Roger Ailes Writes To Jonathan Alter…

Following up on the Jonathan Alter/Roger Ailes drama: USN&WR’s Paul Bedard says Ailes “had wanted to keep the argument private, writing a confidential retort to Alter on June 7. It was only after Alter started blogging that the Fox people decided to air the conflict, releasing Ailes’s letter” to the magazine’s Washington Whispers column.

Here is the letter. “I was disappointed by your recent cheap shot about me in Newsweek,” Ailes wrote. “First, you didn’t disclose that you have been paid by MSNBC, our competitor. Second, you have no basis in fact for what you said.”

The leak of the letter from Ailes doesn’t seem directed solely to Alter, though. This sentence is tacked on: “The Fox News Channel didn’t report something that just got people killed nor have we fired our executive editor, our top producers, our anchors and we don’t have a former attorney general investigating our journalism.” Here it is…