‘The world according to Fox’: A CEO’s vision gets tested in $2.6b lawsuit

People who have heard Scott speak in meetings say she has been critical of Trump’s election denial claims, though she mostly keeps her personal politics private. (She is registered as unaffiliated.) One colleague recalled that in a meeting shortly after the 2020 election, Scott seemed in disbelief as she described how people she considered otherwise serious and rational thought there was any chance Trump could legitimately stop President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

And according to a message that Scott sent around the same time, which Dominion lawyers recently cited in court, she warned against “giving the crazies an inch,” referring to pro-Trump conspiracy theorists. NPR first reported on that message, but a transcript of the hearing in which it was disclosed has since been sealed by a judge at Fox’s request. Fox has suffered several setbacks in court lately as it has tried to narrow the scope of the case and limit what internal communications it is required to hand over to Dominion.

In a statement, Fox News Media lauded Scott for expanding the company into numerous new businesses. “We are extremely proud of Suzanne rising through the ranks to become one of the most successful CEOs in the media industry and her track record of incredible results speaks for itself.”

Lawyers for Fox have said that its commentary on the 2020 election and Dominion was protected by the First Amendment and inherently newsworthy. “There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations,” Fox News Media said in a statement.

Dominion has disputed that. “If it were up to Fox, the more ‘newsworthy’ the lie, the greater their right to spread it,” a Dominion spokesperson said. “However, the First Amendment does not give broadcasters the right to knowingly spread lies or disregard the truth.”

Scott, 56, enjoys a close relationship with the Murdochs, who value the knowledge of Fox News she has accumulated over nearly 30 years with the network and who trust that she has the right vision to expand the business as cord cutting threatens the cable industry, according to two senior Fox colleagues.

The Murdochs, however, have been forced to make hard choices about even their most favoured CEOs when scandal overwhelms. In 2010, Rupert Murdoch, chair of Fox Corp., reluctantly pushed out Rebekah Brooks, who ran his British newspapers and was a close protégé, amid a police investigation into phone hacking by journalists who worked for her.

Scott maintains a much more discreet profile than her predecessor, Roger Ailes, a whisperer to Republican presidents who cultivated a Svengali-like image in the media before numerous accusations of sexual harassment led to his downfall.

She grew up in northern New Jersey, where she lives today with her husband and teenage daughter. Her first job for Fox was as an assistant to one of Ailes’ top deputies. Her first big promotion was to a senior producer position on Greta Van Susteren’s show. She would go on to oversee network talent and then programming.

Colleagues say she pays careful attention to what’s on Fox, often watching from her office with the sound off and occasionally offering advice to producers and hosts on how sets could look better, outfits sharper and guests could be more compelling.

Under her direction, Fox News has maintained not only one of the biggest audiences in cable but also in all of television, occasionally drawing more viewers than traditional broadcast networks such as ABC. And Fox News collects far higher ad rates than its competitors — an average of almost $US9,000 for a 30-second commercial in prime time, compared with about $US6,200 for CNN and $US5,300 for MSNBC, according to the Standard Media Index, an independent research firm. (The writer of this article is an MSNBC contributor.)

As CEO, Scott has adopted a mostly deferential view of dealing with talent, current and former hosts said.

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Ailes believed that no host should ever assume they were bigger than the network — or him. In 2010, for instance, after Hannity made plans to broadcast his show from a Tea Party rally in Cincinnati where organisers had billed him as the star attraction, Ailes ordered the host to scrap his plans and return to New York, threatening to “put a chimpanzee on the air” if he didn’t make it back in time, recalled one former Fox employee.

But in a sign of how times have changed, star hosts such as Carlson and Hannity have spoken at political events in recent years.

According to one Fox journalist, the biggest stars at the network are given much wider latitude today. Speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, this person added: “Tucker is in charge of Tucker. Hannity is in charge of Hannity.”

Carlson, whose 8pm show draws the highest ratings of any in cable news prime time, has boasted about operating without any interference from upper management. “I don’t clear anything with anybody,” Carlson said recently at a journalism symposium. One Fox executive who speaks regularly with Scott said Carlson’s claim “is not true.”

Scott’s supporters argue that much of the tone of the criticism that she’s too hands-off is sexist.

Her supporters are also quick to point out that Scott has elevated numerous women into powerful spots, forming a “League of Their Own,” as some inside Fox have taken to calling it. Dana Perino, Harris Faulkner, Sandra Smith and Martha MacCallum all have their own daytime shows. And for the first time, a woman, Shannon Bream, is the host of “Fox News Sunday,” the network’s signature political talk show.

“If she were the CEO of CNN, lets be honest, the cover stories would never end,” said Perino, a former aide to President George W. Bush who co-hosts two hours on Fox News every weekday. “She doesn’t get that kind of recognition, but she doesn’t need it either.”

The picture of Scott that was painted in lawsuits filed by former Fox News female employees over Ailes’ misconduct, however, was not quite so flattering. In one from former anchor Julie Roginsky, for instance, Scott is described as part of a team that recruited employees to publicly disparage Gretchen Carlson, the former host whose secret recordings of her meetings with Ailes helped bring him down. Fox has denied those claims.

Several women and men who worked at Fox said Scott was viewed as the enforcer of Ailes’ leggy, blonde aesthetic for women on the air while she was a more junior executive, communicating to them things a man could not say. Ailes, according to one former Fox executive who spoke directly to him about his relationship with Scott, once said: “I don’t want to call you guys to tell the girls to hike their skirts up. So I call Suzanne.”

In a statement, Fox News Media defended Scott, noting that she had increased the number of women in executive roles by 50 per cent. “She has revitalised the culture and led a reorganisation of the management structure,” the statement said.

The story of longtime anchor Shepard Smith’s departure in the fall of 2019 revealed much about her reluctance to police top Fox talent. According to two people who spoke to Smith, one of the few politically independent voices left at the network then, his employment became untenable after he and Carlson took veiled shots at each other on their respective programs over the validity of the charges that would eventually lead to Trump’s first impeachment.

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Smith, they said, was stunned that week to read on the website of Vanity Fair something he knew wasn’t true: that Scott had told him to stop criticising Carlson or she would pull him off the air. Smith, who had already quietly been negotiating his exit from Fox, told friends he believed that Carlson was behind the erroneous leak. He demanded that Scott and Jay Wallace, president of Fox News, personally issue a full-throated denial of the story.

None came — only a quote from a Fox representative in the Hollywood Reporter saying that neither executive had spoken directly to Smith about the incident. Three weeks later, Smith shocked colleagues when he announced live on his 3pm program that he was leaving Fox News after 23 years.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.