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Episode: The Rise of Fox News | 3. The Other Guy’s Hamburger

Author: Slate Podcasts
Duration: 00:57:09

Episode Shownotes

For a decade and a half, CNN was peerless and ambitious, and it understood its place in the world. At least, it thought it did—until Fox News burst onto television screens. Could CNN save itself by becoming conservative or by going tabloid? And how would CNN and Fox respond when

September 11 made the news more important than ever? Want more from Slow Burn? Join Slate Plus to unlock full access to all seasons, including members-only bonus episodes from The Rise of Fox News. You'll also enjoy ad-free listening to all of your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now by clicking "Try Free" at the top of the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen. Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde. Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of 'Slow Burn,' host Josh Levin examines CNN's initial prominence in the news landscape, marked by its innovative 24-hour coverage and significant events like Baby Jessica's rescue. However, the network faced fierce competition with the emergence of Fox News, which introduced a more partisan, personality-driven approach. As CNN sought to retain viewers amidst declining ratings, it contemplated shifting toward sensationalist journalism, especially highlighted by events like the Chandra Levy coverage. The episode delves into how the September 11 attacks transformed the media landscape, reshaping viewer engagement and defining identities for both networks, with Fox News capitalizing on nationalism and CNN maintaining a more cautious reporting style.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Rise of Fox News | 3. The Other Guy’s Hamburger) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_00
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Gail Evans had a very busy life doing international consulting in the Middle East and raising three young children. She hadn't been looking to change things up until she got an opportunity with a startup in Atlanta.

00:00:44 Speaker_11
That was July 30th, 1980, within a month of CNN beginning.

00:00:49 Speaker_39
Cable News Network, the news channel. A bold, innovative step taken by Turner Broadcasting exclusively for cable subscribers.

00:00:58 Speaker_36
CNN was selling a brand new era of American television, a future filled with round-the-clock updates, when you didn't have to wait for the network evening news.

00:01:08 Speaker_09
National newsmen may tell you, that's the way it is. At the Cable News Network, we believe that's the way it was.

00:01:18 Speaker_11
How do you actually have original news going on 12, 14, 18 hours a day when the most anybody had ever done before was maybe occasionally an hour?

00:01:30 Speaker_36
Gail was one of the people trying to figure out where all that news would come from. One of her first jobs was to help create CNN's booking and research departments.

00:01:40 Speaker_11
I think everybody believed we'd fail.

00:01:42 Speaker_11
Early on, I remember the woman who handled accounting for the area I was in running down the hall on Friday afternoon going, Gail, deposit your check fast because there is not enough money in the bank to meet the payroll.

00:02:00 Speaker_36
For CNN to work, Gayle and her colleagues would need to pull off news-gathering feats that hadn't even been attempted.

00:02:06 Speaker_11
— Everybody was constantly just making it up because nobody had done it before.

00:02:11 Speaker_40
— One of the things we're really excited about is our ability to use satellite coverage.

00:02:16 Speaker_11
— We really could cover the world in a way in which the world had never been covered before.

00:02:21 Speaker_40
— We'll put it on the air as fast as we can.

00:02:24 Speaker_36
CNN wasn't all reporting all the time. Its daily lineup would also feature the left-right political debate show Crossfire and Larry King's celebrity interviews.

00:02:34 Speaker_36
But the network's founding mantra was the news is the star, that the stories were what mattered, not big-name anchors or primetime pundits. CNN allowed anyone, anywhere, to catch up on the world's most important events.

00:02:49 Speaker_36
The question was, did TV watchers actually want that?

00:02:55 Speaker_11
We decided that we were going to do live programming from Ethiopia to talk about the horrible famine and to show people what famine looked like. And I used to say to people, you could hear television sets turning off.

00:03:14 Speaker_11
It was an absolute ratings disaster.

00:03:18 Speaker_36
The news as the star may have sounded high-minded, but CNN was a for-profit TV network, not a social cause.

00:03:26 Speaker_11
How do you get people to listen? I think part of what happens is you have to give them some of the pabulum they want. If you are always talking into a dark hole where nobody's listening, you're not accomplishing anything.

00:03:42 Speaker_36
In October 1987, CNN would find its answer deep inside an actual dark hole.

00:03:50 Speaker_11
Baby Jessica in the well.

00:03:52 Speaker_42
The eyes, the hearts, the minds of people around the world have been on Jessica McClure underground in Midland, Texas.

00:03:58 Speaker_36
Jessica McClure was just 18 months old when she fell into an abandoned well. The effort to save her dragged on for more than two days. And CNN was there, broadcasting the whole thing live.

00:04:09 Speaker_11
— When there's a big story that's happening, people are glued to their television. People just turn it on, and they leave it on until it's over.

00:04:18 Speaker_26
— You can see the cable coming up. Everyone's eyes are looking down.

00:04:25 Speaker_45
— You can see the enthusiasm, you can hear the applause.

00:04:28 Speaker_36
— Baby Jessica's rescue brought CNN its biggest audience ever, and proved the value of 24-hour news to millions of Americans.

00:04:37 Speaker_22
— The viewers, the public, knew that CNN would have the news.

00:04:43 Speaker_36
That's Tom Johnson. He took over as CNN's president in 1990. Tom understood that for most people, CNN wouldn't be a must-watch every day.

00:04:53 Speaker_36
But as more and more of the country got wired for cable, CNN became the go-to source whenever America got caught up in a big story.

00:05:02 Speaker_43
We can see some bright orange flashes off in the distance here on the horizon in Baghdad.

00:05:07 Speaker_22
My career was really made possible successfully by Saddam Hussein and O.J. Simpson. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. The intensity of the viewing on that was greater than anything I'd ever seen.

00:05:22 Speaker_36
The first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 and the O.J. trial in 1995 caused CNN's ratings to explode. And thanks to ad money and cable subscriber fees, the network's annual net revenue soared into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:05:39 Speaker_36
Life as the first and only 24-hour cable news network was pretty darn sweet. But in 1996, cable television would get a lot more crowded, and CNN would face a new aggressive challenger that it wasn't prepared for at all.

00:05:58 Speaker_36
This is Slow Burn Season 10, The Rise of Fox News. I'm your host, Josh Levine. For a decade and a half, CNN stood alone. It was peerless and ambitious, and understood its place in the world. At least, it thought it did.

00:06:14 Speaker_36
Until Fox News burst onto television screens. From the news capital of the world, this is your news, fair and balanced. News with a pulse. News not born. Fox was a different kind of news channel. Partisan and bombastic, and not as focused on reporting.

00:06:37 Speaker_36
Its emergence would send CNN into an existential crisis, at the exact moment when the news was more important than ever. In September 2001, the country would turn to cable TV to understand the world and to feel understood.

00:06:53 Speaker_36
This was the chance for CNN and Fox News to show who they really were and for the American people to vote with their remotes.

00:07:02 Speaker_19
Although I do occasionally flip from channel to channel, I always come back to Fox.

00:07:06 Speaker_36
This is episode three, The Other Guy's Hamburger. After a night with drinks, it's tough to bounce back the next day. But with Z-Biotics, there's a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after a night of drinking.

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See website for full details and important safety information. When Tom Johnson interviewed to become the president of CNN, he had a simple question for his future boss, the cable TV mogul Ted Turner.

00:09:41 Speaker_22
I said, Ted, what is your policy about news? And he said, two words, be fair. And I said, what else? And he said, that's it, pal. And he said something like, what's yours? And I said, get it right, be accurate.

00:09:56 Speaker_36
Being fair and getting it right were great, but Tom also wanted something else. He'll be very competitive. I am a fiercely competitive person.

00:10:07 Speaker_36
CNN aspired to be the best news service on the planet, and its reporters fought for scoops with journalists from all over the world. But on cable television, there really was no competition.

00:10:18 Speaker_24
I can make an analogy to if the people in town want hamburgers, they got to go eat at your hamburger restaurant.

00:10:27 Speaker_36
— That's Rick Davis. He worked at CNN for more than 40 years, making him the longest-serving executive in the history of cable news. Or, going with his analogy, the longest-serving executive in the history of hamburger restaurants.

00:10:41 Speaker_24
— All of a sudden, if across the street, there are two other hamburger places, If they throw in a special sauce that you don't have on your hamburger, and some of those customers, they realize, you know what?

00:10:54 Speaker_24
There's something about this hamburger that's even a little bit tastier than the place we've been going to for 15 years.

00:11:05 Speaker_36
The first of those competing burger joints opened for business in July 1996. From now on, NBC News and Microsoft will revolutionize the way you get news.

00:11:17 Speaker_11
MSNBC. Well, we weren't happy. We weren't looking for competition. If Microsoft was really behind this, they had the deep financial pockets to do whatever they wanted.

00:11:32 Speaker_36
So you're worried, then you actually turn it on and watch it. What do you think?

00:11:36 Speaker_11
There was nothing new, nothing really revolutionary.

00:11:41 Speaker_36
Back in the 90s, MSNBC was very different than it is today. It didn't have any clear political slant. And from Gayle's perspective, it was just a CNN imitator with no special sauce at all.

00:11:55 Speaker_36
But then, a few months later, in October 1996, a third burger place opened. And their food wasn't bland in the slightest. News every 15 minutes.

00:12:06 Speaker_33
News Now, right now. Fox News Now.

00:12:10 Speaker_11
I was really worried about the look. I was telling people, look at the graphics, look at that screen. It's fresh, it's new, it's different.

00:12:20 Speaker_24
I think competition is good for every industry. I don't think there's the self-examination as much when you have the audience to yourself than when you find out that some of your folks are going across the street to eat the other guy's hamburger.

00:12:37 Speaker_36
Okay, that's probably enough with the hamburger thing. The point is, the Fox News launch felt like an actual crisis. CNN's leaders were alarmed enough that they created a whole Fox observation team

00:12:51 Speaker_11
And their job was just seven or eight hours a day to watch Fox and see what they were doing that was new or that was different or that was controversial.

00:13:00 Speaker_36
CNN still had big profits and an enormous lead in the ratings, thanks to its 16-year head start in cable news. But it wasn't clear how much that advantage mattered. Because the way Gayle saw it, CNN and Fox weren't doing the same thing.

00:13:15 Speaker_11
CNN was out there doing the news. Fox was talking about the news. They wanted to look sharp and grab your eye. We were out there getting dirty, trying to bring you what was happening.

00:13:28 Speaker_36
While Fox did have a bunch of strong journalists, particularly in Washington, D.C., it had just a handful of foreign bureaus, compared to more than 30 for CNN. For Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, that was by design.

00:13:43 Speaker_36
They thought the reporting-heavy CNN was boring, reactive, and too dependent on big stories. — At Fox, the news wasn't the star. Personalities were.

00:13:54 Speaker_36
And even at the start, when its viewership was tiny, Fox News inspired the kind of devoted following among its conservative base that CNN never had.

00:14:03 Speaker_24
— Fox viewers would turn on Fox and put the remote back on the coffee table. And CNN viewers would keep the remote in their hands. CNN had users. Fox had fans.

00:14:21 Speaker_36
Some of the people who ran CNN envied Fox's deep connection with its audience. But mostly, they found their new rival extremely irritating.

00:14:30 Speaker_36
Murdoch said that he wanted Fox News to be objective because he believed CNN was drifting further and further to the left. Ailes took potshots at CNN, too, poking at its alleged liberal bias.

00:14:44 Speaker_36
In politics, attacking the media had been Ailes' go-to move. As chairman of Fox News, he was still in campaign mode, doing whatever he could to discredit CNN and really all of mainstream journalism.

00:14:57 Speaker_03
If you say, well, don't you have too many conservatives on? I say, yes, compared to none on the other channels.

00:15:05 Speaker_36
The truth is, American journalists do tend to be liberal, including the rank and file at Fox News and the channel's early years. Gail Evans and Tom Johnson fit that norm, too. They'd actually both worked for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.

00:15:20 Speaker_36
But that doesn't mean that CNN's coverage was slanted.

00:15:24 Speaker_11
I was happy in a day when 50% of the Democrats hated us and 50% of the Republicans hated us. Then I thought, OK, we did it right.

00:15:33 Speaker_36
Media bias is extremely tough to measure objectively.

00:15:36 Speaker_36
But a study co-authored by a conservative economist found that in the early 2000s, CNN's flagship newscast was almost exactly as centrist as the average American voter, while Fox News' special report with Brit Hume tilted to the right.

00:15:52 Speaker_36
Another study determined that CNN's main nightly news show had more Republican guests than Democrats. On Fox, those guests were nearly 90% Republican,

00:16:03 Speaker_11
If there was one thing that CNN always was, as much as we felt we could do it, are we being fair and balanced? When Fox came up with that as the slogan, it just always made me sick.

00:16:22 Speaker_22
They were not fair and balanced. I said to Raj, I said, the last thing you are fair and balanced. I mean, that should have been my slogan. And he just loved it. He just loved it.

00:16:34 Speaker_36
— Tom Johnson wanted to be competitive. So did Roger Ailes. Maybe that's why the two men were friends. Or probably closer to frenemies.

00:16:45 Speaker_22
— There never was a birthday or holiday that he didn't send me something. Unfortunately, it always had a gigantic Fox logo.

00:16:54 Speaker_36
All those gigantic logos, the whole fair and balanced thing, tossing around accusations of liberal bias. Ailes was having a fabulous time trolling CNN. And Tom really, really wanted to shove it back in his face.

00:17:08 Speaker_22
— I wanted to win at every hour, and so did he. I mean, we were fierce competitors.

00:17:16 Speaker_36
The 2000 election and recount had given Fox a huge ratings boost. To stay on top, CNN needed to find a way to transform its users into fans. Larry King Live represented one potential way forward.

00:17:38 Speaker_36
While CNN's ratings mostly surged during big news events, the talk show host with a Brooklyn accent and trademark suspenders had always dominated in prime time.

00:17:48 Speaker_11
— Larry, ask the question that the person sitting across from you at dinner wanted to know the answer to.

00:17:54 Speaker_30
— Okay, Hillary, the key question is, what's with the hair?

00:17:59 Speaker_19
It's different every day.

00:18:00 Speaker_30
Yeah, we don't know what to expect. What is today's called?

00:18:03 Speaker_19
What is today's called? It's called spray it and hope it doesn't fall on your face when you're talking to Larry.

00:18:09 Speaker_36
Larry King was really successful. So why not just build a whole lineup of Larry Kings all day long?

00:18:15 Speaker_11
Because we were a news network. Come on. I mean, Larry was great, but Larry was not a correspondent or reporter.

00:18:26 Speaker_36
If more Larry Kings wasn't the answer, then maybe CNN needed to take a hint from its rival and just get more conservative.

00:18:34 Speaker_22
I know that Roger's strategy was to serve a part of the spectrum that he felt had not been served. He saw an opening, and perhaps he was right.

00:18:46 Speaker_36
— Fox's rating spike around the 2000 election showed very clearly that there was a market opportunity in right-wing TV. — I'm killing CNN.

00:18:56 Speaker_35
Killing them. Murdering them. — It is a good time to be Bill O'Reilly. His nightly Fox show, The O'Reilly Factor, is gaining in the ratings more than 200% from a year ago. — I'm a threat to the elite media, and they don't want to give me publicity.

00:19:11 Speaker_36
Thanks in part to Fox News pushing the line that CNN was liberal, Tom had started getting loads of criticism for not appealing to Republican viewers. Plus, with Fox on CNN's heels, sticking it to them now felt essential.

00:19:26 Speaker_36
Tom wasn't about to watch his network get run over by Roger Ailes. So he did something that nobody would have expected. He made a play for Fox News's biggest star.

00:19:39 Speaker_22
I felt I should talk with Bill, particularly if I could steal him away. It would be a twofer. I mean, I'd take him away from Fox and bring him over. It could have been a hit.

00:19:49 Speaker_36
And Bill O'Reilly wasn't the only big name from conservative media he tried to recruit.

00:19:53 Speaker_05
I am, it's not even close, the most listened to radio talk show host in America.

00:20:01 Speaker_36
Can you tell me about your conversation with Rush Limbaugh?

00:20:04 Speaker_22
So few people know that. It's just amazing. Why did you want to do that in secret? Because I knew that I might have a revolt on my hands at CNN.

00:20:14 Speaker_36
Tom's colleague Gail Evans says that's probably true.

00:20:18 Speaker_11
I don't know if I could have worked the same place as Rush Limbaugh.

00:20:22 Speaker_36
Neither of Tom's approaches ended with a deal. And by 2001, he and Gayle were on the back end of their careers in television. They both separately chose to leave CNN and bow out of the cable news wars for good.

00:20:36 Speaker_36
It was clear to Tom that he was getting out just in time.

00:20:40 Speaker_22
When I went out the door, we were still ahead, but the trajectory of Fox was such that if I stayed around much longer, they would have gone past me like a rocket ship.

00:20:50 Speaker_36
CNN was never really going to out-conserve it at Fox News. But the original cable news network did have one more move it could make. CNN could compete with Fox by going tabloid.

00:21:03 Speaker_23
Here in Washington, meanwhile, the attorney for the parents of missing intern Chandra Levy is calling on police to step up their investigation and calling on friends of the young woman to come forward.

00:21:13 Speaker_36
Chandra Levy was a 24-year-old intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. After she went missing in May 2001, her relatives told the police they believed she'd been having an affair with a politician, Democratic Representative Gary Condit.

00:21:28 Speaker_24
— Something that's always worked on cable news is mystery. — CNN's Rick Davis again. — Chandra Levy was a true crime mystery, and it involved an American congressman.

00:21:39 Speaker_37
— The Levy family and its spokesman hammer relentlessly at Congressman Gary Condit, the man police say again and again is not a suspect.

00:21:48 Speaker_24
I'm sure there were other stories that should have gotten more coverage, but the cable news audience liked that story.

00:21:54 Speaker_38
In an era where there's a shorter and shorter attention span for news, this story has been continuing and won't go away.

00:22:03 Speaker_36
In the spring and summer of 2001, there wasn't much to the Chandra Levy story but the mystery. In just one day, CNN ran 22 individual segments and six full shows about Levy and had no real news to report.

00:22:19 Speaker_36
There was plenty of speculation, though, about the baseless rumor that Levy might have been pregnant and about the Democratic congressman who, it turned out, had nothing to do with her disappearance and killing.

00:22:31 Speaker_36
Still, the coverage rolled on, like baby Jessica if she never got rescued. And this time, Fox News was right there with them.

00:22:40 Speaker_18
And straight ahead in this next hour of Fox News Live, increasing pressure on Gary Condit to speak out or quit.

00:22:48 Speaker_36
I mean, we'd wake up in the morning on Condit Watch. Fox News' Jim Mills covered the story from his perch at the U.S. Capitol.

00:22:56 Speaker_21
If you had a camera and you got fresh, new pictures of Gary Condit, that was golden. Is that news? Well, in the economy of cable TV, yeah, that's a big deal.

00:23:07 Speaker_04
It was not a story. And the fact that we kept doing it really kind of disillusioned me.

00:23:13 Speaker_36
Randy Lubratich was a producer at Fox headquarters in New York. Even as a kid, it had been clear that television news was where she belonged.

00:23:22 Speaker_04
I brought a TV to summer camp to watch the Iran-Contra hearings. I had it plugged in under my blanket. I was always a little afraid of the world in and of itself, so I felt like I had to know everything that was going on.

00:23:38 Speaker_36
Randy loved her work and her Fox colleagues, even though she identified as a screaming liberal. But she hated the way her network was covering Chandra Levy.

00:23:47 Speaker_04
— We're going to put out all this inference, and no fact, and no substance.

00:23:52 Speaker_33
— It's a story of sex, lies, and politics, of polygraphs, bloodstains, and dead ends, and for one anguished family, a missing daughter. What really happened to Chandra Levy?

00:24:03 Speaker_04
For me, we were completely running with it because a congressman, a Democrat, was attached to the story. It got to be unbearable.

00:24:14 Speaker_36
— I don't think that Fox was only running with the story because Gary Condit was a Democrat. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes both had tabloid backgrounds, and sensationalism, not politics, drove much of Fox's coverage.

00:24:28 Speaker_36
Like a segment where Paula Zahn asked a psychic where Levy might be. But it was CNN's tabloidy shift that reeked of desperation, earning it the nickname the Chandra News Network.

00:24:41 Speaker_36
One CNN source told a reporter that their coverage was probably a reaction to Fox. But what choice did they have? All those Chandra Levy stories were a huge ratings winner for CNN and Fox News.

00:24:54 Speaker_36
And so, it seemed the summer of Chandra would just keep rolling into the fall. But cable news was about to have something new to cover, and a new way of looking at the world.

00:25:07 Speaker_27
People are trying to figure out what exactly is going on. There are several incidents that look for all that we can tell to be a major terrorist attack here in the United States.

00:25:22 Speaker_36
We'll be back in a minute. Support comes from PBS. The Choice, a frontline tradition for over 30 years, returns for this historic election between presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

00:25:42 Speaker_36
Go beyond the headlines in this two-hour documentary special and examine the life experiences, outlooks, and values that reveal key insights in how each would lead.

00:25:51 Speaker_36
Frontline's The Choice 2024, Harris vs. Trump, is an absolute must-watch for those seeking to make an informed decision. Stream now on pbs.org slash frontline or on the PBS app. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:26:11 Speaker_36
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash SlowBurn today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash SlowBurn.

00:27:12 Speaker_21
Fox and Friends. All right, 17 minutes before the top of the hour, our next guest, Edie, is a model and is the wife of a rock star, but this love story is anything but typical.

00:27:23 Speaker_36
A little after 8.40 a.m. Eastern on September 11, 2001, Fox's Brian Kilmeade and Edie Hill were wrapping up their Tuesday morning shift.

00:27:32 Speaker_16
— I remember we were interviewing Marisol Thomas, who was married to Rob Thomas, the musician.

00:27:38 Speaker_17
— I just love the music that your husband makes with Matchbox 20, and now we got the chance to meet you, and you're terrific.

00:27:45 Speaker_06
— Oh, thank you very much.

00:27:47 Speaker_16
And then in our ear, they start saying to us, hey, we've got to get her off the set. So I knew that there was something going on.

00:27:56 Speaker_36
That morning, Fox News' editorial leaders were on a conference call, talking about Chandra Levy coverage. At 8.49 a.m., they noticed that CNN was showing disturbing images of the Manhattan skyline.

00:28:09 Speaker_36
As CNN showed those live pictures, Fox was in a commercial break. After three minutes, Edie Hill came back on screen.

00:28:19 Speaker_17
Welcome back to Fox News. We have a very tragic alert for you right now. An incredible plane crash into the World Trade Center here at the lower tip of Manhattan.

00:28:29 Speaker_16
Initially, they were saying to us that it appeared to be a small plane. When you saw the hole, then you knew it wasn't.

00:28:36 Speaker_28
I was driving to work. I was on the West Side Highway.

00:28:39 Speaker_36
Aaron Brown was heading into CNN's New York office when he got a call about the World Trade Center and a plane. Then, about 15 minutes later, his phone rang again.

00:28:51 Speaker_28
The second tower has been hit. I just got there as quick as I could, and I got behind a police car. I was tailgating. I went, this has got to be covered by the First Amendment.

00:29:02 Speaker_36
He weaved his way to 34th Street and 8th Avenue and ditched his car on the ramp of a parking garage.

00:29:08 Speaker_28
And I remember running across the street and thinking, you gotta calm down. Don't get crazy.

00:29:15 Speaker_36
Aaron had just started at CNN after a long stint with ABC News. He'd made the move so recently that his daily newscast hadn't even started airing yet. But on September 11th, he would become the face of CNN.

00:29:32 Speaker_28
I went up on the roof, microphone on, and did television.

00:29:36 Speaker_41
— Aaron Brown in New York City joining us now. Aaron, we can see over your left shoulder there, the building still smoldering of the World Trade Center.

00:29:43 Speaker_27
— Well, it is a grotesque sight to look at from about 30 blocks away from where we are.

00:29:49 Speaker_36
— Aaron stood on that rooftop with a rolled-up sheet of paper in his hand, and earpieces in both his ears.

00:29:56 Speaker_27
For those of you just joining us, let's just briefly recap what we know. About an hour ago, about 8.45 Eastern time, one plane crashed into the tower, the World Trade Center tower on the right.

00:30:12 Speaker_28
I mean, if there was one thing that kept going through my head, it was, don't screw this up. Don't get ahead of the story. Don't speculate. Just stay with what you know. It never occurred to me that this building was going to collapse.

00:30:31 Speaker_27
And there, as you can see, perhaps the second tower, the front tower, the top portion of which is collapsing. Good Lord. There are no words. You can see large pieces of the building falling. You can see the smoke rising.

00:30:49 Speaker_27
This is just a horrific scene and a horrific moment.

00:30:55 Speaker_28
You need to keep your wits about you, which is actually a greater strain, if that makes sense. You want to scream, and you can't. You can't.

00:31:10 Speaker_36
Aaron is retired now, and his voice sounds different than it did on 9-11. But the fear that he felt that day is still fresh.

00:31:19 Speaker_28
You're now absolutely in a mass casualty event. What everyone in America thought was, what's going to blow up next?

00:31:30 Speaker_36
TV news would never be more powerful than it was on September 11. 90% of Americans kept up by watching television. Just 5% followed the news online.

00:31:42 Speaker_36
On such a confusing and scary day, everyone at home was desperate for guidance about who had done this and what the day meant. That morning, George W. Bush made just one short statement about an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

00:31:58 Speaker_36
TV anchors like NBC's Tom Brokaw would fill that vacuum and go much further than the president had.

00:32:05 Speaker_34
— This is war. This is a declaration and an execution of an attack on the United States, two of our most conspicuous symbols of the American system of capitalism.

00:32:15 Speaker_36
— Brokaw was an experienced, confident broadcaster, a classic network news voice-of-God anchorman. CNN's anchor was different.

00:32:25 Speaker_27
— I must say, every time we hear a plane coming up overhead, it gets a little nervous where we are. Whatever is happening and whoever is responsible, we have no way of knowing if it's played out yet or if it's just going on.

00:32:43 Speaker_36
Aaron Brown spent September 11th owning his fallibility, preaching journalistic caution, and making sure that the news was always the star.

00:32:52 Speaker_36
CNN bounced from New York, to D.C., to a live feed of a Taliban press conference, to a correspondent with Secretary of State Colin Powell in South America,

00:33:01 Speaker_26
They can destroy buildings, they can kill people, and we will be saddened by this tragedy, but they will never be allowed to kill the spirit of democracy.

00:33:11 Speaker_36
That kind of comprehensive coverage was exactly what American TV watchers wanted to see. In the first week after September 11th, CNN averaged 3.4 million daily viewers, almost double the audience of Fox News.

00:33:26 Speaker_36
One critic wrote that the Chandra Levy saga felt like a million years ago. CNN had adjusted quickly to this new American moment, and it seemed like Fox's personality-driven approach to TV news might be obsolete.

00:33:42 Speaker_36
Fox News hadn't been built to handle a story like September 11th. Its news operation was much smaller than CNN's and less experienced. But even with all those disadvantages, Fox's coverage holds up remarkably well.

00:33:57 Speaker_20
— September 11th, 2001, you're going to remember this day for a long time, and a lot of things in this country will change as a result of what you're seeing on your screen now.

00:34:08 Speaker_36
John Scott, who took over anchor duties from E.D. Hill that morning, was the first person on any network to mention Osama bin Laden as a possible suspect.

00:34:17 Speaker_36
Fox's team in Washington also beat everyone in reporting that a plane had likely crashed into the Pentagon. Plus, the channel's tone that morning was pretty restrained. No Fox News anchor said, this is war, like Tom Brokaw did on NBC.

00:34:33 Speaker_36
Fox's most respected voice, Brit Hume, spent much of his time debunking rumors that had been shared by other networks.

00:34:39 Speaker_31
— There was an earlier broadcast report here in Washington that there had been a car bomb outside the State Department. Terry Shultz, our reporter at the State Department, has talked to senior officials who say that that is not true.

00:34:51 Speaker_36
— For me, all of this is proof that Fox had a whole slew of talented journalists. When they got left alone and were allowed to do their jobs, they did them very well.

00:35:04 Speaker_36
It's not surprising that Fox News' 9-11 coverage isn't really remembered today, since breaking news is so ephemeral. But Fox and Roger Ailes did change television on September 11th in a way that has endured.

00:35:19 Speaker_36
They did it with an innovation so simple that it feels shocking that it wasn't already a TV staple. A block of text scrolling from right to left across the bottom of the screen.

00:35:30 Speaker_07
A day of terror in the United States. Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. WTC towers collapsed.

00:35:37 Speaker_36
That's how the Fox News crawl started, two hours after the first plane hit. It kept on going, a never-ending horizontal stream. That ticker would quickly get copied by both CNN and MSNBC.

00:35:51 Speaker_36
And in the days, months, and years that followed, all those alerts and warnings would just keep inching along, conveying an unending sense of urgency. As one Fox commentator put it,

00:36:13 Speaker_36
Regardless of what was happening in the world, the Fox News crawl was there to stay. A subtle promise that you'd always know what was happening, so long as you never flipped the channel. This was what Fox News had been built on.

00:36:27 Speaker_36
The idea that in all kinds of ways, a TV channel could forge a bond with its audience. Fox would only deepen that connection after 9-11. And they do it by making patriotism a competition.

00:36:41 Speaker_31
There are a dozen news outlets to choose from. If one of them is a little more flag-waving than the others, I think that's perfectly legitimate.

00:36:47 Speaker_36
Let's take a quick break.

00:36:52 Speaker_44
The 2024 election is upon us, and the stakes couldn't be higher. But the outcome might not be clear till long after everyone has voted.

00:37:01 Speaker_44
If the race ends up being as close as it looks right now, we could be in for a repeat, or worse, of the year 2000, when the presidency came down to a recount in Florida that ended at the Supreme Court.

00:37:12 Speaker_44
To hear the whole story, check out Fiasco Bush v. Gore, a podcast from the co-creators of Slow Burn. listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:37:25 Speaker_36
After the September 11th attacks, pretty much everyone in American politics and media spoke up about the country's character and resolve. Some people went one small step further and made their national pride more tangible.

00:37:39 Speaker_16
The way people felt then, you wanted to put a flag on, you wanted to show support for each other.

00:37:46 Speaker_36
Edie Hill had spent three years building a rapport with her audience on Fox & Friends. Now those shared values were easy to display. All she had to do was put a flag pin on her lapel.

00:37:57 Speaker_15
— That's common sense. I'm an American. We're in America. I'm wearing one.

00:38:02 Speaker_36
— Fox News anchors Brit Hume and Neil Cavuto wore flag pins, too. But CNN's Erin Brown never did.

00:38:10 Speaker_28
I was never asked to, and I never felt the need to. I was an American, and a flag pin didn't make me more of an American. And there's not a single viewer that didn't know where my heart was.

00:38:24 Speaker_36
CNN didn't have anything against the Stars and Stripes. Like Fox News, it added a waving American flag to its on-screen logo.

00:38:32 Speaker_36
But for most anchors and reporters outside of Fox, pinning the flag on your chest was a step too far, a sign that you were in lockstep with the government. Even one Fox contributor, Jane Hall, was willing to say as much publicly.

00:38:45 Speaker_14
I don't really like the feeling that I should show my patriotism on my sleeve. And to me, you know, this is going to sound corny, but I think I can be patriotic by asking good questions and trying to provide good information to the American people.

00:38:59 Speaker_36
I asked Fox producer Randi Lubratich what she thought of this whole debate and the idea that journalists should not wear flag pins on the air.

00:39:07 Speaker_04
Can I curse?

00:39:08 Speaker_36
Yeah.

00:39:09 Speaker_04
Yeah, go fuck yourself. That's what I have to say to that.

00:39:13 Speaker_36
Randi is the liberal Democrat who felt disgusted by Fox's obsessive Chandra Levy coverage. But in this case, she thought Fox News had it right, and all of its critics were totally wrong.

00:39:24 Speaker_04
At that moment, we were not conservatives. We were not liberals. We were the United States of America, and we joined together under that flag.

00:39:33 Speaker_04
So if you want to criticize who we are as a people who are under attack, where thousands of people just died, yeah, I'm OK with wearing an American flag, and I'm OK with putting it in my graphic, and I'm OK with putting it in my crawl.

00:39:48 Speaker_04
And if you're not, I think you need to examine who you are, not us.

00:39:55 Speaker_36
As an institution, Fox turned those tiny flagpins into points of division. Brit Hume said that journalists who didn't wear them were a bunch of elitists who consider themselves above or apart from the readers and viewers they supposedly serve.

00:40:11 Speaker_36
Fox's chairman, Roger Ailes, put things more crudely. When a journalist reportedly criticized Ailes for allowing his on-air talent to wear the American flag, he responded,

00:40:31 Speaker_36
— In the days after 9-11, as the Bush administration's war on terror kicked into gear, Fox News was ready for battle. And the restraint that Fox showed during the attacks quickly transformed into something else.

00:40:43 Speaker_35
— While most Americans are united in their support of President Bush and the desire to bring Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to justice, there are some differing voices.

00:40:53 Speaker_36
— On the night of September 13th, Bill O'Reilly hosted Sam Husseini, a Jordanian-American political activist and writer,

00:41:01 Speaker_35
— Sam, you've been on a program before… — When O'Reilly said the U.S.

00:41:04 Speaker_36
would likely blast Afghanistan's Taliban government with air power, Husseini pushed back.

00:41:10 Speaker_25
— Who do you kill in the process? — Doesn't make any difference. — No, no, no, it does make a difference. I don't want more civilians dead. We've had civilians dead in New York, and now you're saying maybe it's okay to have civilians dead in Afghanistan.

00:41:21 Speaker_25
— Mr. Husseini, this is war. — Stop it. — This is war. — Yeah, exactly. And in war, you don't kill civilians. You don't kill women and children. Those are your words, Bill. I don't want to insult you, Mr. Husseini, but this is... That's so sad.

00:41:32 Speaker_35
This is... You are, just to me, the most absurd statement in the world. That means we wouldn't have bombed the Nazis or the Japanese. We wouldn't have done any of that because you don't want somebody who's declared war on us to be punished.

00:41:44 Speaker_25
Who's declared war on us?

00:41:46 Speaker_35
The terrorist states have declared war, Mr. Husseini. Cut his mic.

00:41:54 Speaker_36
That wartime fervor is exactly what Roger Ailes wanted to hear.

00:41:59 Speaker_36
After September 11th, Ailes sent a letter to Karl Rove, George W. Bush's advisor, saying that the American public wanted the president to take the harshest measures possible in response to the attacks.

00:42:11 Speaker_36
This was the head of a media outlet that claimed to be neutral, giving political advice to the Republican White House. When Ailes' message got leaked, he said, I did not give up my American citizenship to take this job.

00:42:28 Speaker_36
With the administration preparing for war and the public still reeling from the deadliest attack ever on American soil, the networks were left asking themselves, how do you talk about all this on the air?

00:42:40 Speaker_36
CNN's answer came from the guy who'd replaced Tom Johnson, the channel's new chairman Walter Isaacson, CNN executive Rick Davis again.

00:42:50 Speaker_24
Walter really felt like it was important that when we did stories from Afghanistan, that at the end of the story, we reminded the audience of what happened on 9-11.

00:43:01 Speaker_36
Isaacson told CNN's journalists that they should always point out that the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing thousands of innocent people.

00:43:10 Speaker_24
Walter, he had some people who agreed with him, and he had some people within the network who didn't agree with him. But he was the boss, and that was the policy.

00:43:22 Speaker_36
That CNN directive got leaked too. When it came out, an executive from a rival network said he would never give reporters that kind of guidance, that the whole thing was infantilizing.

00:43:34 Speaker_36
But one of Isaacson's peers defended him, Fox News' editorial boss, John Moody. He said, Americans need to remember what started this. A lot of Americans did die.

00:43:46 Speaker_36
What no one outside of Fox knew at the time was that John Moody was writing memos too, a whole lot of them.

00:43:55 Speaker_13
I had been working at Fox for a few years before the editorial notes started, when they actually affected my daily work life.

00:44:03 Speaker_36
Ann McGinn was a Fox News producer in Washington, D.C. She got hired at Fox in 1998. Moody's memo started coming in early 2001, after George W. Bush was elected president.

00:44:15 Speaker_13
— Within the computer system, there was a section for the editorial notes, and you were supposed to read it every day.

00:44:21 Speaker_36
— Caroline Bruner was Ann's colleague in D.C.

00:44:24 Speaker_47
— Moody's note would usually be an editorial, like, this is what we're going to focus on today.

00:44:29 Speaker_13
The notes could be, you know, fairly obvious, you know, whatever the world events, of course, we're going to cover.

00:44:34 Speaker_47
The president is talking about jobs in Idaho. We're going to focus on the economy, that sort of thing. And then sometimes it would be things like, I remember when Osama bin Laden was the biggest news in the world.

00:44:49 Speaker_47
We're going to call him Osama with a U. We're going to follow the White House on that.

00:44:53 Speaker_13
The notes were very much in line with what the administration was putting out there.

00:45:00 Speaker_36
One example that both Anne and Caroline remember came in April 2002, as the U.S. was conducting its retaliatory war in Afghanistan.

00:45:09 Speaker_36
At a White House briefing, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer got asked about a new phrase the Bush administration was trying to popularize.

00:45:16 Speaker_02
— You, the president, others in this White House have adopted a term called homicide bombing instead of suicide bombing.

00:45:25 Speaker_10
The reason I started to abuse that term is because it's a more accurate description. These are not suicide bombings. These are murderers. The president has said that in the Rose Garden, and I think...

00:45:35 Speaker_36
CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and the Associated Press all said that they weren't going to use the Bush administration's language. But the Fox staff and Fox viewers got a different message.

00:45:47 Speaker_35
— Fox News has changed its terminology when describing people who kill others while blowing themselves up. Now, we're calling them homicide bombers. Ridiculous? Only if you're a terrorist.

00:45:59 Speaker_13
I can't speak to what coordination was going on behind the scenes, but it certainly felt that, wow, we are in step with whatever is coming out of the White House.

00:46:13 Speaker_36
Anne had started to get disillusioned during the 2000 campaign in the Florida recount, when she felt Fox News was openly rooting for George W. Bush. She thought these notes showed that Fox was now leaning even further to the right.

00:46:27 Speaker_36
But Anne and other producers on the news side in Washington still believed they had the autonomy they needed to do their jobs.

00:46:34 Speaker_13
Did I feel that I had to adhere to the editorial note in lockstep? No.

00:46:41 Speaker_47
My executive producer was just like, I don't care about that. Gonna ignore it. We in D.C. kind of felt we were above them, which sounds really arrogant and silly, but we did. We felt like we were above them.

00:46:51 Speaker_36
While Moody's memos would stay secret for years, the public did see a Fox News that was riding high. Right after September 11th, CNN had drawn a huge audience, almost double what Fox News was getting.

00:47:07 Speaker_36
But in just a few months, as news gave way to talking about the news, Fox zoomed back up the charts.

00:47:14 Speaker_45
Fox, the scrappy upstart news channel founded just six years ago by publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch, has pulled ahead of CNN, the 22-year-old traditional leader.

00:47:25 Speaker_32
In the month of January, we were number one.

00:47:29 Speaker_45
Fox Washington managing editor Brit Hume.

00:47:32 Speaker_32
We won in ratings, we won in households.

00:47:38 Speaker_36
In this moment, when Fox News ascended to number one, CNN actually had more unique viewers, people that flipped over to watch the news for a few minutes at a time.

00:47:49 Speaker_36
But the Nielsen ratings reward channels with devoted watchers who tune in for longer stretches. And Fox News had more of those than CNN. To put it another way, CNN had users and Fox had fans.

00:48:03 Speaker_36
And thanks to those fans, in 2001, Fox News turned a profit for the first time ever. Roger Ailes said all that success had a simple explanation. Fox loved America more than CNN did.

00:48:18 Speaker_36
Ailes told the New York Times, our competition has discovered fair and balanced, but only when it's radical terrorism versus the United States. Ailes didn't only mock CNN to reporters.

00:48:31 Speaker_36
He also spent tens of thousands of dollars per month on a billboard outside CNN Center in Atlanta. The Fox chairman would draw up a new message every time one of his shows topped the ratings.

00:48:44 Speaker_24
I saw it every day when it came in door. CNN's Rick Davis. Well, there was discussion. Can't we buy that billboard? Is there a way we can get rid of that? Eventually, I think we did. Took a couple years because he had like a two-year contract.

00:48:58 Speaker_36
— Roger Ailes' war of words against CNN after 9-11 wasn't just about professional competition. He also wanted personal payback after one of his star anchors got snatched away.

00:49:10 Speaker_01
— Good morning, I'm Paula Zahn. Next on American Morning, a possible thaw overnight in the tense standoff with North Korea.

00:49:17 Speaker_36
Paula Zahn had co-anchored Fox's 2000 election night coverage with Brit Hume. But the next year, just before 9-11, she decided to make a move to CNN.

00:49:27 Speaker_16
— Roger was ticked. He did not see that coming.

00:49:30 Speaker_36
— A.D. Hill of Fox & Friends.

00:49:32 Speaker_16
— If someone's not going to be there, he wants it to be his choice, not theirs. And so when she did that, that really irritated him.

00:49:42 Speaker_36
Irritation doesn't really capture it. Ailes told The Times that he could have improved on Zahn's ratings by putting a dead raccoon on the air.

00:49:50 Speaker_36
A Fox News spokesperson also compared Zahn's new role at CNN to putting a fresh coat of paint on an outhouse. And on Fox & Friends, the radio DJ Man Cow Muller did a skit in which he punched an actor in the face and screamed, I'll kill you, Paula.

00:50:08 Speaker_36
We will kill you, Paula. As ManCow kept on pummeling, E.D. Hill pleaded with them to stop.

00:50:15 Speaker_16
I was not told about that beforehand for good reason. I wouldn't have gone along with it. I think it's cheap. I think it's juvenile. And I think it's mean.

00:50:26 Speaker_16
And we were good enough that we could beat any network on our own without resorting to something as stupid as that.

00:50:35 Speaker_28
Paula Zahn wasn't Fox's only target. I was the new kid in town and the hot property in town. So Roger decided, let's take him down.

00:50:45 Speaker_36
Aaron Brown became an unlikely TV star after anchoring CNN's 9-11 coverage. And then, like Zahn, he got heckled on Fox & Friends.

00:50:56 Speaker_28
The morning show, at one point, held up a picture of me. And they said, doesn't he just look like your dentist?

00:51:04 Speaker_36
Under Brown's picture, there were captions reading, Aaron Brown DDS and Molar Man.

00:51:10 Speaker_28
And it was just all to sort of humiliate me. This is like fourth grade stuff.

00:51:17 Speaker_36
Roger Ailes orchestrated the whole thing, calling Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy and telling him, no matter what happens, even if they torture you, say he's your dentist. This gag went on for two days.

00:51:35 Speaker_28
You know, my bosses were just like, no one's watching them, no one takes them seriously.

00:51:41 Speaker_36
CNN had all kinds of problems in the early 2000s. A chaotic corporate merger, executive shuffles, and multiple rounds of layoffs. And then there was the constant drumbeat of Fox News winning and taunting, and winning and taunting some more.

00:51:58 Speaker_36
Aaron says he couldn't convince the people in charge to do anything to fight back, about the personal shots he was taking, or about Fox's suggestion that CNN loved terrorists.

00:52:10 Speaker_28
We had a competitor who had convinced people that we were actually rooting for the other side and that they were the Americans. You're not punching back. I just think it was a terrible mistake. Why was it a mistake?

00:52:29 Speaker_28
Because you don't get into a ring to box and then just let your hands hang down at your side while the other person knocks you silly.

00:52:41 Speaker_36
At its best, CNN did help its viewers understand the world, but it never inspired the passion and anger that Fox did from its fans and its enemies.

00:52:52 Speaker_36
That fervor would propel Fox News into a new phase, an era when it was no longer an up-and-coming network. In just a few years, Fox had become a media Goliath, swatting away its challengers and critics, possibly for good,

00:53:08 Speaker_28
The only chance we had was at the beginning. It's very hard to take down somebody. You just can't let them get started.

00:53:23 Speaker_36
Next time on Slow Burn, the backlash against Fox News grows from activists, former Fox employees, and The Daily Show.

00:53:31 Speaker_46
We all, like, in unison, in my memory of it, uttered, What if we pretend we're them?

00:53:41 Speaker_36
If you aren't already a Slate Plus member, please consider joining. You'll be supporting Slate's independent journalism, including the creation of this season and future seasons of Slow Burn.

00:53:52 Speaker_36
And by joining, you'll unlock full ad-free access to Slow Burn and all your other favorite Slate podcasts.

00:54:00 Speaker_36
In this week's Plus episode, you'll hear more from Tom Johnson about the successes and failures from his decade-plus running CNN, and how Fox News is still a part of his life.

00:54:09 Speaker_22
— I've got conservative relatives. You can't get them to get off of Fox. I mean, it ruins my time with them, almost, because they're so addicted. They're almost addicted to Fox.

00:54:19 Speaker_36
— Do you fight with him about it? — Sure. I'd never win. This season of Slowburn was written and reported by me, Josh Levine, an executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

00:54:41 Speaker_36
Slowburn is produced by Sophie Sommergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson, with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Finston, and Julia Russo. Derek John is Slowburn's executive producer. This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hilary Fry.

00:54:55 Speaker_36
Merit Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourd. Our theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. Derek Johnson created the artwork for this season. We had production help from Maya Croth and Chris Sinclair.

00:55:10 Speaker_36
Paul Arras' book, American Television's live coverage of the 9-11 attacks, was a valuable resource in the making of this episode. Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Paula Bernstein, Stephen Battaglio, and Julia Turner.

00:55:23 Speaker_36
And to Slate's Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme, Forrest Wickman, Cristina Cotarucci, Greg Lavallee, Ben Richmond, Seth Brown, Katie Raiford, Caitlin Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Emily Hodgkins, Ivy-Lise Simonis, Joshua Metcalf, Heidi Strom Moon, and Alicia Montgomery, Slate's VP of Audio.

00:55:42 Speaker_36
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.