In his continuing coverage of the Roger Ailes-Fox News fiasco that involves at least 20 different allegations of sexual harassment committed by the network's former chief executive, New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman dropped another find Sunday morning: that Ailes allegedly used portions of the Fox budget "to hire consultants, political operatives, and private detectives who reported only to him."
At least one of these consultants "ran negative PR campaigns against Ailes’s personal and political enemies out of Fox News headquarters," Sherman reported. The alleged center of these operations was a so-called "Black Room" at News Corp headquarters in New York City.
Sherman reports that because Ailes allegedly created a culture of secrecy at Fox, there were "few checks" on him when it came to the organization's budget (making settlements from sexual harassment lawsuits easy to hide). Per New York Magazine:
Sherman reported that Ailes also allegedly used private detectives to extensively track and smear journalists from publications like Gawker and the News and Recorder, as well as Sherman himself.
In an email to Sherman, Ailes’s personal lawyer and Fox contributor Peter Johnson Jr. denied involvement in “Black-Room” campaigns, reportedly saying that “the only online campaign I’m aware of is [Sherman's], attempting to create a truth from a fiction with this account.” Via his attorney Susan Estrich, Ailes told Sherman that the allegations “are totally false.”