The Rise of Fox News | 4. Beacon of Truth

Summary

Slow Burn – Season 10, Episode 4: The Rise of Fox News | Beacon of Truth

In this episode of Slow Burn, host Josh Levine delves into the transformative years between 2000 and 2004, a period marked by the meteoric rise of Fox News and the counter-movements it sparked. Through firsthand accounts and insightful interviews, the episode unpacks the intricate dynamics between Fox News, The Daily Show, and the broader media landscape, highlighting the enduring impact on American society.

---

1. Introduction: Comedy as a Coping Mechanism

The episode opens with an exploration of how comedy served as a vital outlet for individuals grappling with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Elliot Kalin recounts his reliance on humor and shows like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" as a means to process the tumultuous political climate.

Elliot Kalin [00:53]: "The number one thing that drew me to the show was it was funny, but it was also exciting to have any show that was presenting a viewpoint that's similar to mine."

2. The Birth and Evolution of The Daily Show

Madeline Smithberg and Liz Winstead, co-creators of The Daily Show, share their journey in creating a satirical news program aimed at dissecting media narratives. Initially conceived as a parody of cable news, the show struggled to find its footing with Craig Kilbourne as the original host.

Madeline Smithberg [08:19]: "Here’s your host, he makes his own gravy. Jon Stewart."

The transition to Jon Stewart's leadership marked a pivotal shift. Stewart repositioned the show to serve as a "beacon of truth," critically analyzing Fox News' influence on American politics.

Jon Stewart [13:25]: "Welcome, welcome to the Daily Show. Craig Kilbourne is on assignment in Kuala Lumpur. I'm Jon Stewart."

3. The Daily Show vs. Fox News: A Media Clash

As Fox News rapidly gained viewership, The Daily Show intensified its critique of the network. The episode details how Stewart and his team employed satire to expose Fox News' partisan bias, particularly during the contentious 2000 Florida recount and the lead-up to the Iraq War.

Jon Stewart [15:29]: "They're killing me, slowly eating away my flesh."

Elliot Kalin emphasizes the asymmetry in power between The Daily Show and Fox News, noting that Fox often dismissed their critiques while The Daily Show struggled to effect meaningful change.

Elliot Kalin [21:57]: "It always felt to me like they were much bigger than us. They were this leviathan and we were like a much smaller boat that was just kind of stabbing them with spears or pitchforks or whatever, and then they would shrug it off."

4. Internal Struggles and Editorial Control at Fox News

The episode unveils the stringent editorial control exercised by Fox News, primarily through internal memos directed by Senior Vice President John Moody. These memos dictated the network's partisan stance, often sidelining unbiased journalism in favor of agenda-driven reporting.

Madeline Smithberg [43:20]: "They were a signal to the reporters in the field and to the people writing news copy here of what our editorial position, most often partisan, was going to be that day."

Charlie Rena, a Fox News producer, becomes a whistleblower by exposing these editorial directives, leading to significant backlash from the network.

Charlie Rena [47:36]: "Now, the last thing I wrote was at the fair and balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view."

5. Personal Accounts of Harassment and Misogyny at Fox News

Ashley Banfield’s narrative provides a harrowing glimpse into the hostile work environment at Fox News. From inappropriate advances by Roger Ailes to systemic sexism, Banfield’s story underscores the pervasive challenges faced by women in the media industry.

Ashley Banfield [53:07]: "You can win 5 million Emmys and only hear about how your hair looked that day."

Her confrontation with Ailes and subsequent career struggles illustrate the personal toll of working within such a toxic environment.

Ashley Banfield [59:23]: "And I remember him for like an hour suggesting that I didn't get it, that I didn't understand how it works. And then at the end he just gave me a big look. Up and down, he said, but you're still looking hot."

6. The Impact of Fox News and The Daily Show on American Politics

The symbiotic relationship between Fox News and The Daily Show is examined, highlighting how both entities shaped public perception and political discourse. While Fox News bolstered conservative viewpoints, The Daily Show fostered skepticism and cynicism toward mainstream media and political institutions.

Jon Stewart [21:13]: "This war has truly belonged to Fox. Not only did they start it, but they managed to offer. They managed to offer fair and balanced coverage while combining the subject they were covering with their own promotion."

7. The Legacy and Continuing Influence

The episode concludes by reflecting on the lasting legacy of The Daily Show’s confrontation with Fox News. It underscores the enduring divide in media representation and the ongoing struggle of progressive voices to counterbalance entrenched conservative narratives.

Liz Winstead [57:44]: "That award was for work done in co creator Madeline Smithberg's last year as executive producer."

8. Conclusion: A Story Beyond Fox News

Beyond the specific focus on Fox News, the episode frames the narrative as part of a broader story about media ethics, political influence, and the power dynamics within news organizations. The personal testimonies and historical recounting offer a comprehensive understanding of a critical period in American media history.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Stewart [05:34]: "I make my living watching Fox News eight hours a day. I'm already in hell."

• Ben Carlin [14:35]: "I think the Daily show was just trying to say what the fuck to institutions or public figures who were being shitty or disingenuous."

• Ashley Banfield [38:32]: "I can't believe you're saying that anywhere on tv, let alone Fox, you've got."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Media Influence: Fox News’ rise significantly altered the landscape of American media, embedding conservative ideologies deeply into public discourse.

• Satire as Resistance: The Daily Show emerged as a counterbalance, using satire to critique and expose media biases, fostering a more critical and informed audience.

• Workplace Challenges: The internal culture at Fox News, marked by harassment and strict editorial control, had profound effects on its employees and the broader media environment.

• Enduring Impact: The dynamics between Fox News and The Daily Show continue to influence media strategies and political narratives in the United States.

This episode of Slow Burn provides a nuanced exploration of the early 2000s media wars, offering listeners an in-depth look at the forces that shaped contemporary American news and politics.

Transcript

[Josh Levine]

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply. Elliot Kaelin spent his childhood studying the classics.

[Elliot Kalin]

You're despicable Looney Tunes and goes on through the Marx Brothers and Monty Python.

[Josh Levine]

I fart in your gender direction.

[Elliot Kalin]

The things that your average Jewish, New Jersey nerdy kid is going to find funny, I found funny.

[Josh Levine]

Elliot found politics fascinating too, especially in 2000, the first election year when he was old enough to vote. But the political comedy he saw on network TV didn't really speak to him.

[Elliot Kalin]

SNL was doing their kind of Bush Gore debate sketches. They were about the idea that Bush is kind of dumb and that Gore is kind of boring.

[Josh Levine]

So I will ask each candidate to sum up in a single word the best argument for his candidacy. Governor Bush, strategery. Vice President Gore lockbox.

[Elliot Kalin]

And I remember even as a young person watching that and being like, well, this isn't really about anything.

[Josh Levine]

But there was one show on cable, a half hour parody of TV news that felt like it had been made just for him. The Daily show with Jon Stewart, weeknights at 11. We know what's really going on in politics. Really.

[Elliot Kalin]

The number one thing that drew me to the show was it was funny, but it was also exciting to have any show that was presenting a viewpoint that's similar to mine.

[Jon Stewart]

Stephen, are you seeing parallels with tonight's election? A country flushed with prosperity, two young, energetic candidates perhaps ready to lead us back to Camelot?

[Elliot Kalin]

No, I'm getting more of a nom vibe.

[Josh Levine]

You know, unwinnable wars, inescapable downward spiral, chaos in the streets, that sort of thing.

[Elliot Kalin]

Finally, there's a show that's saying the kinds of things that I would say about this if I was smarter and funnier and had a television show.

[Josh Levine]

Elliott wanted as much Daily show as he could possibly get. He'd watch it every night in his college dorm room, then stay up for the rebroadcast at 1am this was pre.

[Elliot Kalin]

Everything being available all the time. I may never see it again, and I want to know these jokes.

[Josh Levine]

In 2001, Elliot was starting his junior year at NYU after the attacks on the World Trade center that September he and his roommate found that comedy was the only way they could cope.

[Elliot Kalin]

We just watched my Mr. Bean tapes because we needed something that had no connection to reality.

[Josh Levine]

In the immediate aftermath of 9 11, old comedy bits were all Elliot could watch. All the late night TV shows had gone dark and nobody knew what they would sound like when they came back. Jon Stewart was off the air for more than a week until the night of September 20th.

[Jon Stewart]

They said to get back to work. And there were no jobs available for a man in the fetal position under his desk crying, which I gladly would have taken.

[Elliot Kalin]

I remember very well sitting in that dorm and seeing John's speech about it.

[Jon Stewart]

The idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wisecracks, which is really what we do. We sit in the back and we.

[Elliot Kalin]

Throw spitballs and feeling like he's saying the next step of what we would think if we could process that far.

[Jon Stewart]

But never forgetting the fact that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is a country that allows for open satire. And I know that sounds basic, but that's really what this whole situation is about.

[Elliot Kalin]

If you had asked me when I was 17, I already would have wanted to work on that show. But now it felt like it wasn't just kind of like a silly luxury that I would allow myself, that maybe there was something more to it than that.

[Josh Levine]

This is slow burn, season 10, the rise of Fox News. I'm your host, Josh Levine. After 9 11, the Fox News Channel rallied a huge portion of the country around the Bush administration's vision of the world. But a lot of Americans like Elliot Kalin got drawn in by a different vision, one that was more skeptical and suspicious of the jingoism that Fox News was selling, especially as the US Marched to war in the Middle East. The first half of this series focused on where Fox News came from and how it stampeded into American life. Now I'm going to talk about what happened after it became a media juggernaut and a big group of people tried to show the world what Fox really was. Those critics and antagonists took very different approaches to going after Fox News. The Daily Show's satire allowed an audience of millions to get to know Fox without actually having to watch it. Your hell doesn't scare me.

[Jon Stewart]

I make my living watching Fox News eight hours a day. I'm already in hell.

[Josh Levine]

On Fox itself, liberal pundits tried sort of to win over the network's conservative viewers. Well, why are you insulting me? Because they try to make me a straw man doesn't make me a straw man. And a former Fox News employee exposed the channel's secrets and saw for himself how Fox got revenge.

[Madeline Smithberg]

We wish him well. They say that to everybody, which means screw them. I hope they die.

[Josh Levine]

This is episode four Beacon of Truth After a night with drinks, it's tough to bounce back the next day. But with ZBiotics, there is a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after a night of drinking. ZBiotics Pre alcohol Pretty Probiotic Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration. It's to blame for your rough next day. Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make Zbiotics your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Also, Zbiotics is continuing to invent probiotics that will help with everyday challenges of modern living. Go to ZBiotics.com Slowburn to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Slow Burn at checkout. ZBiotics is backed with a 100% money back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slowburn and use the code slowburn at checkout for 15% off. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% in your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply Madeline Smithberg got into two comedy relationships in the early 90s that would change her life. The first came after she left a job with David Letterman and met a young New Yorker who was developing his own late night show.

[Liz Winstead]

And Jon Stewart and I kind of started playing comedy ping pong and we instantly fell in comedy love.

[Madeline Smithberg]

And now here's your host.

[Josh Levine]

He makes his own gravy. Jon Stewart. Madeline would go on to produce the Jon Stewart show, first on MTV and then in syndication. And it wasn't long after that Collaboration kicked off that she met her next creative partner.

[Liz Winstead]

One day, Liz Winstead moved in upstairs from us, and instantly she had, like, 30 people over. And all I could hear was laughing and screaming.

[Josh Levine]

Did you start hitting the ceiling with a broom?

[Liz Winstead]

No, I didn't. I didn't. But then we kind of met, and just. She was great.

[Ben Carlin]

I was like a punk rock kid with a lot of anger, and I never saw any comics with my experience at all.

[Josh Levine]

Liz Winstead grew up in Minnesota. She'd moved to New York to try and make it as a standup comedian.

[Ben Carlin]

I think what really propelled me was just, you know, sexism, the patriarchy, and also just being the youngest of five kids in a Catholic family. It's like searching for any place to complete a sentence. And the stage was one of those places.

[Josh Levine]

When Liz moved into Madeline's building, she was totally broke and desperate for work.

[Ben Carlin]

And she was like, do you want to be a segment producer on the Jon Stewart Show?

[Josh Levine]

Liz took the job gratefully, but by the time she came on board, that project was just months away from flaming out.

[Liz Winstead]

Marilyn Manson set the stage on fire. John Leguizamo mooned the camera. And they wouldn't tell us if we were canceled or not. And finally, we figured we were canceled because they stopped filling the soda machines.

[Josh Levine]

After the soda ran out, Madeline and Liz started developing a new show about a fictional cable network. That series was supposed to be for Comedy Central. But an executive there kept steering them towards a different concept.

[Liz Winstead]

He said, I need a show which will do what SportsCenter does for ESPN, and that is, if something happens in the world, you'll have to turn on the Daily show to see how they handle it.

[Josh Levine]

That idea was pretty vague, and Madeline and Liz had never even seen SportsCenter. But they got a deal. They couldn't pass up a guaranteed year on the air. With a big promotional budget, the Daily show would premiere in the summer of 1996, just before Fox News had its debut. But first they had to figure out what exactly their show was going to be. Liz had started thinking seriously about television news a few years earlier. It all started when she went to a bar on a blind date. It happened to be the first night of the first Gulf War, and the whole place was captivated by CNN's coverage.

[Ben Carlin]

And I remember sitting there thinking, are they reporting on a war or trying to sell me a war? And, like, moments later, my date was like, this is so awesome.

[Josh Levine]

After that night, Liz became obsessed with how stories get packaged and consumed. That was the angle she wanted The Daily show to take.

[Ben Carlin]

I said, shouldn't just be us talking about the news. I think that the media should be a character in the show.

[Liz Winstead]

We all like in unison in my memory of it uttered what if we pretend we're them? And we all kind of like started drooling and our jaws fell.

[Josh Levine]

Pretending we're them meant creating a fake news show. To pull that off, they brought in actual journalists.

[Liz Winstead]

One of our first hires was a guy named Brian Unger. He and Liz were dating and he was working for CBS News.

[Ben Carlin]

Brian really introduced the concept of this satirical correspondent.

[Josh Levine]

Our team of investigative reporters uncovers the toughest stories.

[Jon Stewart]

We are at the potato sack race.

[Liz Winstead]

And asks the the mock seriousness would actually pave the way for us to be as silly as we wanted to be.

[Josh Levine]

The host of the Daily Show, Craig Kilbourne had actually anchored SportsCenter. He was tall and blonde and did a dead on impression of blow dried TV news fatuousness.

[Jon Stewart]

I am out there every night for.

[Alan Colmes]

One reason and one reason only.

[Liz Winstead]

To give good news.

[Josh Levine]

To look good. No. To give great news. No. To look great.

[Ben Carlin]

We didn't want the audience to know whether or not he was in on the joke. I think it was unclear whether or not he was in on the joke.

[Josh Levine]

Kilbourne definitely looked the part. But with him in the host chair, the Daily show didn't have a clear perspective on the world. And it lacked political bite. After two years, Kilbourne left to host a late night show on cbs. His replacement was Liz and Madeline's old friend.

[Jon Stewart]

Welcome, welcome to the Daily Show. Craig Kilbourne is on assignment in Kuala Lumpur. I'm Jon Stewart.

[Josh Levine]

When Stewart took over in 1999, Liz had already left under circumstances we'll get into later in this episode. Now from the outside, she watched her original vision start to snap into focus.

[Ben Carlin]

When Craig left and John took over, he made a decision that I think was a good strategic move which was I'll be the voice of reason, but I'll surround myself with these imbeciles so that I can be the voice of the viewer.

[Josh Levine]

That shift to make the host an island of sanity in an insane world was very well timed because in the fall of 2000, the Florida recount would take American politics totally off the rails. That's where we went a little crazy in a good way. That's Ben Carlin. He came on as the Daily Show's head writer after Jon Stewart became the.

[Jon Stewart]

Host along with the hanging chad.

[Josh Levine]

As it got deeper and deeper, it became more comedically. Absurd. The words were ridiculous. The process was ridiculous.

[Jon Stewart]

Double somersault, half pike, chad over baro, flamenco style. Which degree of difficulty 3.1 should only be tried by the most skilled voters.

[Josh Levine]

The Daily Show's coverage of Indecision 2000 didn't just make fun of ridiculous ballot terminology. The 2000 election was when we really started zeroing in on the Fox News of it all. The show took its first big swing against Fox when it came out who'd been running the channel's decision desk.

[Jon Stewart]

Meanwhile, a new flap has developed after it was revealed that John Ellis, the man responsible for calling Florida and the election for George W. Bush, happens to be George W. Bush's first cousin.

[Josh Levine]

Fox's John Ellis moment hit John Stewart like a blinding flash. Of late, he would later say, that was the first time it occurred to me that we took it a little bit more seriously than the media did. We were serious people doing a very stupid thing and they were unserious people doing a very serious thing.

[Jon Stewart]

They're killing me, slowly eating away my flesh.

[Josh Levine]

During the weeks long purgatory after election night, the Daily show and Fox News were rising in parallel. They both saw their viewership multiply and they were both cementing their points of view. Fox was rooting for Bush.

[Elliot Kalin]

I mean, that's not a secret.

[Josh Levine]

But seeing once they're like so close to the end zone, how they're willing.

[Elliot Kalin]

To kind of spin.

[Josh Levine]

It was so funny to us and so bald. For the most part, the Daily Show's audience was not rooting for Bush. Just listen. As Stewart announced the official winner in the state of Florida, George W. Bush. It wasn't just the crowd that felt that way. How would you describe the politics of the Raiders? I mean, everyone, most everyone, was fairly left of center. Do you think you had anybody who voted for George W. Bush? Not in the writers room? No, absolutely not. Regardless of the staff's political persuasions, Stewart insisted that he and the show weren't partisan. He said that he identified with the disenfranchised center, the group of fairness, common sense and moderation. The Daily show definitely did not discriminate when it came to ragging on the media. In the early 2000s, CNN was just as big a target as Fox News.

[Jon Stewart]

Let's face it, no form of entertainment can be sustained for 24 hours. CNN's got so much time to kill, they report on the future.

[Josh Levine]

Tommy, start with you. What's your lead in the paper tomorrow? Do you know lead story is still the war, Aaron.

[Jon Stewart]

That's a little Segment called Anybody? Anybody? I'm dying over here. Anybody.

[Josh Levine]

One Daily show producer told us that their segments on CNN were pinches of love. Basically that they wanted to encourage the original Cable News Network to be better, live up to its own standards. The show's breakdowns of Fox News were a lot less loving. And when the Daily show won a Peabody Award for its coverage of the 2000 election, Stewart couldn't resist making a little dig.

[Jon Stewart]

You know, the news parody division, which I think is what we won in, was not that competition this year. It was us and Fox.

[Josh Levine]

The Daily show took its news parodies very seriously. One of their secret weapons was a research chief who said that without credibility, the jokes mean nothing. They also dug up material that nobody else had, thanks to young go getters like Elliot Kalin.

[Elliot Kalin]

When I got the internship, I was so excited.

[Josh Levine]

Elliot had watched Jon Stewart's post 911 monologue in his NYU dorm room and been inspired by what a comedy show could do. He got his foot in the door. A year later, one of his jobs at the Daily show was recording the.

[Elliot Kalin]

News in the reception area. There was like a TV with a vcr, and we would set up tapes for shows that we knew we wanted to watch.

[Josh Levine]

That one VCR and later a whole bunch of tivos expanded the Daily Show's scope and ambition. In the spring of 2003, the show put together a debate on the invasion of Iraq by grabbing news clips and stitching them together back to back. On one side of that debate was President George W. Bush.

[Jon Stewart]

Mr. President, is the idea to just build a new country that we like better.

[Alan Colmes]

We will tear down the apparatus of.

[Josh Levine]

Terror, and we will help you to build a new Iraq. On the other side was presidential candidate George W. Bush. I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.

[Jon Stewart]

Strong words from two very different men.

[Josh Levine]

That juxtaposition of clips to call out hypocrisy might seem banal now in the age of social media, but the Daily show basically invented it.

[Elliot Kalin]

I remember when that piece aired, there was this feeling around the office of everyone being like, we did a new thing, like, we did a new cool thing.

[Josh Levine]

This was a fake news show doing real journalism at a time when most of the press wasn't asking tough questions. As the Bush administration sold its case to invade Iraq, pretty much every American media institution just went along for the ride. But Fox News guests and pundits weren't a category of their own. They weren't just passengers on the drive to war. They were putting a cinder block on the accelerator. This irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible evidence today. It was so compelling. I don't see how anybody at this point cannot support this effort. We expect every American to support our military, and if they can't do that, to shut up. In the days before YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, there were only two ways for most people to see and hear what Fox was saying about Iraq. You could either flip over to Fox News or you could watch the Daily show and trust Jon Stewart to dissect Fox on your behalf.

[Jon Stewart]

Who among us could ever forget where they were? The night Fox set the war to music that was real sounded like our troops have liberated a Yanni concert.

[Josh Levine]

For millions of Americans who didn't watch Fox News, the Daily Show's critical eye helped define what Fox was and what it stood for.

[Jon Stewart]

This war has truly belonged to Fox. Not only did they start it, but they managed to offer. They managed to offer fair and balanced coverage while combining the subject they were covering with their own promotion.

[Josh Levine]

I like to say hello to all my friends and all my family in North Carolina. Are you watching Fox News? This was exactly what Liz Wenstead had wanted the Daily show to be. The kind of place that would go after an influential media outlet for hyping up a war. The show's critiques brought Fox News attention it wouldn't have gotten otherwise. But all that scrutiny didn't shame Fox or change it.

[Elliot Kalin]

It always felt to me like they were much bigger than us. They were this leviathan and we were like a much smaller boat that was just kind of stabbing them with spears or pitchforks or whatever, and then they would shrug it off.

[Josh Levine]

Elliott has that right. Fox didn't see Stewart's jokes as something that could ever hurt them. The Daily show staff actually heard that directly, that every time they made fun of Fox News, Fox people gathered together and watched and loved it.

[Liz Winstead]

It was kind of disappointing that they were enjoying it because it took away some of are oomph.

[Josh Levine]

The Daily Show's co creator Madeline Smithberg.

[Liz Winstead]

Here we were like scrappy little fighters in the corner. We're gonna take them down. And they were like, oh, look how cute they are. And you felt like, no, we really meant what we were saying and we're not cute. We hate you.

[Josh Levine]

A big chunk of the Daily Show's audience hated Fox too, but probably not as much as they loved Jon Stewart. Around the time of the Iraq War, Stewart started getting celebrated as a crusading hero.

[Elliot Kalin]

There was a sign that someone had put up in the writer's room. That said, beacon of truth, I think that we put up.

[Josh Levine]

Ironically, Elliot Kalin would build a long career at the Daily show, going from intern all the way to head writer. He first fell in love with the show because it didn't only care about being funny, it also had a moral compass. But that balance between humor and righteousness was always tricky to strike.

[Elliot Kalin]

Whenever things would get too serious in a meeting every now and then, someone would point to go beacon of truth. That would be a good reminder for us that it is jokes. If we're not funny and we're not entertaining, then why are we even doing this?

[Liz Winstead]

The thing that I'm the most proud of in the show is the seriousness and the silliness at the same time.

[Josh Levine]

The Daily show built a cult following around the idea that a fake news show could expose phoniness and hypocrisy. But Jon Stewart wasn't much of a cult leader because he wasn't leading his viewers anywhere in particular. He was only telling them what not to believe in. According to one academic study, watching the Daily show was strongly correlated with cynicism about candidates, the American political system and the news media.

[Elliot Kalin]

I buy that premise that people would get more cynical, but I think that then it is the job of the authorities to earn that faith back.

[Liz Winstead]

I think that cynicism keeps you healthy. It's like vitamin C. I don't think you can take too much.

[Josh Levine]

If you only knew about Fox News from watching the Daily show, you might think that everyone on the channel was an unabashed conservative shilling. But that wasn't entirely true. There was a place on the network for a different kind of voice. The Fox News liberal. The right has been much better at packaging and marketing itself, and the left wing has not fought back. Let's take a quick break.

[Ashley Banfield]

Blinds.com is kicking off the savings early with Black Friday megadeals. All month long, a Blinds.com design expert can help you make the perfect selection on your schedule. We can even handle everything from measure to your whole home installed for just one low cost. With over 25 million windows covered, Blinds.com is the number one online retailer of custom window coverings. Get up to 45% off site wide and a free professional measure. Right now at blinds.com, rules and restrictions may apply.

[Josh Levine]

I'm James McComb reporting live from home in my bathrobe and slippers. Tonight we're talking Dunkin Poehler peppermint coffee. Gene's here with the latest. Uh, Gene, do you Copy. The Home With Dunkin Is where youe Wanna Be. Before Fox News went on the air in 1896, the network announced one of its new stars, a young, brash Atlanta radio host named Sean Hannity. I don't make any qualms about it. I consider myself conservative, and I don't hide that fact. But Hannity got hired to co host a primetime political debate show. His TV partner was. Well, that part wasn't clear. Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes said the other slot would be filled by an ltbd, a liberal to be determined. Liberal is really a great word. I mean, people should not duck in that word. Alan Colmes made his name in New York talk radio. Despite his loving tribute to the word liberal, he was no raging lefty. He actually called himself quite moderate. And thanks to Sean Hannity's personal recommendation, he would become Fox News liberal to be determined. The guy who got second billing on Hannity and Combs. Fox is fair and balanced. My role is to give a point of view, a strong point of view, you know, on whatever the issue is that comes up. Most people had a different explanation for why Colmes was on Fox News. The conservative journalist Jonah Goldberg told me about that theory. You needed the Washington Generals, the team that plays the Harlem Globetrotters. The Generals need some baskets. The Harlem Globetrotters still with their big lead. The Washington Generals are the biggest losers in the history of basketball. And they're supposed to lose entertainingly. That was truly the only reason they existed. To get dunked on and embarrassed by the Harlem Globetrotters night after night after night to the great amusement of the Trotters adoring fans. And those poor generals, they've waited 17 years to beat the Trotters, and they'll have to wait to another night in another town. Combs, the Fox News liberal, suited up every night to get demolished. Hey, guys. Guys. Hey, Congressman. Excuse me.

[Jon Stewart]

Trying to blame.

[Josh Levine]

I don't want to be unfair. He was a nice man doing a difficult job, but everybody's good looking. And then there's Alan Combs. They cast him to look apart against this choir boy Sean Hannity guy. But please, let's. Let's have some decorum here. Let's stop the yelling and screaming. Now, Congressman Schrock, it seems to me.

[Madeline Smithberg]

That, well, he was on a conservative tv. He was never set up to win.

[Josh Levine]

That's Mark Riley, like Combs. He was a fixture on New York talk radio. I loved Alan Combs.

[Madeline Smithberg]

Alan Combs, good people.

[Josh Levine]

But, you know, he was there for a reason.

[Madeline Smithberg]

He knew why he was there, he had a role to play, and he knew who the audience was.

[Josh Levine]

Combs did score some points. Occasionally, if you listen closely, you might hear him challenge a guest or stick up for the Democratic Party. Can you name a Democrat who wants us to lose the war on terror? I wouldn't put words in your mouth.

[Madeline Smithberg]

I don't say that. I just say you do not support what President Bush is doing. You're undermining him.

[Josh Levine]

No, we don't support his policies. That's not undermining, but I'm gonna tell you something. But Combs, who died in 2017, seldom ventured beyond the center left or really confronted Sean Hannity. Some of Combs biggest fans were actually in the Republican caucus. House Speaker Newt Gingrich blurbed his book, and US Congressman Tom delay called him my favorite liberal. Despite those pats on the head from Republican officials, and despite the fact that the New York Times referred to Combs as Hannity's sidekick, he insisted they were equal partners with equal airtime. By the way, we have a producer who sits in the control room with a stopwatch. It is actually timed. Roger Ailes liked to talk about that stopwatch thing, too. In his version of the story, he held the timer himself to ensure that everything was fair and balanced. It was a convincing sounding story if you'd never watched the show. When Colmes did a Q and A on C Span, he heard from someone who had been watching, hey, Alan, I think you're a nice guy, but your partner dominates the show. It seems like you're too nice to disagree. Okay, I'll be meaner from now on if it'll make you happy. Alan Combs may have been the pundit equivalent of a basketball team that never won, but he argued that just being in the game was its own kind of victory. He said that liberals had a lot to gain by reaching out to audiences that didn't agree with them. He also said that if Sean Hannity went on the air alone, then that would only serve the right wing's interests. It was a reasonable argument, one that plenty of Democrats used to explain their own appearances on Fox. But for some left wing pundits, noble defeats just weren't good enough. They wanted to go on Fox News and win.

[Alan Colmes]

I have nothing against Alan Combs. He wouldn't harm a fly, and that's why they chose him.

[Josh Levine]

That's Jeff Cohen. He's a bona fide left winger, the founder of the progressive media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. He got his start as a TV pundit on CNN's classic partisan debate show Crossfire.

[Alan Colmes]

Every time they invited me, I would say, yes. So, you know, is there too much nudity on tv? I'm ready to debate that. Or we're thinking of doing feminism. I'd say, fine.

[Josh Levine]

Jeff was willing to go anywhere that let him share his liberal beliefs. And so in 1997, when Fox News was looking to round out its weekend media criticism show, he agreed to come on board. I'm Eric Burns, and I'm all out of ideas. So here's the panel this week. We begin with Jeff Cohen. Fairness and accuracy in reporting on that show, Fox News Watch. Jeff found himself on an ideological island. His longtime fellow panelists were moderate journalist Jane Hall, Christian conservative Cal Thomas, and former Reagan and George H.W. bush advisor Jim Pinkerton.

[Alan Colmes]

I was outnumbered by right wingers from beginning to end. It was good interplay to have me on that show. This idea that immigrants have to immediately learn English when we demand that they learn English is silly. My close political colleagues were utterly amazed. It's unbelievable what you said. I can't believe you're saying that anywhere on tv, let alone Fox, you've got.

[Josh Levine]

Bush and Gore, who the evidence suggests both have violated drug laws, but the prisons are not filling up with rich white guys born into privilege. I think it's important to talk. Writing in Vanity Fair, critic James Walcott said that Jeff was farther to the left than any other talking head on cable and that his presence on the air was a credit to Fox News. For Fox viewers, he was an object of fascination, like a zoo animal who'd wandered into the wrong habitat. Now, for the part of our show that we call letters about Jeff, Jeff Cohen could be replaced by a row of buttons that played the top 20 hits of international socialism.

[Alan Colmes]

There was no individual on that show that got more email pro and con, and some of it was pro.

[Josh Levine]

And finally, from a very surprised Marty in Boise, Idaho, regarding last week's show. I couldn't believe it. I agreed with Jeff Cohen twice.

[Alan Colmes]

Keep watching, Marty.

[Josh Levine]

It was calls like that one that convinced Jeff that Fox News was a worthless venue for his ideas. He was even allowed to criticize Rupert Murdoch and the decision to put George Bush's cousin on the Fox decision desk.

[Alan Colmes]

Those were thrills. It's what you call biting the hand that's feeding you.

[Josh Levine]

No matter what Jeff said, Fox News seemed to enjoy having him around so long as he stayed in his enclosure.

[Alan Colmes]

I was on in the weekend, so I got away with it. Would I have been able to do that? In primetime? No. Would they ever have allowed me into primetime? No. And I knew that any moment I could be fired.

[Josh Levine]

Jeff ultimately left Fox News of his own volition. While he enjoyed being Fox's house contrarian, he knew it was never actually going to be fair and balanced. And so in 2002, he took a job with another cable news channel, Count on America's news channel, MSNBC. MSNBC had debuted alongside Fox News in 1996, but in the cable news wars, it was a very, very distant third top rated.

[Jon Stewart]

Fox has quadrupled its ratings. CNN has as well, and MSNBC has seen its viewership jump from three to nine people.

[Josh Levine]

It wasn't just that nobody watched. MSNBC didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. CNN is the reporters network. Fox News Channel is the opinion makers network. MSNBC is the confused network. In 2002, MSNBC was not a liberal channel, far from it. But Jeff thought he might be able to turn it into one. The job he took was to help launch a talk show hosted by a left wing icon, Phil Donahue. This is an email from Michael. I'm 17. I'm the person the Bush administration wants to hold a rifle and go off and kill Iraqis. I would like to know why. Is that too much to ask? Donohue was a daytime talk pioneer, the guy who paved the way for Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer. By the early 2000s, he was a TV elder statesman and unabashed about his liberalism and his opposition to war in Iraq. I have to tell you, when you're called unpatriotic, it's very personal and it hurts your feelings. I ought to know. One reporter called MSNBC's decision to showcase Donahue a bold move to lift the channel's sagging ratings.

[Alan Colmes]

They guaranteed him that he could be as progressive and biased toward the left as O'Reilly was biased in favor of right wing themes and issues that would be counter programming against Fox.

[Josh Levine]

Donohue became MSNBC's highest rated show, but that promise that he could be as progressive as he wanted got broken very quickly.

[Alan Colmes]

Management said whenever you have a guest who is anti war, you have to have two guests that are pro war. If you have two guests that are on the left, you have to book three guests that are on the right.

[Josh Levine]

Even with those rules in place, the network canceled donahue in early 2003 after just seven months on the air. An MSNBC higher up told Jeff, the rap on us is that we're anti American. So instead of distinguishing itself by moving to the Left, MSNBC brought in new hosts that tacked aggressively to the right in primetime. Republican ex congressman Joe Scarborough called anti war protesters leftist stooges. And on weekends, the conservative zealot Michael Savage swerved even further. I don't want Osama bin Laden driving around in a burqa and a veil with a suicide bomb strapped to his chest. Do you liberal idiots want that? TV executives had a term for this phenomenon, the Fox effect. MSNBC was copying Fox News pro war, pro troops, pro flag philosophy both to juice its ratings and to avoid being seen as a home for the liberal anti war agenda. One journalist who'd risen to stardom at MSNBC was not on board with that approach, and she decided to speak out.

[Alan Colmes]

Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Ashley Banfield.

[Josh Levine]

Ashley Banfield had anchored her own primetime show on MSNBC and reported from hotspots around the world, including Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2003, Ashley's show had gotten canceled and her star had dimmed at NBC News, a sign, one colleague said, of the network's fickleness. That spring, she made a speech at Kansas State University criticizing the American media for turning the war on terror into sanitized TV entertainment. And she said that one cable channel was driving everything.

[Ashley Banfield]

Many talk about it as the Fox effect, Fox News effect. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news.

[Josh Levine]

What was the response from your bosses at NBC to your speech?

[Ashley Banfield]

Oh, God. NBC News president Neal Shapiro called me into his office and chewed me out and said, they'd already written my statement apologizing. And I said, but I'm not. I'm not apologizing for it. I spoke the truth.

[Josh Levine]

NBC said publicly that they were deeply disappointed and troubled by her remarks. They also took away Ashley's office, and.

[Ashley Banfield]

My agent sort of pressed them to say, what's Ashley supposed to be doing every day right now? Because no one will respond.

[Josh Levine]

Eventually, she was given a space of her own.

[Ashley Banfield]

So they cleared out a tape closet and wedged a desk into it. But I went to work every day. I refused to not show up.

[Josh Levine]

Ashley says that she got sidelined for 17 months until her contract ran out. NBC News then president Neal Shapiro told us that he recalls things dramatically differently, but wishes her all the best. Looking back, it's undeniable that Ashley's career stalled out after she talked about how Fox was changing cable News. But in 2003, she wasn't the only one taking a risk to call Fox out that fall. Someone else would make his voice heard, a whistleblower that Fox News couldn't ignore.

[Madeline Smithberg]

What I was thoroughly naive about about was that there could be a network news operation that would be an arm of a political party.

[Josh Levine]

We'll be back in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Amazon.

[Ashley Banfield]

The holidays are here, and you know what that means. It's time to get your friends and.

[Josh Levine]

Family the gifts they deserve.

[Ashley Banfield]

Take the stress out of shopping with.

[Josh Levine]

Amazon's great deals and low prices on a huge range of items from toys.

[Ashley Banfield]

To tech and more, much more. Whoever you're gifting for, Amazon has great.

[Josh Levine]

Prices on everything you need this holiday season. Shop Black Friday week starting November 21st. Charlie Rena was a very experienced journalist when he started at Fox News in 1997. Back then, the channel was just a few months old and Charlie wasn't sure what approach Fox was going to take. The guy who schooled him was Chet Collier, Roger Ailes, right hand man.

[Madeline Smithberg]

I asked Chet one day, I said, there's so much shouting, I said, I can't even hear what they're saying. He said, look, this is how it works. The people out there are just turning that dial. If they don't see something that gets their attention, they're going to just go on to the next station. We want to stop them.

[Josh Levine]

At Fox, Charlie was a producer in New York for Fox News Watch, the not very shouty weekend media criticism show. Chad Collier was not a fan.

[Madeline Smithberg]

I came into the newsroom. Chet happened to be sitting there talking with someone and he turned and he said, sleaze it up, sleaze it up. The next day I walked in and the same thing, dumb it down, dumb it down.

[Josh Levine]

Did you sleaze it up and or dumb it down?

[Madeline Smithberg]

No, we did it our way.

[Josh Levine]

For years, he mostly managed to keep Fox News Watch insulated from the suits, a fact that the panelist Jeff Cohen appreciated.

[Alan Colmes]

Charlie Reno was a serious reporter. He was a serious TV producer, a news writer, and he understood journalistic ethics.

[Josh Levine]

Charlie had worked at the Associated Press, CBS and ABC outlets that he says aimed for neutrality.

[Madeline Smithberg]

Anything that showed the slightest partisan bias of any sort would be stopped, would be edited, you'd be pulled on the carpet. It was just not done.

[Josh Levine]

Fox News was not the AP or cbs. And there were some orders for management that Charlie felt he couldn't ignore. Once he was told to be careful with the special on Ronald Reagan because Reagan was one of Roger Ailes favorites. And when he was producing an environmental package, he got told, you can give both sides, but make sure the pro environmentalist journalists don't get the last word. Then there were the memos. The other news organizations Charlie had worked for sent around internal messages about big events and who was covering them. But Fox's editorial notes, written by Fox News Senior Vice President John Moody, were different.

[Madeline Smithberg]

They were a signal to the reporters in the field and to the people writing news copy here of what our editorial position, most often partisan, was going to be that day.

[Josh Levine]

One note that stuck with him was from the spring of 2003, after the invasion of Iraq.

[Madeline Smithberg]

And John Moody's memo that day said something like, you're going to hear a lot of whining from protesters about American troops killing civilians. Don't fall into that trap.

[Josh Levine]

A few hours later, Charlie was in the newsroom and saw a young producer preparing a story about the war. That item included a brief clip of children in an Iraqi hospital.

[Madeline Smithberg]

And he decided to kill the whole report because the editorial note that morning had said, there are going to be people whining about civilian deaths.

[Josh Levine]

Moody's memos weren't always treated as gospel, especially by the news crew in Washington, D.C. but even their editorial freedom had its limits.

[Ashley Banfield]

I remember this very clearly. It was January. It was around the anniversary of Roe v. WADE.

[Josh Levine]

That's Ann McGinn. She was a producer in the D.C. bureau.

[Ashley Banfield]

I was on the Mall to do live shots with one of my correspondents, Major Garrett. And it was the first time I'd ever heard the term pro abortion.

[Josh Levine]

In one respect in Washington is it is a ritual. And in another respect, it is a profound yearly recognition of the importance this issue plays to people on both sides of the issue, anti abortion and pro abortion forces. One thing I want to say.

[Ashley Banfield]

And he finished his live shot, and I said, what was that? And he said, ah, I see you hadn't read Moody's editorial note this morning. We now refer to it as pro abortion. And I looked at the note and sure enough, it was in there.

[Josh Levine]

Ann believed that shift in language turning pro choice into pro abortion was not a journalistic decision.

[Ashley Banfield]

When we're talking about the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. To talk about one side of the issue as those folks being pro abortion, I don't think that's factual, and I think that skews the conversation.

[Josh Levine]

She says that she and Major Garrett decided to work around Moody's order. And the tape we acquired from that day shows that. In his next live report, Garrett says Pro choice. But then there's this 90 minutes later decision. Anti abortion forces are convinced the Supreme Court will eventually overturn those rights. Pro abortion forces believe that will never happen. And even if it does, they'll win. A Fox News producer in New York, Randy Lubradich, got the same command. Pro choice was now pro abortion.

[Ashley Banfield]

And I morally disagreed with that terminology because you can be against abortion and still be pro choice.

[Josh Levine]

Randy is the self described screaming liberal who you heard in episode three defending Fox's post 911 patriotism. But this mandate about language was something she couldn't get behind.

[Ashley Banfield]

I said, I'm sorry, I cannot in good conscience write pro abortion. I will not write pro abortion. I will write pro choice. And I was told I could go home for the day. I wouldn't be paid for that day. If that was my hill, then that was the repercussion. And I said, bye.

[Josh Levine]

Fox News told us that its human resources department has no record of Randy's suspension, which has not been revealed publicly before now. Neither has the existence of Fox's directive to use the term pro abortion. I did find one published report about a Fox memo, an order that staffers not use Terminator puns when Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for office. But that was all anyone outside Fox News heard about the editorial notes until the fall of 2003 when Charlie Rena blew the whistle. Charlie had quit his job at fox news in April 2003. That decision wasn't about politics. He'd been given tasks that he felt were a demotion and he wanted to get out with his dignity intact. After that, Charlie kept his mouth shut for six months until he saw some quotes from the journalist Chris Wallace. Wallace had left ABC to join Fox News and he said in an interview that Fox gets an unfair rap. Its reporting is serious, thoughtful and even handed.

[Madeline Smithberg]

I thought that really deserves a reply. It deserves an answer, a rebuttal.

[Josh Levine]

Charlie wrote a letter to Jim Romanesco, a media blogger whose website was essentially a national journalism message board. The letter said that the roots of Fox News Channel's day to day are on air. Bias were John Moody's editorial notes. Charlie described Moody's whining protesters memo and how it led a young producer to kill a story rather than show injured Iraqi civilians. And he said that wasn't an isolated incident.

[Madeline Smithberg]

Now, the last thing I wrote was at the fair and balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view. And in case they're not sure how to get that on the air, the memo is there to remind them.

[Josh Levine]

Before Charlie's letter, the Fox News memos were a secret. Now they'd been exposed. And other journalists were talking too. A former [e-mail] said he'd been told to seek out stories that cater to angry middle aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. Someone else said the memo's existence proved that fair and balanced was an empty slogan, like tastes great, less filling. There was even a public call for someone inside Fox to leak each day's editorial note. Fox News response to all of this was to try and discredit the source. Charlie Rena. A Fox executive, Shari Berg, sent her own letter to Jim Romanesco. And it was intense.

[Madeline Smithberg]

It was a personal attack full of lies. She used the word fuck in it.

[Josh Levine]

That letter said that Charlie's coworkers found him so clueless that he'd leave them muttering, go fuck yourself. The letter also claimed, falsely that Charlie had never worked in the Fox newsroom.

[Madeline Smithberg]

She knew I worked in the newsroom, but it's okay to lie.

[Josh Levine]

A Fox News spokesperson told us. We have no knowledge of this and did not provide additional comment when we sent them a copy of the letter. Charlie would do interviews with newspapers all across the country. But after about a week, the whole thing blew over, which I guess isn't surprising. It was about memos, after all, a bunch of journalists carping at other journalists about journalism. But Fox News had felt threatened enough to write that letter with the go fuck yourself. Charlie wasn't really surprised that Fox had attacked him publicly. A few years earlier, when he was still working for Fox News, he'd watched the channel's PR shop go after MSNBC's Ashley Banfield for seemingly no reason at all. In a 2001 Washington Post story on Banfield, a Fox spokesperson said Fox News considers her a lightweight. She's the Anna Kournikova of TV news.

[Madeline Smithberg]

This tennis player who had the reputation of being a pretty face, it was cruel. It was really cool. And therefore I thought that he had been quoted on something that he thought he said off the record. I happened to see him a few hours later coming out of the newsroom and I took him aside. I said, did they snooker you here? He said, oh, no. He said, we generated that whole story. We're out to get her.

[Ashley Banfield]

Wow, I hadn't heard that. Well, maybe I should be flattered that they felt threatened by me. It would be great if they went after my journalism. But they didn't. Maybe they couldn't find anything wrong with the Actual work I was doing. So they went after me.

[Josh Levine]

Six months later, Fox News went after her again. Roger Ailes told the New York Times that there are news anchors and news actors. He said that Ashley Banfield was a news actress, that it's all about her performing the news.

[Ashley Banfield]

It was extraordinarily hurtful. I actually reached out to him about it. I said, I don't understand why you would attack me in this way when you were trying to hire me.

[Josh Levine]

That part about Ailes trying to hire her is a story she hasn't told publicly. It happened before. Ashley was a big name when she was still on local TV in Dallas and looking to go national.

[Ashley Banfield]

I met with Roger Ailes in his office and he asked me a couple of questions that I thought were very off base. One was how I voted, and he asked me to do a twirl, which I have come to learn was not unique to me.

[Josh Levine]

Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Allison Camerota and more women who worked at Fox News have all described Ailes harassing them in exactly this way, ordering them to spin around so he could examine them from all angles. After Roger Ailes asked Ashley to twirl, he offered her a job. But NBC was recruiting her, too.

[Ashley Banfield]

The reason I didn't go to Fox News at the time was that they didn't have a show and NBC was offering me three hours on msnbc. And so it was a no brainer. I said, you know, thank you so much. It's been great to meet you and I appreciate you showing interest. And he seemed very affable and kind. And then, you know, the vitriol started after I started doing well.

[Josh Levine]

Those specific details may help explain why Ailes and Fox went out of their way to demean her. But Ashley's experience also reminds me of something we heard from Terry Anser, the anchor from America's Talking, who we interviewed in our second episode. Terri told us that she loved her job and that she still remembers wanting to cry before she went on camera.

[Ashley Banfield]

You can win 5 million Emmys and only hear about how your hair looked that day.

[Josh Levine]

That kind of pressure and scrutiny is only part of what women at all levels of the industry have to navigate.

[Ashley Banfield]

I had no idea that a situation that I was working in would qualify as a hostile work environment.

[Josh Levine]

That's Fox News producer Anne McGinn. And this is Fox producer Randy Lubradich.

[Ashley Banfield]

Who is going to complain? Who is going to hr? I didn't even know that HR existed at Fox News. I thought he was actually legitimately interested in What I had to say.

[Josh Levine]

In late 2003, Caroline Bruner was working behind the scenes at a presidential debate that Fox News was hosting in Detroit. She was still in her 20s and trying to prove herself as a producer. After the debate, she got what she thought was a rare opportunity to speak peer to peer with a senior executive. The guy who sent the daily memoir, John Moody.

[Ashley Banfield]

He was asking me questions about shows and news and to get my perspective. And then later that night we went to a bar across the street. Everybody was there and he tried handing me his hotel room key.

[Josh Levine]

And I held the hotel room key.

[Ashley Banfield]

In my hand and I handed it back to him.

[Josh Levine]

Fox told us that HR was not made aware of this allegation. Caroline told us she never filed a complaint, but we confirmed her story with three people she told at the time. John Moody left Fox News in 2018. He declined to be interviewed for this series and did not reply to a request for comment about this claim. There's been a tremendous amount of reporting about Roger Ailes years long campaign of sexual harassment and sexual assault. And later in this series we'll be looking at how the sexual harassment allegations against Bill O'Reilly changed Fox News and the country. But most of the stories we heard didn't make headlines. Sexual harassment and misogyny in the workplace have taken so much away from so many women. Security, confidence, joy, and the opportunity to have the careers they've always wanted and come tantalizingly close to getting. And that is not just a story about Fox News.

[Ben Carlin]

I had a tumultuous relationship with the host. I don't know why, but he felt like we didn't have his best interest at heart.

[Josh Levine]

Liz Winstead, the co creator of the Daily show, has rarely spoken about why she left her dream job. But she told us that she's now ready to talk about the original host, Craig Kilbourne and why she chose to quit.

[Ben Carlin]

It all came to a head when he went out with a writer from Esquire magazine and said something in the magazine to the effect of Liz was hired to give me blowjobs.

[Josh Levine]

He said that you would blow him if he wanted you to.

[Ben Carlin]

Oh yeah. And when it came out, there was a big push to not have me say anything. And it was very protective of Craig. He got suspended for a week and I was like, if that's how you're gonna view this, then I'm leaving the show.

[Josh Levine]

That's so classic. Like you're the one who.

[Ben Carlin]

Yeah, I'm the one that had to leave.

[Josh Levine]

Back in 1997, Craig Kilbourne apologized for his regrettable remark, and when we reached out to him last month about his relationship with Liz more generally, Kilbourne said, my recollection of my time at the Daily show differs from Liz, but I respect her and wish her only the best.

[Ben Carlin]

I think the one thing, if I learned anything, it's you have two choices. You become the person who treated you like shit, or you make a vow to yourself that you'll never do that to other people. And I think that I've made that bow to myself and it's paid off.

[Josh Levine]

Liz made it clear to us that her choice to leave the show wasn't just about one comment in one magazine. It was about the overall atmosphere that comment exemplified. And that atmosphere didn't magically improve when Jon Stewart replaced Craig Kilbourne. The Daily show was created by two women, but it was dominated by men. When the show won an Emmy for outstanding writing in 2003, Stewart joked about all the white guys who joined him on stage.

[Jon Stewart]

I've always felt that diversity is the most important part of a writing staff. I don't know if you can tell, but Steve has a beard and JR isn't Jewish.

[Josh Levine]

That award was for work done in co creator Madeline Smithberg's last year as executive producer. Multiple sources have reported that at some point before Smithberg left, Stewart threw a script or newspaper at her head. An unnamed Daily show staffer has said that Stewart then apologized, saying, sorry, that was the bad John. I try not to let him out. You could see and hear the Daily Show's perspective on the world whenever Jon Stewart denounced Fox News, but its point of view came through in a different way when he interviewed Ashley Banfield about her reporting in war zones.

[Ashley Banfield]

Right away, you couldn't walk through the street without everybody glaring at you and gazing at you, and you just didn't.

[Jon Stewart]

Was that blonde hair, or is that because you're kind of a hot lady?

[Ashley Banfield]

Well, you're so sweet.

[Jon Stewart]

Is that because I would think that you could even wrap a veil around that and they'd still be like, check out that booty.

[Josh Levine]

Ashley now hosts a show on the cable channel News Nation, but there was a time after she gave that speech about the fox effect in 2003, and NBC put her in a tape closet that Ashley thought she might never work again.

[Ashley Banfield]

I couldn't get a phone call returned, so my agent said, well, I got an interview with Ailes, and I thought, oh my God, well, that's bizarre. But I need a job. I'M not working and it's been a year.

[Josh Levine]

A few years earlier, Ashley had turned down a job offer from Roger Ailes, and he'd insulted her publicly. But now she felt she had no choice but to meet with Ailes again. So she went to Fox News headquarters in Manhattan.

[Ashley Banfield]

And I remember being in the boardroom and he was sitting at the end of the board table with his foot up on a chair. And I remember him for like an hour suggesting that I didn't get it, that I didn't understand how it works. And then at the end he just gave me a big look. Up and down, he said, but you're still looking hot. That's how he ended that meeting.

[Josh Levine]

Next time on Slow Burn. The left tries to build its own Fox News and runs into some challenges.

[Ben Carlin]

If George Soros ever gave us a penny, it would have been the greatest day on earth. George Soros didn't give us dick.

[Josh Levine]

If you aren't already a Slate plus member, please consider joining. You'll be supporting Slate's independent journalism, including the creation of this season and future seasons of Slow Burn. And by joining, you'll unlock full ad free access to Slow Burn and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. In this week's plus episode, we're diving deeper into the world of the Daily show of the early aughts. You'll hear from head writer Ben Carlin, writer Chris Regan and correspondent Ed Helms about how they did their jobs and how they thought about Fox. I really think that the Daily show was just trying to say what the fuck to institutions or public figures who were being shitty or disingenuous. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Slow Burn show page 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. The season was edited by by Susan Matthews and Hilary Fry. Merritt Jacob is 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 Kate Mishkin, Karen Michelle, Chris Sinclair and Travis Bell at the Westport Library in Westport, Connecticut. Special thanks to Rachel Strong, Chris Regan, Eric Byrne, Peter Hart, Steve Rendell and to Slate's Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme, Forest Wickman, Christina Cotterucci Greg Lavalley, Ben Richmond, Seth Brown, Katie Rayford, Kaitlyn 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.

[Ashley Banfield]

Former President Donald Trump rewrote the rules of how the American justice system treats our nation's most powerful people. Hello, it's Andrea Bernstein. I'm the host of the Law According to Trump, a special series from Slate.

[Josh Levine]

Plus.

[Ashley Banfield]

Long before the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity, Donald Trump created a blueprint for shielding himself from legal accountability on everything from taxes to fraud to discrimination. Listen as we explore Trump's history of bending the law to his will. Check out the Law According to Trump wherever you get your podcasts.