This man was a piece of garbage. It doesn't matter what his political leanings were, although they were based in paranoia and ignorance.
He was creative enough, and knew people well enough, to manipulate them.
Fox News is based on fear. It's based on a yearning for something in the past that never was.
This man created it.
And now we have this documentary.
11 Reviews
Roger Ailes was pure evil. His life reflected the ugliness inside his heart.
tikab_123 May 2019
Fantastic documentary about the horrible life of mega-troll Ailes. His poor wife.. so many sexual assault and rape lawsuit settlements, which led to FAUX.. errr.. Fox News firing him and his death soon after. Ailes was one of the worst humans this country has ever seen. Pure evil. His bloated, obese body reflected the ugliness inside. What a sad, tragic, insecure man. The world is a better place without him in it.
BUT IS IT?
kirbylee70-599-5261794 April 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The world is fueled by politics these days, perhaps more so than in the history of this country. What's even more frightening is that there is little room for middle ground these days and more and more people have chosen one side or the other. Even scarier is the fact that the press has revealed themselves in recent years to be more one sided politically than they exposed themselves to be in the past. But even in stating that opinion there is controversy with one side claiming I'm right and the other saying I'm wrong and that they are merely reporting the news. History would say otherwise.
Which brings us to this film, DIVIDE AND CONQUER THE TRUE STORY OF ROGER AILES. The documentary from A&E (owned by Disney/ABC) attempts to paint a portrait of a man who knew how to manipulate people toward his own cause and beliefs. Those were right leaning conservative ideas. It follows his life starting with his childhood, moving quickly on to his time working with Richard Nixon and on through his years helping other Presidents get elected. Then he moves on to something even bigger, the creation of Fox News.
Along the way incidents of alleged sexual misconduct followed Ailes. From his producing days while working on THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW to his time at Fox, Ailes was supposed to have hit on nearly every female employee that worked for him. He had affairs with his aides and was married three times. It was this last bout of accusations that led to his being ousted from the behemoth he had created and made the number one news channel in the country.
So how is the movie? Confusing, infuriating, interesting and leaving at least myself with more questions than answers. Those who find Ailes to be the devil will no doubt adore the movie and not put it in perspective, finding it a film that justifies their beliefs not so much about the man but Fox News itself. The channel takes a lot of hits in the film. But that's what makes the film so confusing.
In a world filled with # metoo stories the movies takes numerous shots at Fox while ignoring the myriad of other networks suffering the same stories. We get to hear about Ailes and host Bill O'Reilly while nothing is said of Charlie Rose (seen in clips here), Matt Lauer or several other network execs who've gone through the same process and been ousted as well. While the movie is about Ailes, why focus solely on him and not discuss the entire movement that led to this juncture?
The movie also tries to have it both ways with claims that Ailes wasn't all that smart in one sentence and then claiming he was Machiavellian in the next, creating a news channel based completely on political beliefs without any value as a news source. Either his a genius or an idiot but the film tries to claim that he was both at the same time. Huh?
It also fails to discuss the fact that the channel does have a news division kept apart from its commentary programming which fills most of its air time. And it paints those commentary shows as extremist propaganda, again ignoring the fact that channels such as MSNBC and CNN both do the exact same thing but coming from a different political point of view. How does one complain about a channel doing this but then never discuss the fact that all major news channels these days have followed suit? And perhaps that's the biggest thing about Ailes that they fail to discuss, the fact that his channel pushed the others into coming out and doing the same thing in an attempt to win back ratings.
Along these same lines they claim that he was shaping the country in one sentence and a few minutes later they say that he was tapped into what America wanted. These two concepts cannot exist at the same time. Either he made the entire country that watches the channel and makes it number one in ratings believe as he did or they believed that way to begin with and finally found a channel to watch that they agreed with.
Through it all and wrapping up the story being told here we have his sexual escapades, his telling potential stars that they need to sleep with him to get ahead. Every man or woman who does something like this immediately raises the creep factor a hundred fold. Ailes falls into that category with the claims made against him that were settled out of court. But then as I stated earlier this was a pattern found in all of the entertainment and news world if one is to judge by the accusations, indictments and firings throughout the industry.
While the movie is interesting it is so far one sided that at times the interviewers can be heard posing the questions to those speaking so that they get the response they hoped for rather than a straight answer from the mouth of those talking. It becomes a hit job intended to portray Ailes, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and Fox News in the most negative light while ignoring the fact that more has taken place at other networks. Fox News used to use the phrase "fair and balanced". It would be nice to see a documentary that applies that to the topic they choose to feature.
Which brings us to this film, DIVIDE AND CONQUER THE TRUE STORY OF ROGER AILES. The documentary from A&E (owned by Disney/ABC) attempts to paint a portrait of a man who knew how to manipulate people toward his own cause and beliefs. Those were right leaning conservative ideas. It follows his life starting with his childhood, moving quickly on to his time working with Richard Nixon and on through his years helping other Presidents get elected. Then he moves on to something even bigger, the creation of Fox News.
Along the way incidents of alleged sexual misconduct followed Ailes. From his producing days while working on THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW to his time at Fox, Ailes was supposed to have hit on nearly every female employee that worked for him. He had affairs with his aides and was married three times. It was this last bout of accusations that led to his being ousted from the behemoth he had created and made the number one news channel in the country.
So how is the movie? Confusing, infuriating, interesting and leaving at least myself with more questions than answers. Those who find Ailes to be the devil will no doubt adore the movie and not put it in perspective, finding it a film that justifies their beliefs not so much about the man but Fox News itself. The channel takes a lot of hits in the film. But that's what makes the film so confusing.
In a world filled with # metoo stories the movies takes numerous shots at Fox while ignoring the myriad of other networks suffering the same stories. We get to hear about Ailes and host Bill O'Reilly while nothing is said of Charlie Rose (seen in clips here), Matt Lauer or several other network execs who've gone through the same process and been ousted as well. While the movie is about Ailes, why focus solely on him and not discuss the entire movement that led to this juncture?
The movie also tries to have it both ways with claims that Ailes wasn't all that smart in one sentence and then claiming he was Machiavellian in the next, creating a news channel based completely on political beliefs without any value as a news source. Either his a genius or an idiot but the film tries to claim that he was both at the same time. Huh?
It also fails to discuss the fact that the channel does have a news division kept apart from its commentary programming which fills most of its air time. And it paints those commentary shows as extremist propaganda, again ignoring the fact that channels such as MSNBC and CNN both do the exact same thing but coming from a different political point of view. How does one complain about a channel doing this but then never discuss the fact that all major news channels these days have followed suit? And perhaps that's the biggest thing about Ailes that they fail to discuss, the fact that his channel pushed the others into coming out and doing the same thing in an attempt to win back ratings.
Along these same lines they claim that he was shaping the country in one sentence and a few minutes later they say that he was tapped into what America wanted. These two concepts cannot exist at the same time. Either he made the entire country that watches the channel and makes it number one in ratings believe as he did or they believed that way to begin with and finally found a channel to watch that they agreed with.
Through it all and wrapping up the story being told here we have his sexual escapades, his telling potential stars that they need to sleep with him to get ahead. Every man or woman who does something like this immediately raises the creep factor a hundred fold. Ailes falls into that category with the claims made against him that were settled out of court. But then as I stated earlier this was a pattern found in all of the entertainment and news world if one is to judge by the accusations, indictments and firings throughout the industry.
While the movie is interesting it is so far one sided that at times the interviewers can be heard posing the questions to those speaking so that they get the response they hoped for rather than a straight answer from the mouth of those talking. It becomes a hit job intended to portray Ailes, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and Fox News in the most negative light while ignoring the fact that more has taken place at other networks. Fox News used to use the phrase "fair and balanced". It would be nice to see a documentary that applies that to the topic they choose to feature.
Good Historical Coverage
westsideschl31 March 2019
Good historical coverage of the rise of Fox News and it's personalities. Reinforced the notion that one major difference between conservative & liberal ideologies is that personalities gravitate toward either, the innate self interest that there should be no limit on what one can accumulate for oneself (Trump perhaps) vs. those who have a sense of material personal sacrifice for the greater good.
Side note: Over the years I've, quite by accident, observed a high correlation between skinny, attractive blonde females and conservative media as coincidentally this documentary also seemed to find.
Quite fine and interesting actually
JurijFedorov7 July 2022
Pretty basic Roger Ailes documentary largely focused on his quirks and weird right-wing ideas. As most of this stuff on Roger Ailes it makes him out to be that crazy guy with some genius ideas about how to entice conservatives. So not quite evil nor great. But he is important.
It's a good doc for sure. It's just not really a topic or person I'm that fascinated by. Roger Ailes to me just seems a bit too biased to be a great man. The doc is negative, as predicted, but not over the top initially. At the end it goes into some nasty theories about Fox News STILL being a place of sexual harassment, but that's just mentioned as a proposed guess with zero proof whatsoever. This is after we learned that Rupert Murdoch kicked out Ailes just 2-3 days after finding out there were some fairly legit sexual harassment cases. There was clearly a zero tolerance policy on this from the top and they reacted swiftly. They even initially hired a law firm to carefully investigate all claims and interview a ton of women in the company just to see if the first story from Gretchen Carlson was valid. But then most American docs have this "doomsday" style to them where they exaggerate things somewhat just like Fox News itself did 10 years ago. Still, what I have learned from these docs on bad Republican people is that they are often fairly neutral because most are produced by progressives and Democrats and they already have the story they need so they don't need to invent new rumors. In this case they can just retell the story truthfully. At the end they just have a need to take a jab at Fox News itself as they largely don't hate Roger Ailes anymore. He used to be that "evil guy" in left-wing media. Now they admit he was just that crazy old guy and not some super evil psychopath. I guess biographical docs need to be made after a person has died.
Overall it's quite fine. A critical looks at Roger Ailes. But frankly I think it would be way better if it was about Fox News and how it started and came about. That would be fascinating. Seeing all the shows being created. Looking into the drama. Seeing what aired when and what interviews they did. The interesting story is the one behind the scenes here. Roger Ailes is not Fox News. Fox News today is a very changed news network. Rupert Murdoch's sons are not conservative so they don't like his media companies that they are about to inherit and to a large degree already run. Their plan is to shut down Fox News or sell it. Or maybe push it more to the left still. It has become a news channel with way more varied opinions yet it's still clearly right-wing.
It's a good doc for sure. It's just not really a topic or person I'm that fascinated by. Roger Ailes to me just seems a bit too biased to be a great man. The doc is negative, as predicted, but not over the top initially. At the end it goes into some nasty theories about Fox News STILL being a place of sexual harassment, but that's just mentioned as a proposed guess with zero proof whatsoever. This is after we learned that Rupert Murdoch kicked out Ailes just 2-3 days after finding out there were some fairly legit sexual harassment cases. There was clearly a zero tolerance policy on this from the top and they reacted swiftly. They even initially hired a law firm to carefully investigate all claims and interview a ton of women in the company just to see if the first story from Gretchen Carlson was valid. But then most American docs have this "doomsday" style to them where they exaggerate things somewhat just like Fox News itself did 10 years ago. Still, what I have learned from these docs on bad Republican people is that they are often fairly neutral because most are produced by progressives and Democrats and they already have the story they need so they don't need to invent new rumors. In this case they can just retell the story truthfully. At the end they just have a need to take a jab at Fox News itself as they largely don't hate Roger Ailes anymore. He used to be that "evil guy" in left-wing media. Now they admit he was just that crazy old guy and not some super evil psychopath. I guess biographical docs need to be made after a person has died.
Overall it's quite fine. A critical looks at Roger Ailes. But frankly I think it would be way better if it was about Fox News and how it started and came about. That would be fascinating. Seeing all the shows being created. Looking into the drama. Seeing what aired when and what interviews they did. The interesting story is the one behind the scenes here. Roger Ailes is not Fox News. Fox News today is a very changed news network. Rupert Murdoch's sons are not conservative so they don't like his media companies that they are about to inherit and to a large degree already run. Their plan is to shut down Fox News or sell it. Or maybe push it more to the left still. It has become a news channel with way more varied opinions yet it's still clearly right-wing.
Helps explain the present
Zebb6710 December 2018
As more people see this great documentary, the rating will most certainly go up and be closer to the excellent critical reviews this doc has received. If you want to know the genisis for our currently polarized country, it all begins with one man - Roger Ailes. We went from simply disagreeing with each other on political matters to hating each other simply because we have a difference of opinion. This doc shows how Ailes basically created the landscape for the horrible condition of our current political discourse. The doc also shows how Ailes treated women like property he could use and abuse and discard at will. A must-see documentary if there ever was one.
Political history still morphing...
muzzypatmn14 December 2019
If only this kind of behavior was behind us and finally relegated to history. His father did the damage and Roger took it out on Americans and especially women. This movie demonstrates how gullible a large part of our populace has become. How sad that men in power have led people to become so hateful towards others. Watching, I remembered how the women had to fight to be understood. The legal system did a lot to shield a lot of those evil men.
Shining a light on the puppet master of Fox News.
torbi-27 November 2019
This was really well done. We all know the stories of how Ailes was taken down for harassment, but this doc shined a light on his notable (if somewhat horrific) contributions to media as we know it now.
I was surprised to learn that his first cable channel eventually became MSNBC (which most likely pushed him to further extremism) and that he bought up a small town paper in his town for reasons that are slightly unclear here. I would have liked to have learned more about the other ex-wives (and the "assistant" who seems to fall off the radar once Ailes marries his third and final wife.... Liz stood by her man until the bitter end). I feel sorry for these strong shouty newswomen who continue to be used by Fox News but hopefully the climate of harassment has changed to allow them a safe workspace. I believe in their right to say it, but not how they say it. (also magical is the fact that "gender queer monster drag" actor Babette Bombshell portrayed Ailes in reenactments.)
Yes, They Actually Go There....
arfdawg-126 March 2019
This is nothing more than a staged Soros backed hit piece on a right wing genius. Filled with haters, has beens and wanna bes all claiming to know Roger. Sure.
It's edited to make him look evil.
And believe it or not, they actually take the leap and make him a Nazi sympathizer! Unreal. These clowns should never get money to make another film.
It's edited to make him look evil.
And believe it or not, they actually take the leap and make him a Nazi sympathizer! Unreal. These clowns should never get money to make another film.
Interesting History
tcslawinski4 November 2023
Some of the negative reviews are purely out of fans of the network he created and that it wasn't a favorable view of either. But what should make it more broadly interesting to all but the most fringe fans of his work is that it goes to the history of the man behind the curtain and the start of the channel that changed cable news forever as well as the fall of the creator.
While partisanship is discussed what makes this worthwhile is the character study that goes beyond it. The focus is more about power, trust and a need for importance. What makes this a stellar documentary is that it doesn't get into the weeds about the politics more than necessary to show the person. While you shouldn't expect to like the character study, the man himself said 'I don't need any more enemies I have enough as it is.'
While partisanship is discussed what makes this worthwhile is the character study that goes beyond it. The focus is more about power, trust and a need for importance. What makes this a stellar documentary is that it doesn't get into the weeds about the politics more than necessary to show the person. While you shouldn't expect to like the character study, the man himself said 'I don't need any more enemies I have enough as it is.'
Left wing hack garbage
carlclements72 July 2019
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
