Fox News Remembered the 'Revolutionary' Roger Ailes With Tears, Love and a Whole Lot of Whitewashing

Given that the anchors of Fox News barely addressed their former CEO Roger Ailes being forced out of the network last year, it was hard to predict how they’d handle the announcement of his death Thursday. But despite the degree to which Fox is still very much grappling with the corporate culture Ailes allegedly encouraged, some of their employees were deeply emotional on air.

Shepard Smith, Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, Martha MacCollum, Tucker Carlson and Kimberly Guilfoyle were some of those who took a moment out of their time on air to pay their gushing respects to the man who was repeatedly accused of making their colleagues lives a living hell. I guess he’d just never done anything to them.

Most mentioned that he had, in Smith’s words, “well-documented flaws”; in Hume’s package, he said that the sexual harassment accusations “came as a shock to nearly all at Fox News, who remembered him today for his talent and his leadership, his humor, and his personal kindness.” (Bill O’Reilly, denied the opportunity to opine on air about Ailes, agreed in an op-ed for USA Today, writing that “the vast majority of Fox employees were sad” about his exit, and that the outside hatred towards him is what “killed him.”)