6: David Folkenflik on Roger Ailes

When Roger Ailes' wife Elizabeth sent a statement on her husband's death to The Drudge Report instead of Fox News it was, according to NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik, "the final act of Roger Ailes' revenge" against the network he created. In an interview for the podcast NewsFeed with @BuzzFeedBen, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith talks with Folkenflik about Ailes' contentious relationship with the Murdochs and the way he wielded — and abused — his power as the head of Fox News. "It was a paranoid cult culture, it was a control culture, we knew that it was a punitive culture," said Folkenflik.  In the interview, Folkenflik also talks about the allegations of sexual abuse that got Ailes kicked out of Fox News and how the network is navigating Trump's presidency without him. "The people who are in that [morning] meeting basically have a triptych, incense, candles, a hologram machine, designed to conjure up the spirit of Roger Ailes and figure out what the hell would he do if he was handed these cards to play," he said. David Folkenflik is the author of Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices