The Loudest Voice in the Room

How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country

By: Gabriel Sherman

Narrated by: Erik Singer

A revelatory journey inside the world of Fox News and Roger Ailes—the brash, sometimes combative network head who helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A SHOWTIME LIMITED SERIES • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR

When Rupert Murdoch enlisted Roger Ailes to launch a cable news network in 1996, American politics and media changed forever. With a remarkable level of detail and insight, Vanity Fair magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman puts Ailes’s unique genius on display, along with the outsize personalities—Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Gretchen Carlson, Bill Shine, and others—who have helped Fox News play a defining role in the great social and political controversies of the past two decades. From the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to the Bush-Gore recount, from the war in Iraq to the Tea Party attack on the Obama presidency, Roger Ailes developed an unrivaled power to sway the national agenda. Even more, he became the indispensable figure in conservative America and the man any Republican politician with presidential aspirations had to court.

How did this man become the master strategist of our political landscape? In revelatory detail, Sherman chronicles the rise of Ailes, a frail kid from an Ohio factory town who, through sheer willpower, the flair of a showman, fierce corporate politicking, and a profound understanding of the priorities of middle America, built the most influential television news empire of our time.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present, Sherman documents Ailes’s tactical acuity as he battled the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives strategized Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with Fox News stars such as O’Reilly, Hannity, and Carlson; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Roger Ailes’s life is a story worthy of Citizen Kane. The Loudest Voice in the Room is an extraordinary feat of reportage with a compelling human drama at its heart.

Critic reviews

“[An] actually fair and balanced, carefully documented biography.”—Jacob Weisberg, The New York Times Book Review

“The book excels at compiling data establishing Ailes’s control freakishness and authoritarian nature. . . . A veteran of the New York media-reporting scene, Sherman nails the Fox News palace intrigue and brings to light interactions that Ailes clearly never wanted to go public.”—Erik Wemple, The Washington Post

“[An] enormously entertaining new biography.”—The New Republic

“A thoroughly reported look behind that curtain . . . Part of the reason [Ailes] and his allies have campaigned against the book is not because it is false, but because it tells a true story.”—David Carr, The New York Times

“Sherman is at his best writing with sweep about the history of cable news and placing Ailes in context.”—Los Angeles Times

“[An] eye-opening biography of the would-be political kingmaker and Fox News mastermind . . . A well-reported, engaging book. A bonus: Bill O’Reilly won’t like it, either. Politics and media junkies, on the other hand, will have a field day.”—Kirkus Reviews

Superb

Gabriel and his editor should be proud. The research was exhaustive, and, in my opinion, the findings were delivered in an unbiased manner. Based on the level of detail, it's evident this book took many years of research, writing, and editing. It's subject - Mr. Ailes - was delivered to the reader thoroughly, carefully, and fairly. The narration was spot-on. It's a shame that Mr. Ailes refused to be interviewed for the book. A much deserved "well-done" to Gabriel, the editor, researchers (if anyone else contributed other than Mr. Sherman), and narrator.

Excellent writing and performance

Wow. The story of Roger Ailes is fascinating and it is told so well here by Erik Singer. Highly recommended.

Broadcasting Power

At the outset of Vladimir Putin's reign, masked government strongmen burst into the halls of the Independent Television Station (NTV is the Russian acronym) and wrestled the control of this media empire away from an oligarch fleeing to Israeli shores and into the hands of the resurging Russian state.

In a sense this was a uniquely Russian story, and yet the themes of this power play echo in the American landscape.

Media power, government collusion with that power and -yes- oligarchy (with a human face here in the USA).

A life of an individual told by his associates is a jumble of anecdotes, metaphors, gossip and flawed memories. That is what a biography always was and always will be.

Any reader who reads a biography and believes that he is getting a total portrait of a single person is an idiot.

The bigger question -the true mark of a success or failure of a biography- is whether a larger truth emerges out of a swamp of gossip and recollections. Similar to way a lotus rises out of the mud.

In this book a larger narrative does emerge and the developing picture isn't all that agreeable to the eyes of a common citizen.

News Corporation's media foot soldiers have attacked this book on account of a story it tells of Roger Ailes offering a female underling money for sex. Although Fox News made millions of dollars peddling salacious rumors about Bill Clinton and there are youtube compilations of female Fox News anchors crossing and uncrossing their legs, we are expected to believe that their corporate offices are filled with asexual boy scouts.

The sexual harassment tale sounds plausible to me; but even if it was proven to be totally false it does nothing to amend the larger narrative of the book.

Forget Roger Ailes, the main protagonist here is power in modern America. The flow of power away from the smoke-filled backrooms and into greenrooms and shiny studios.

Gabriel Sherman does -in one volume- present a narrative similar to that Robert Caro does in his unfinished biography of Lyndon Johnson. This is a study of power: its acquisition, its nature and its use.

The Loudest Voice in the Room is a good listen and I recommend it. The narration is perfect.

~ Ivan
Ivan's Shady Existence Blog

Interesting, but biased

Any additional comments?

The book was well narrated. The story behind Fox new and Roger Ailes was interesting. However, the book seemed overly negative regarding Mr. Ailes and the picture it painted of him, to the point where I wondered if the author had an agenda.

Needs better editing

I was disappointed in this book (and too bored to finish it). Like him or not, Roger Ailes is a fascinating character. This book, however, was too inclusive of every detail of Ailes career to hold my attention. The relevant bits are diluted in a vast dump of information, which is too bad because this is an important and interesting subject.