In our first Slate Plus episode from Slow Burn Season 10, host Josh Levin talks with David Folkenflik, NPR’s media correspondent and author of the book Murdoch’s World, about Fox News’ founder Rupert Murdoch.

Back in 2000, Folkenflik was a media reporter for the Baltimore Sun who covered the fledgling Fox News Channel’s election coverage. His reporting that night—and in the aftermath of Election Day—would shape his professional relationship with Fox News for decades to come. Folkenflik talks about John Ellis, a first cousin of George W. Bush who ran Fox’s decision desk in 2000. Plus, he shares his own experience inside the Baltimore Sun’s newsroom that chaotic election night.

Slate Plus members can listen to an audio version of this conversation. Hear more about Fox News and Election Night 2000 in Slow Burn Season 10, Episode 1, “We Report. You Can Suck It.”

David Folkenflik: Back in the summer of 2000, I became the media reporter and columnist for the Baltimore Sun. I had just finished up a stint of about three years covering Congress and politics in Washington for the Sun. And I had been invited to think of a new beat, and I came up with the idea of covering the media. But, the convention happened in July, so it really became clear to me that it would be valuable to focus on the intersection, or really the collision of politics and media throughout.

Josh Levin: What was your assignment on election night in 2000, and can you set the scene? Where were you watching the returns that night?

Folkenflik: On election night, early November 2000, I was in the Baltimore Sun’s old newsroom, on North Calvert Street in downtown Baltimore. Like in the stereotype, the newsroom was humming. There was a ton of life, a lot of people walking around. You had local, national, state elections all occurring on the same evening. A lot was at stake. You know, the Clinton years were coming to an end, and there was this question mark of what was to succeed it. And my assignment as the media guy was to write about how the television networks and maybe the Associated Press handled the coverage of the election night in more or less real time.

This was the kind of story that was going to run on something like A12, A17, deep inside the front section of the paper. And there are a lot of people bustling around. You know, it’s exciting. Election nights are exciting. If you can’t get excited about the direction that your community and your nation is about to be headed in, then you probably should rethink whether you want to be a news reporter.

Levin: I was thinking you were going to say, “Then you’re probably dead inside.”

Folkenflik: You’re probably have a soul that has been curdled in time.

Levin: Did you have this enormous bank of televisions where you’ve got CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, all up on the screen?

Folkenflik: You have a number, if memory serves, of larger TVs that have been effectively attached to these rather non-glamorous columns dotting the newsroom. You took a computer at a place where you commandeer visually several screens at once, and you had also the ability to turn the TV you were watching pretty readily.

Levin: It’s like finding a good seat at a sports bar during the NCAA tournament.

Folkenflik: Oh, 100%. You know, there’s a high market for political arcana on nights like that.

[MUSIC]

Levin: So, you had made some plans before that night. You had sent somebody out into the world to gather string for you.

Folkenflik: Yeah, I was fairly new to the beat. I think the very first person I sat down with as a non-deadline conversation was with Kim Hume, who had come over from ABC News and was the Fox News Washington Bureau Chief. And so Fox News is one of the first places I introduced myself to and started to make contacts with. On election night, we thought it would be really interesting, and I think Fox was very amenable to this, to have somebody in an election center during that feeding me on election night information about how a national news network makes a call. We had a former intern there as a freelancer. She had been an intern for us and, you know, really sparkled and she had gone on to get a job with another financial publication in New York, but was game to go to Fox for the evening and file some material for me to be able to infuse into my coverage and we thought what a great shtick, right? It was a way of not simply being reactive to what was playing out in our television screens.

Levin: Was it significant? That you had sent someone to Fox News on election night as opposed to ABC, NBC, CBS?

Folkenflik: Fox was a new player. I thought, what a great opportunity to see how they operate. They’re a different kind of voice. There was something about the notion of Fox doing this that was more interesting than just, you know, picking another network out of the hat.

Levin: Yeah.

Folkenflik: Here’s somebody building something new from the ground, basically, right? Basing it assuredly on the way things have been in other places, but no doubt trying to differentiate itself. So there was no effort at gotcha here, we were just interested in incorporating it.

Levin: And were they interested in being written about?

Folkenflik: Absolutely. They were very welcoming at the time. I mean, you know, I imagine if you went to CBS in the 1980s, at a certain point, there would have been an arrogance and a complete confidence about saying whatever you want without repercussions, more or less. And that was not the case at Fox. They were carefully trying to tend their image as this brash place with some conservative voices, but just maybe we’re doing news a little bit differently than the other guys was how they were presenting at this point.

Levin: Right. Did you know, going into election night who was running the Fox decision desk?

Folkenflik: If memory serves, I had no idea that John Ellis was running, uh, the election desk. And let me be clear, I really enjoy John Ellis’ work, but John Ellis’ name matters for a reason. His name constitutes two-thirds of the name of the then sitting governor of Florida, John Ellis Bush, Jeb Bush. And he was the first cousin of both Governor Bush and the other Governor Bush, who was the Republican nominee, George W. Bush. So, you know, it’s quite an audacious move by Roger Ailes, a former........

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