CLEVELAND – On the first day of the Republican National Convention, potentially seismic news for the politics and media world was unfolding offstage.
New York magazine reported Monday that Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes would be removed following an investigation into sexual harassment accusations leveled by former “Fox & Friends” co-host Gretchen Carlson.
One Fox News star didn’t buy it when asked about the report. “No way,” Geraldo Rivera said.
Another hurried by. “No. God, no,” correspondent Carl Cameron said. “You got to go through media relations.”
Senior political analyst Brit Hume also declined to comment.
Rupert Murdoch has long been seen as the figure who’d protect Ailes. But the report said the elder Murdoch agreed with his sons, Lachlan and James, that Ailes should go, though the timing remains unclear. Deadline later confirmed plans to “sideline” Ailes.
A spokesman for 21st Century Fox, the Murdoch-run parent-company of Fox News, said in a statement that “this matter is not yet resolved and the review is not concluded.”
Still, the suggestion of a Fox News without Ailes rocked the media world just as 15,000 journalists were converging on Cleveland. On Monday afternoon, Fox News was broadcasting as usual from the convention floor, though the possibility of Ailes leaving, without an immediate successor, was surely on the minds of staffers.
Fox News contributor Juan Williams told HuffPost Monday he’d just heard about the report and didn’t know anything about it.
He did take the opportunity to praise Ailes, who gave Williams a new Fox News contract after he was fired from NPR a few years back. “I love Roger,” he said. “He’s been a savior to me.”
Fox News contributor and veteran political operative Ed Rollins said it wasn’t his place to comment on what 21st Century Fox should do. Ailes is “my friend and I wish him well,” he said.
“He clearly built Fox, built CNBC before that, and he’s really the major architect of cable television,” Rollins added. “And I’ve never known any kind of incidents where he’s ever done this, what he’s being accused of. I don’t know if there’s any truth to the story or not.”
Several Fox News stars publicly defended Ailes after Carlson accused him of firing her in retaliation for rebuffing his sexual advances, as well as for speaking out about harassment by her “Fox & Friends” cohost Steve Doocy. Six other women have since claimed Ailes sexually harassed them during his time as a television executive and political operative, before Fox News was launched.
When Carlson filed the suit earlier this month, 21st Century Fox said that it was commencing an internal review into the allegations, but that it had “full confidence in Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy, who have served the company brilliantly for over two decades.”
Doocy has not commented on the claims.
Asked Monday about Ailes’ potential ouster, Doocy, walking with his son Peter, a Fox News correspondent, turned away and silently got on an escalator.
Arthur Delaney and Lance Gould contributed reporting.