As if Roger Ailes doesn’t have trouble on his plate, former Fox News anchor Laurie Dhue has been shopping a tell-all about her experiences with the founder of the conservative-friendly cable network along with other Fox News personalities.
Dhue’s proposed book-length memoir, which I’m told is already attracting interest from publishers, can’t be good news for the embattled Ailes—who faces the prospect of a pile-up of sexual harassment allegations, in the wake of fired anchor Gretchen Carlson’s sensational harassment lawsuit claiming he sent her packing after she rebuffed him, even after Ailes negotiates his forced exit from the cable channel. Fox News didn’t respond to a request for comment as of this writing.
Ailes is dickering over the terms of his departure after Rupert, Lachlan, and James Murdoch—the top executives of Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox—ordered an internal review of Carlson’s allegations and those of other women at the network, conducted by the blue-chip law firm Paul, Weiss. One of his attorneys, longtime Fox News contributor Susan Estrich, told The Daily Beast that Ailes expects to speak with Rupert Murdoch when the latter arrives in New York next week.
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Dhue—who worked for Fox News as a prominent anchor from 2000 until Ailes dismissed her in 2008, when she was escorted out of the building—was originally planning her book as a novel, I’m told, because of her apprehension over dishing on Ailes and others. But she decided to write a non-fiction account—which will also include her experiences as a producer and on-air personality at CNN and MSNBC, as well as her struggle with and recovery from alcoholism—after Carlson’s lawsuit and other women began to speak out about their treatment by Ailes.
“Ms. Dhue does not intend to comment in the media,” her attorney, Bruce Schaeffer, said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “She is in the process of writing a book in which she will candidly discuss her years at Fox News and her interactions and communications with Mr. Ailes and many other Fox News personalities, her involuntary departure from Fox News and her lack of success in continuing her career in the television news industry following her departure from Fox News.
“She will also discuss her lengthy battle with alcoholism, her nine years of recovery and her national advocacy work in the recovery community.”
Schaeffer’s statement also points out that Dhue and her attorney have “not been contacted or interviewed by Paul, Weiss, the attorneys reported to be conducting the inquiry on behalf of Fox.”
