Roger Ailes fake news empire: Former Fox News head presided over a panoply of phony sock puppets

Interesting story regarding how Ailes created phony social media blogs to attack competitors relying on tactics learned as a GOP political operative.

http://www.salon.com/2017/04/18/roger-ailes-fake-news-blogs-sockpuppet/

Since a series of sexual harassment accusations led to the ouster of Roger Ailes as chairman and CEO of Fox News Channel last summer, the managerial culture he created at the network has come under increased scrutiny. Ailes’ old-fashioned, male-dominated style has been characterized by many former employees as sexist, but another aspect of it has received little attention: the many ways that Fox News was run more like a political operation than a journalistic enterprise.

During the Ailes era, the network’s ferocity in defending itself against inconvenient facts and journalists it deemed unfair became legendary among the small group of people who cover the media business. Under its former head, the network employed a team of “black room” operators who allegedly obtained phone records and credit reports of reporters disliked by Ailes. According to news reports, private investigators working for the company were dispatched to follow journalists, apparently to find out whom they were meeting. According to sources, sometimes Fox News corporate funds were used for such endeavors; other times, Ailes paid for them himself.

That ultra-aggressive approach to promotion during the Ailes era also extended to the online world, where Fox News employees and contractors were dispatched to do battle against not just mainstream media reporters but also against small-time bloggers and even website commenters. Fox News even went so far as to create at least two anonymous websites that attacked the competition.

This strategy of online fakery — a practice known as creating “sock puppet” accounts, in internet parlance — was an outgrowth of the corporate culture established by Ailes when he launched the channel at the behest of media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1996. With a background in Republican politicking instead of news reporting, Ailes infused his fledgling operation with the ethos of a political campaign. Nearly eight months removed from Ailes’ leadership, executives at Fox News and its parent company 21st Century Fox are still discovering some of the arcane structures and methods he once employed.