Roger Ailes started Fox News.
Posted by Inside Trump's Head, Checked
- Sources
- 4 support1 context
- Said
- 2 times·
- Confidence
- 92%
The Daily Beast PodcastSep 8, 2026
Multiple reliable sources (AP obituary, NYT, Britannica, CNN, Wikipedia) state that Roger Ailes was hired by Rupert Murdoch to build and lead Fox News Channel, which launched October 7, 1996, so the claim that he started Fox News is supported.
Our two reads of who says this, and how, disagree, so it counts as the post's own claim.
What was said
… It Will there be a bleed in that direction? Or, you know, I once, um, I was, as I say, I was very friendly with Roger Ailes, who, for all his despicableness, was an incredibly good source, and we should just remind people: Roger Ailes started Fox News. He was a long term TV exec who Murdoch chose to start Fox News, um, and he said, I remember that he once, he once said, "If you come to work for Fox News, you can never go back to, um, uh, to the mainstream media. They'll never have you." …
The Daily Beast Podcast · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Supports. AP's 2017 obituary states that in early 1996 Ailes accepted Rupert Murdoch's challenge to build a news network from scratch, and that Fox News Channel launched that October under his direction.[1]
Supports. The New York Times reports that Murdoch started Fox News in October 1996 and hired Ailes as its founding chief executive.[2]
Supports. Britannica describes Ailes as commissioned by Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to create Fox News Channel and as its founding president.[3]
Supports. CNN's 2021 retrospective states that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched Fox News 25 years earlier.[4]
Context. Some sources credit Murdoch as the network's founder with Ailes as its founding CEO, so 'started' is best read as Ailes leading the build-out rather than sole conception; this is a defensible reading, not a contradiction.[2][5]
Sources
5 sources: 1 fact-checker, 1 tier 2, 3 not rated
- 1Roger Ailes, media guru and political strategist, dies at 77apnews.com · fact-checker · cited for: supports
- 2How Fox News's Influence Grew Under Roger Ailesnytimes.com · tier 2 · cited for: supports, context
- 3Roger Ailes | Facts & Biography | Britannicabritannica.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 4Examining how Fox News has changed America as it turns 25 years old | CNN Businessedition.cnn.com · not rated · cited for: supports
- 5History of Fox News - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org · not rated · cited for: context
Where this claim was made
Said in 2 published posts
Related claims
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