Murdoch's World (39 page)

Santorum received a boost from the top Fox pundit of all. Rupert Murdoch fired up a personal Twitter account on New Year's Eve 2011. Among his inaugural political missives of the 2012 cycle:
“Can't resist this tweet, but all Iowans [should] think about Rick Santorum. Only candidate with genuine big vision for country.” Romney was thought to have won the Iowa caucuses in a close vote. Days later, however, Santorum was declared the victor following a party recount. It would not be enough to give him enduring momentum. He would
hold his former employers at Fox responsible for failing to give him sufficiently fulsome coverage.
So, for that matter, did Gingrich. Romney, for his part, told Ailes point-blank that Fox favored Gingrich and Santorum
over him. If Ailes had granted one of the Republicans favored status, the candidate didn't know it.

OVER THE months Ailes reconciled himself to Romney's ascension. In May,
Fox & Friends
broadcast a four-minute segment that was
like a political hit piece on Obama, contrasting his aspirational 2008 themes of hope and change with discordant music and images of a dystopian America. After an angry call from White House press secretary Jay Carney,
Fox removed the video from its website and Bill Shine said it was not “authorized” by senior executives. The network did not issue an apology; it rarely did. Instead, the issue was addressed internally. The same instinct played out in a different way when Fox News wrongly reported that the US Supreme Court had overturned the president's health care overhaul, on constitutional grounds. CNN also misreported the decision—the result of journalists for both networks failing to read past the second page of the ruling. Fox gave viewers the correct outcome more quickly than did CNN. But
CNN posted a correction and an apology.
Fox said it had gotten the story right, as the ruling declared Obamacare unconstitutional on page two and resurrected it on page three.

AS THE general election reached full steam, Fox executives believed Obama was getting a pass on important issues that would have bedeviled George W. Bush, including the death of Americans at the US consulate in Benghazi. The network devoted extensive coverage to the issue, replaying the footage of the consulate ablaze in the days before the election. Anchors and pundits said other news outlets were failing to give adequate attention to the administration's failure to secure
their diplomats' safety. The network was providing balance to the bias it identified in others.

In the week before Election Day, the so-called Superstorm Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey and New York State. After the storm, however, New Jersey governor Chris Christie accepted the warm embrace of the federal government, literally, in the person of President Obama. Christie, a Republican, praised the president, who promised and delivered immediate financial support and much needed personnel.
Christie took to Fox News to explain why he welcomed the active aid from a Democratic White House just days ahead of the election.

“Right now I'm much more concerned about preventing any other loss of life, getting people to safe places. And then we'll worry about the election,” Christie said. “I've spoken to the president three times yesterday. He's been incredibly supportive and helpful to our state. And not once did he bring up the election.”

Steve Doocy, the host of
Fox & Friends
, nudged Christie to offer a photo opportunity for Romney: “Is there any possibility that Governor Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you?”

“I have no idea. Nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” said Christie, as caustic as ever. “I could care less about any of that stuff. I have a job to do. I've got 2.4 million people out of power. I've got devastation on the shore. I've got floods in the northern part of my state. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me.”

Romney's partisans privately groused that Christie was doing what was best for his own future political prospects, both in New Jersey, a blue state, and in his mind for a possible presidential bid four years later. But Christie was striking a partnership of convenience that would pay off for the state. At times, Christie exhibited the giddiness of a kid. He expressed delight to be flying on a presidential helicopter.
Obama further rewarded him a few days later with a call from his musical hero, Asbury Park's Bruce Springsteen,
from Air Force One. Springsteen had been performing at Obama events in Ohio.

Rupert Murdoch paid close attention. His papers and Fox News had supported Christie as he rose from top federal prosecutor to governor to a national political prospect. Romney had come close to selecting Christie as his running mate, although, according to a friend of Ailes,
Murdoch and Ailes met with Romney and made it clear that conservatives—and they—would not take him seriously unless he picked Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Romney's choice of Ryan earned him widespread praise from the
New York Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
editorial page, and Fox News programs.

On November 3, the Saturday before Election Day, Murdoch took to Twitter to praise New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and Christie for their handling of the storm damage but added,
“Can't blame Christie for being on the front page of every paper palling up with O [meaning Obama] but misleading.” A bit later on, Murdoch tweeted that Christie
“was first Republican gov to support Romney, and has worked tirelessly for him[.] Help to remind.” Murdoch was telling Christie to let voters know that his support belonged to Romney.

As a mark of respect, if not deference, Christie telephoned Murdoch to explain he would seek help for residents wherever he could get it. Murdoch bluntly told Christie he might irreparably damage his chances for higher office if he did not reiterate his support for Romney. He told the New Jersey governor exactly what he had to do to retain credibility in meaningful conservative circles.

The next morning, at a press conference covered by national cable news channels, Christie reiterated his loyalty for Romney.

Typos, misspellings, and the occasional gaffe mark the Twitter feed as Murdoch's own, not one commandeered by PR advisers. Murdoch was doing his part for the Romney camp, letting Twitter followers know he expected the Republican to win, despite polls to the contrary.
“Monolithic media will spend next three days pushing Obama, but
final outcome far from certain,” he wrote on November 3. “Early voting patterns look very different.”

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
: “Seems slight edge to Obama, but
Romney seeing small late surge. Many state polls look unreliable.”

His statement seemed to encompass polls commissioned by his own properties. Those conducted by the
Wall Street Journal
in partnership with NBC News and rival surveys paid for by Fox News also showed fairly constant margins in favor of the president, in the swing states as well as nationally. But Fox's programs relied heavily on a rotation of other conservative pollsters, pundits, and public opinion gurus. They strayed beyond analysis into promises of a Romney resurgence.

Former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove was Fox's leading analyst. He also had the run of the opinion pages of the
Wall Street Journal
. On October 4,
his column in the
Journal
was headlined: “Can We Believe the Presidential Polls?”

“Mr. Bush was hitting the vital 50 [percent] mark in almost half the polls (unlike Mr. Obama) and had a lead over Mr. Kerry twice as large as the one Mr. Obama now holds over Mr. Romney,” Rove wrote. “So why was the 2004 race ‘a dead heat' while many commentators today say Mr. Obama is the clear favorite? The reality is that 2012 is a horse race and will remain so. An incumbent below 50 percent is in grave danger. On Election Day he'll usually receive less than his final poll number.”

A chief force behind American Crossroads, a new form of political action committee that took money from anonymous donors, Rove helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Republican candidates across the country. But despite his strategic role in the race he remained a nearly constant presence as an analyst on Fox. The polls, he warned viewers, are “endowed by the media with a scientific precision they simply don't have.” On October 9, David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told Fox viewers that Romney was cresting. “In places like North Carolina, Virginia,
and Florida
we've already painted those red,” Paleologos told Bill O'Reilly. “We're not polling any of those states again. We're focusing on the remaining states.” (Obama would win Virginia and Florida.)

On October 15 Dick Morris, the former adviser to Democratic president Bill Clinton and Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott, weighed in. “If Romney simply continues to be the same man that he was two weeks ago . . .
this momentum will continue. And I told you nine months ago, and I've said for the last nine months, and I say it again tonight, this election will be a landslide for Romney.”

Other conservatives made the same case elsewhere. The
New York Times
poll aggregator, Nate Silver of the blog 538, came in for particular derision for promising near black-and-white certainty in a world defined by gray-hued margins of error. Silver's twist was to predict not just the national vote and state-by-state breakdowns (with accompanying Electoral College scenarios) but also the degree of certainty any given candidate would prevail. Given Silver's openly liberal outlook,
the
Times
took a gamble that his methodology would hold up. If not, the newspaper would be criticized for having tilted its coverage.

On November 1, Dick Morris
offered the Fox audience a vision for what would happen. “It is not neck and neck, it's a few laps. I think that Romney is going to win by 5 to 10 points in the popular vote. I think he's going to win the electoral vote by something like 310, 300 to 220, 230.” Morris continued, “I think he's going to carry—and this isn't just [a] guess, it's based on the latest polling—I think he's going to carry New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, plus, of course, Florida, Colorado and Virginia. And then I think he's got—he's going to carry Pennsylvania. I think he's got a good shot at carrying Wisconsin, an outside chance at Michigan and Minnesota.” (Not one of those predictions held just five days later.)

On the day before the election Newt Gingrich offered his prediction on Fox News:
“My personal guess is you'll see a Romney landslide, 53 percent-plus in the electoral, in the popular vote, 300 electoral votes
plus. And we may come very close to capturing control of the Senate in that context.”

That same night Morris doubled down: “We're going to win 325 electoral votes. We're going to win the popular vote by 5 points or more. . . . There's
about a seven-point margin between the enthusiasm of Democrats and that of the Republicans.”

Election Day would prove to be a shock for viewers who had relied primarily on Fox News for their political coverage.