Thursday, January 16, 2014

Ailes Biographer Attacked for NAF Affiliation

Gabriel Sherman, contributing editor at New York Magazine, has just written a much-talked-about biography on Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, and there has been lots of pushback.

Mr. Sherman happens to be a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation (NAF), which is often described as a liberal think tank.  NAF calls itself non-partisan.  The President and CEO of NAF is Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top-level State Department official in the Obama Administration.

Here is a recent conversation that CNN's Brian Stelter had with Mr. Sherman about the book:
STELTER: Another charge you'll see online, it seems to have merit to me, is the New America Foundation gave you a fellowship a couple of years ago. They are backed by a number of liberal causes and groups and donors.
What's - what do we make of that connection to the book?
SHERMAN: Well, listen, number one, that's an effort to distract from the book. The book is coming out –
STELTER: That is what you think.
SHERMAN: Readers can read the book. But to that point, New America is a nonpartisan think tank. They receive funding from a variety of sources. Roger Ailes' own handpicked autobiographer, Jim Pinkerton, who for many years, almost 10 years, was a fellow at the New America Foundation. So, it's clearly a transparent effort to distract from the book.

Indeed, Mr. Pinkerton was a fellow at NAF, and you can read much of his content here.

Here is a recent article in the conservative National Review Online labeling NAF as liberal.  Here is an article from the conservative Daily Caller from 2010 calling NAF a liberal think tank.  Another conservative outfit, The Free Beacon, recently called NAF "liberal" in an article titled "New America Foundation Under Fire for Hosting Event for Anti-Israel Book."  The liberal Huffington Post has labeled NAF "eclectically liberal."