going out on a limb there. They made their call after CBS, CNN and NBC.

[Fox News Channel]

He wins the 25 electoral votes. It turns out that Governor Jeb Bush was not his brother's keeper.

[Josh Levine]

After all those announcements, Gore wins Florida felt like a settled fact and it seemed like the election could be trending his way. But then two hours later, everything got unsettled.

[Fox News Channel]

Florida is now too close to call. What the networks give us. The network taketh away computer and data problem. One of the CBS News election night headlines of the hour.

[Josh Levine]

The numbers from Voter News Service had been off and the network decision teams weren't so infallible after all. By this point, it was clear that whoever really Won. Florida was going to win the White House. And Fox's Brit Hume sounded totally uncertain about when the night might end.

[Fox News Channel]

Decision desks all over the place are looking at discs, scratching their heads and unable to call this race.

[Josh Levine]

As Tuesday night turned to Wednesday morning, it felt like nothing was going to break the deadlock. But at 2:16am Eastern, the whiz bang banged again.

[Fox News Channel]

Fox News now projects George W. Bush the winner in Florida, and thus it appears, the winner of the presidency of the United States.

[Josh Levine]

This time, Fox was taking the lead, projecting Florida for Bush before any of the other networks. And Brit Hume didn't sound totally convinced.

[Fox News Channel]

I must tell you, everybody, after all this, all night long, I feel a little bit apprehensive about the whole thing. I have no reason to doubt our decision desk. But there it is.

[Josh Levine]

At Bush headquarters in Austin, Texas, the candidate's chief strategist, Karl Rove, was feeling wary too. When that call came across the screen, Rove said, it's just Fox, but it wouldn't be just Fox for long. Within minutes, everyone in TV news made the exact same call.

[Fox News Channel]

Uh oh, something's happened. George Bush is the President Elect of the United States. Florida goes Bush. The presidency is Bush. That's it. Unless there is a terrible calamity, George W. Bush, by our projections, is going to be the next President of the United States.

[Josh Levine]

The Bush victory party in Austin was ecstatic about their candidate's projected win and the network that called it first and Fox anchor Paul Lazahn wanted to make sure her channel got the credit it deserved.

[Bill]

All right, we're going to take some time out now for some shameless self promotion. You want to know what these folks are waving at on the Jumbotron themselves? They are seeing themselves on the Fox News channel feed the way a lot of these folks found out that the.

[Josh Levine]

President elect at Gore headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, it wouldn't stop raining and the Democratic nominee was certain it was all over.

[Bill]

Gore had to call and concede.

[Josh Levine]

Jenny Backus was the communications director for the Democratic National Committee. On election night, she was in the Gore campaign's war room.

[Bill]

Gore was going to go get his speech, which was probably like five minutes away. And that's just when all chaos broke loose.

[Fox News Channel]

The Florida Secretary of State says the margin in Florida. Get this, folks. 629 votes.

[Josh Levine]

When Fox had called Florida for Bush, his lead was in the tens of thousands. Now, with the margin shrinking down to almost nothing, it felt absurd for Gore to give up on the presidency.

[Bill]

And I'm like, can I call the networks. Can I call the networks?

[Josh Levine]

Jenny got the go ahead and told one of her network contacts that Gore was taking back his concession.

[Bill]

And she said, are you fucking sure? And I said, I'm fucking sure and I gotta go.

[Fox News Channel]

Vice President Al Gore has called Governor Bush and retracted his concession because he is now of a mind that things could be turning yet again in Florida.

[Josh Levine]

The truth is, no one should have called Florida for George W. Bush. The margin was just too narrow and the chances of a data error were just too high. The Associated Press understood that and decided that they couldn't make a projection. But Fox News and its television rivals all screwed up twice. Fox's second retraction came after cbs, ABC, and NBC had already pulled back their calls. It was around 4am as Gore's campaign chairman called out Fox and everyone else for giving the race to Bush.

[Fox News Channel]

It now appears that their call was premature. Is now returning the state of Florida to the Too Close to Call column. In light of developments there.

[Josh Levine]

It would take a recount and a whole slew of bitter legal fights before a real winner could be declared. The whiplash on election night had sowed chaos, anger and confusion. And there was plenty of blame to go around. To Voter News Service, whose data had helped lead the TV networks astray, to the networks themselves for caring more about being first than being right. And to Fox News in particular for leading the way and declaring that Bush had won.

[Fox News Channel]

But it mattered. That Fox News was the first network that called not only Florida for Bush, but the country for Bush. And it has shaped the way we perceive things is sort of like, you know, Bush was the presumed president and Gore is trying to snatch something away.

[Josh Levine]

A lot of people wanted to know how Fox News had made such an important decision, one that had created the impression that the election was over. Soon they'd all be focusing on the man who ran the Fox decision team. His name was John Ellis, and he was George W. Bush's first cousin. Let's take a quick break. Hi, I'm Carvel Wallace, and on this week's Slate advice podcast, How to we're.

[Carvel Wallace]

Tackling the future of reproductive healthcare in the U.S. which now feels uncertain after.

[Josh Levine]

2024, but has been uncertain for some time. But there is one thing that is.

[Carvel Wallace]

Certain, which is that men need to share a greater responsibility for contraception.

[Bill]

This idea that there's something that's unmanly about reproductive healthcare means that we don't welcome men into our healthcare settings.

[Josh Levine]

Look for how to man up about.

[Carvel Wallace]

Male birth control in the how to feed and find it wherever you listen.

[Josh Levine]

John Prescott Ellis grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, the grandson of a U.S. senator. He roomed with a Kennedy at the private Milton Academy, then moved on to Yale. After college, he got a job at NBC as a producer in their election unit. But he stepped down in 1989 after his uncle, George Herbert Walker Bush, got elected president. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Ellis relationship with Fox News began after the channel's first election fiasco, the one in 1996. Here's Ellis in an interview with C Span. They had what Roger Ailes felt was.

[Fox News Channel]

Not a very good night. So he asked me to come in and sort of do the decision desk team to professionalize the operation there.

[Josh Levine]

Ellis ran the decision team during the 1998 midterms and the 2000 and primaries, but his work didn't draw much scrutiny. Fox producer Anne McGinn remembers hearing something about his family connections, but it didn't seem like a huge problem.

[Bill]

He was related in some way to the Bush family, but then hearing that he is qualified in his own right felt like, okay, we'll give the benefit of the doubt. And what kind of effect could that have on an election anyway?

[Josh Levine]

No one had expected the 2000 election to come down to a couple hundred votes or that Fox's call in Florida would be so pivotal. But even so, the makeup of the Fox News decision desk wasn't getting much attention until six days after the election when John Ellis spoke with the reporter. Here's ellis in a 2023 podcast.

[Fox News Channel]

I did an interview with what I thought person I thought was a friend of mine from the New Yorker that came out and there was a lot of drama because I'm related to the Bush family.

[Josh Levine]

That New Yorker piece was written by Jane Mayer. In it, Ellis seemed excited to relive his election calling adventures. How the afternoon exit polls had looked so bleak for Bush that he'd pantomimed a neck slash in Roger Ailes office. How he'd watched the numbers in Florida flip in Bush's favor. How it was so cool to be on the phone that night with his two cousins, the governor and the president elect. It was a short article, less than 700 words, but when it got published, the whole world knew where John Ellis worked and who was in his family tree.

[Bill]

It does not look good for Fox News. I mean, that's just the trend.

[Fox News Channel]

I watched Fox all night and I think it was misinformation for us to be told things. And it turns out that your analyst there was the cousin of George Bush. It makes me very, very concerned.

[Josh Levine]

Before Election Day and even for a few days after, almost no one knew or cared that Bush's cousin was running the Fox News decision team. Now the whole thing seemed totally bizarre and scandalous, like if the home plate umpire in a World Series game was cousins with one of the starting pitchers. Slate's then editor, Michael Kinsley thought it was all pretty rich.

[Fox News Channel]

If it had been a cousin of.

[Josh Levine]

Al Gore sitting there making this call.

[Fox News Channel]

Republicans would be burning up the phone.

[Josh Levine]

Lines and spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories. The person who made the strongest case against John Ellis was John Ellis. Along with his decision desk work, Ellis had a regular column in the Boston Globe. In 1999, he told his readers that he wouldn't write about the upcoming presidential race. He said, there is no way for you to know if I am telling you the truth about George W. Bush's presidential campaign, because in his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.

[Fox News Channel]

He's too biased to write an opinion column, but he's somehow hireable to make some of the most important news decisions at the Fox News Channel. I don't see how that quite works out.

[Josh Levine]

After the New Yorker published its story about Ellis, Fox pleaded ignorance about his election night phone calls. One of Fox's editorial leaders, John Moody, said he hadn't known that the guy running the channel's decision desk had been chatting up his cousins. In an internal memo, Moody wrote that Ellis status was under review. Meanwhile, Fox totally absolved itself of wrongdoing. John Moody said it would have been as strange not to hire Ellis because of who he's related to as to hire him because of his relatives. Seriously, that was their argument that it would have been just as unethical not to employ George W. Bush's cousin. Finally, Fox explained that the head of its decision desk wasn't really the one in charge. That John Moody, not John Ellis, had given the ultimate sign off on the Florida call.

[Carvel Wallace]

This was sort of one of the earliest instances of night being day dealing with Fox at times.

[Josh Levine]

David Fogenflick is now a media correspondent for NPR, but in 2000, he was on that beat for the Baltimore Sun. Back then, David heard all of Fox's spin about John Ellis role on election night, but he also knew that they were scrambling behind the scenes to rewrite the Ellis narrative.

[Carvel Wallace]

I get these furious calls from a guy who worked for Fox.

[Josh Levine]

It just so happened that the Baltimore sun had assigned a freelancer to embed with the Fox News decision team on election night. Now Fox PR wanted David to command that report, to say publicly that John Ellis had not been calling the shots.

[Carvel Wallace]

He wasn't saying, I need a favor, he said, this is what's going to happen.

[Josh Levine]

That Baltimore sun freelancer had left early on election night and hadn't gotten much information. But she had passed along one important thing. John Ellis had told her directly that he was the one making the calls for Fox News. That's what David said to Fox pr, and Fox PR didn't want to hear it.

[Carvel Wallace]

This was met with a fiery blast. You know, you're trying to fuck us over and the answer is no. I'm telling you, this is what she observed. This was for years a reference point and a grievance point with Fox every time I did some reporting they didn't like.

[Josh Levine]

But even if John Ellis did make the Florida call personally, there was still a big unanswered question. Had he intentionally cooked the books for his first cousin? Ellis declined to talk to us for this podcast, but over the last 24 years, he said emphatically that he didn't do anything nefarious.

[Fox News Channel]

It's hard to imagine how preposterous conspiracy theories are until you find yourself at the center of1.

[Josh Levine]

In December 2000, Ellis wrote his own blow by blow account of election. In that article, he said that Fox's decision to call Florida for Bush was totally empirical, that based on the vote counts, Al Gore simply could not overcome the math. But another member of the Fox decision team later said that Ellis wasn't looking at the numbers when he made the call. She said he was actually on the phone with his cousin Jeb, the governor of Florida. And according to her, when Ellis hung up, he announced to the rest of the team, jebby says we got it. Jebby says we got it. But Fox News wasn't the only network to call Florida for Bush, just the first. So was Fox really responsible for everyone else falling in line? Ellis said this In 2023, I never.

[Fox News Channel]

Realized I had the power to make CBS call for Bush and make NBC call for Bush.

[Josh Levine]

Ellis didn't have the power to make CBS do anything. When Fox made its call at 2:16am the leader of the combined CBS and CNN decision desks declined to follow suit, saying, Fox has an agenda, don't forget. But NBC made a different decision. When the head of that decision desk heard about Fox's projection, he immediately hung up a phone call, saying, sorry, gotta go. Fox just called it. NBC would declare Bush the president elect a minute and a half after Fox did. Just 22 seconds after that CBS and CNN called it two. The networks clearly felt competitive pressure instigated by Fox News call. Maybe if Fox didn't call the race first, nobody would have jumped the gun and we could have lived in a world where neither candidate was the presumed President elect.

[Carvel Wallace]

Other networks were definitely influenced by the fact that someone had gone first and said in this fraught moment, George W. Bush will be the next President of the United States. What you hear in journalism all the time is you want to be first, but it's more important to be right. What you see all the time is you want to be first. And yes, we'd like to be right.

[Josh Levine]

Here's where I come down. It was totally nuts for Fox News to put John Ellis in charge of its decision desk. It was also nuts for Ellis not to recuse himself and to be chatting it up with George and Jeb Bush all night. But I don't believe that Fox or Ellis had some kind of secret plan to steal the presidency. So why was John Ellis running the Fox News decision team during the 2000 election? I think Fox was sending two different signals. The first was to a potential Republican administration showing that the network would be full of friendly faces. The second signal went out to Fox's media peers.

[Carvel Wallace]

It was a kind of a wink at the rest of the establishment press saying we can create our own counter establishment. And by the way, if you guys are going to get all pious about it, screw you. It's them saying, hey, we don't have to live by your rules. You know, we write our own rules.

[Josh Levine]

Fox's rule breaking did inspire a bunch of piousness about ethics and morals and all that high and mighty journalism kind of stuff. Congress also took an interest in how Fox and everyone else in TV news bungled the election. In his testimony in Washington D.C. in 2001, Roger Ailes actually said he was sorry.

[Fox News Channel]

Our lengthy and critical self examination shows that we let our viewers down. I apologize for making those bad projections that night. It will not happen again.

[Josh Levine]

Ailes may have apologized, but he wasn't admitting that Fox did anything wrong. He said that those bad projections were caused by bad numbers from voter news service. In his written testimony, Ailes added that John Ellis was a consummate professional. And he said that Ellis frequent phone calls to his cousins on election night were nothing more than a good journalist talking to his very high level sources. Or to put it another way, screw you. Ellis would ultimately resign his position leading the Fox News decision desk. But the role he played in the 2000 election loomed large for Fox's critics, including the Daily Show's Jon Stewart.

[Fox News Channel]

Mr. Bockle has forced network higher ups.

[Carvel Wallace]

To change their slogan from we report you decide to we report you can suck it.

[Bill]

That was sort of the beginning of the Democratic axiom that Fox News is the axis of all evil.

[Josh Levine]

Democratic speakers spokesperson Jenny Backus says the 2000 election and the recount that followed made her see the world differently. She believed that Fox News was a destructive influence on American life. She was also jealous of its power and reach.

[Bill]

The Republicans had a motor in their motorboat that was a cable news station that was taking their talking points and pushing it out or approaching the news of the day from that perspective. We didn't have that. I started wising up during the recount.

[Josh Levine]

Fox news producer Anne McGinn had been scandalized when she heard Sean Hannity say that George W. Bush was our guy. Now she started picking up that vibe everywhere at Fox.

[Bill]

It became much more apparent how the organization felt. I just was left with this constant feeling of people really hope that this is going to go towards Bush.

[Fox News Channel]

A special edition of the O'Reilly Factor is on tonight. It looks like George W. Bush has it.

[Josh Levine]

On election night, Fox News called Florida 90 seconds before anyone else. Once the legal wrangling started, Bill O'Reilly declared that Bush had won more than two weeks before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

[Fox News Channel]

This whole thing in Florida was about hustle and calculation on the part of Al Gore's team. They brilliantly executed a plan that almost gave the vice president the win.

[Josh Levine]

During the Florida recount, Fox News audience grew 440% to an average of more than a million daily viewers. When the numbers settled back down, Fox's audience was still bigger than MSNBC's, basically permanently, and it was closing in on CNN. Fox News now had a loyal army of fans. And when they called into Fox's weekend media criticism show, they expressed their gratitude for what they were seeing and hearing.

[Fox News Channel]

You're the only ones who give a.

[Josh Levine]

Fair and balanced news of the election.

[Fox News Channel]

I did choose Fox after channel surfing because I felt that they were touching the closest to the truth.

[Bill]

I really can only stand to turn on Fox News to hear the coverage because it seems to be the only network that reports it in a fair manner.

[Ad]

We would get messages from people saying we've burnt the Fox News icon into our TV screens because we haven't on all day. So when you turn off the tv, you'd still see Fox News burned into the glass.

[Josh Levine]

Fox producer Caroline Brunner.

[Ad]

That was a turning point for Me realizing that things were a bit different. The Fox News bug, the logo, it started moving because otherwise it was burning into screens.

[Josh Levine]

That Fox News logo started spinning in the summer of 2001, a few months into the Bush presidency, in less than five years after the channel got off the ground. At that point, Ann and Caroline and a bunch more of the Fox staffers we spoke with said they still believed in each other, but they knew that Fox News was becoming a different place, that a whole big universe of Americans believed in Fox in a different way than they did.

[Jim Mills]

I would travel around and I would tell people, they'd ask, what do you do?

[Josh Levine]

I work for Fox News, Capitol Hill producer.

[Jim Mills]

And they said, oh, man, Fox. I love Fox. That's all I watch. And I would say to them, don't do that to your brain.

[Josh Levine]

Coming up, this season on Slow Burn.

[Fox News Channel]

So we just expect to do fine, balanced journalism.

[Josh Levine]

I said to Roger, the last thing, you are fair and balanced.

[Jim Mills]

That should have been my slogan.

[Ad]

It was like, oh, I'm living in.

[Fox News Channel]

A Vanity Fair article.

[Josh Levine]

Oh, my God, this is insanity.

[Fox News Channel]

He writes it in his book. He tries to make me happy.

[Josh Levine]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Fox News Channel]

Shut up. You had your 35 minutes. Shut up.

[Josh Levine]

There were moments where I'm like, wait.

[Tom Connolly]

Are you fucking serious?

[Josh Levine]

You know, sending a woman out to pretend to date me was just idiotic. I can tell you this now, right? Roger was my source. And why do you feel comfortable saying this publicly now?

[Bill]

Well, I don't think that people really asked.

[Josh Levine]

And next time, before Fox News, Roger Ailes launched another cable network, a channel that was apolitical and strange and that he believed would be a huge success.

[Carvel Wallace]

Roger would stand on a soapbox in the middle of of the newsroom. He's giving us our marching orders, and.

[Josh Levine]

We want to do it right for this guy. We couldn't make Slow Burn without support from our members. And I strongly urge you to sign up for Slate today. You'll get all kinds of perks, including ad free listening and member exclusive episodes of Slow Burn. In this week's plus episode, you'll hear more fascinating stories about the two election from NPR media correspondent David Fauconflig. He talked about John Ellis in the Fox News decision desk, sparring with the Fox PR team and stopping the presses on election night. Join now by clicking try Free at the top of the Slow Burn show page on Apple podcasts or visit slate.com slowburn to get access wherever you listen. This season of Slow Burn was written and reported by me, Josh Levine, an executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer and Rosie Belson, with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Finston and Julia Russo. Derek John is Slow Burn's executive producer. This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hilary Fry. Merritt Jacob senior technical director, mix and sound design by Joe Plord. Our theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. Derek Johnson created the artwork. For this season we had production help from Chris Sinclair, Josh Neal and Hilary Niles. Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Murray Edelman, David Moore, Leon Nayfock, Julia Turner and Lauren Levine and to Slate's Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme, Forest Wickman, Christina Coterucci, Greg Lavalley, Ben Richmond, Seth Brown, Katie Rayford, Caitlin Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Emily Hodgkins, Ivy Lee Simonis, Joshua Metcalf, Heidi Strom Moon and Alicia Montgomery, Slate's VP of Audio. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.