People sue newspapers, right? Newspapers don’t sue people. Or do they?
The power of the press has been turned upside down in the hamlet of Philipstown, 60 miles north of New York City, ever since Roger Ailes, chief of the Fox News outlet, and wife Elizabeth bought a tiny weekly paper there in 2008.
The Aileses own a 9,000 sq. ft. estate home in nearby Garrison. But all eyes last month were focused on the election of trustees in the village of Cold Spring. You’d think everyone would get along peaceably in these comfortably Republican Putnam County outposts.
Instead, a heated war of words has broken out. The Putnam County News & Recorder is owned by the Aileses and edited by Elizabeth. Local critics say the Ailes duet runs the paper exactly the way Roger operates Fox News — hardly “fair and balanced.”
Last month, the couple threatened to sue a group of political allies known as the “Cold Spring Five,” according to New York magazine. The cause of Beth Ailes’ ire was, according to a reader of the Philipstown.info blog site, “that little thumbs up button you hit after reading a Facebook post.”
The target of the Aileses’ legal machine was Stephanie Hawkins, a Cold Spring village trustee who declined to remove a link to a comment by ex-trustee Matt Francisco, who’d lost his electoral bid March 18 and posted this note:
“The Ailes newspaper and their candidates have gone too far. It is clear I’m being followed; my movements are being tracked and reported in their newspaper.”
Francisco removed his post from his campaign’s Facebook page, but Hawkins did not remove her link to it. For this, she drew a flurry of cease and desist letters from lawyers including a frequent guest on the ‘Fox and Friends’ show on the network owned by News Corporation and its chief, Rupert Murdoch.
The local battles involved a familiar issue: development. But the strange twist is a series of aggressive “editorial” reporting by PCNR’s editor, Doug Cunningham and reporter Tim Greco. Cunningham, the paper’s editor, accused trustee Hawkins of trying to suppress the paper’s freedom of speech.
How can a lowly trustee stifle speech in a newspaper owned by a wealthy conservative media baron? Let us count the ways.
It would seem somewhere east of Kafka for a political candidate, Francisco, to accuse Ailes & Friends of following him. But there’s a history. In April 2011, Gawker reported that two reporters and an editor at the Aileses’ paper defected after the editor caught Roger Ailes using a News Corp. security employee to track him. Joe Lindsley was once close to the both Aileses. But after falling out with Roger, Lindsley noticed a black Lincoln Navigator following him. He recognized the driver as a News Corp. security man he knew socially. Lindsley claimed he called the driver, who confirmed that Ailes had put a tail on him, possibly fearful of what his news staff were saying about him at lunch.
Last month, Greco, the PCNR reporter, wrote that two political critics were in touch to orchestrate a “smear campaign” against PCNR’s favored candidates. Greco reported that ex-trustee Francisco was outside the pair’s home Monday morning. He’d earlier reported that Francisco was recently seen in a “restaurant on Main St.” having a long talk with a key development critic.
But Hawkins remained the Aileses’ key target. A March 26 PCNR “staff” report under the headline “Hawkins Continues Divisive Actions” noted that Hawkins had failed to remove “libelous material” from her Facebook page.
The Ailes-backed candidates won the Cold Spring trustee election, but editor Cunningham appeared before the trustees so say the paper was “appalled” by Francisco’s allegations.
Hawkins claimed she was legally free to discuss “matters of public concern” and that the material that gave the Aileses & allies indigestion was clearly opinion, also protected.
Roger Ailes was said to be ramping down his legal threats, boasting that his candidates won and that was what mattered.
Meanwhile, an underground movement was gathering. The blog site Philipstown.info ran uncomfortably detailed stories about the Ailes and PCNR. Its readers were sympathetic. In seven comments all identified by writer, they took aim. One characterized the Ailes paper as “targeting and attacking individuals,” while another suggested readers should “like” Hawkins and Francisco.
Hawkins thanked the “Dot.info” for its coverage, adding, “having aspects of Fox News disturbing our peace is unpleasant.” Another commenter suggested that PCNR was employing favorite Fox News practices, including fabricated scandals, bullying and opinion masked as journalism — “standard operating procedure” since “before the birth of Roger Ailes.”
But a new site is sure to get under the Aileses’ skin: “Pretend PCNR.” Using parody, it has been having a field day with the Aileses’ stewardship of PCNR, questioning how the paper could support two unmarried candidates against an opponent who is. It also quoted a “person on the street” as having heard that “someone doesn’t like Fox News!”
“How dare they?” the comment concluded, mixing satire into hamlets that take small-town news entirely too seriously.
The writer (ddanforth@aol.com) is a founder of the Aspen Daily News and appears here Sundays.
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