The New York Times made room for a second book review of the Gabriel Sherman unauthorized biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes. This one, by Janet Maslin and published in this morning’s paper, is not as glowing as the one from Jacob Weisberg published in the Sunday Book Review.
Tucked away at the end of Gabriel Sherman’s disingenuous Roger Ailes biography, there is a note on sources that should have opened the book. Sherman has done a lot of interviewing, but there are so many citations of “author interview with a person familiar with the matter” that The Loudest Voice in The Room may set a record for blind items and the untrustworthiness they engender. It would have helped to know right from the get-go why Sherman found this kind of journalism necessary.
The Baltimore Sun‘s David Zurawik has his take on the book:
I know that understanding the life and mind of Ailes would make us smarter about our media and ourselves — and we desperately need such understanding. Unfortunately, this book fails to provide that. For all its promotional push, I don’t think The Loudest Voice in the Room will be long remembered — or even talked about past the short buzz life of most media these days.