Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment, is blaming Roger Ailes for turning her scandal into a national news sensation.
In a column published Monday night for the New York Times, Lewinsky wrote that Ailes, the former Fox News CEO who died last week, helped create a toxic 24/7 news culture with nonstop coverage of her affair with Clinton.
“Their dream was my nightmare,” Lewinsky wrote. “My character, my looks and my life were picked apart mercilessly. Truth and fiction mixed at random in the service of higher ratings. My family and I huddled at home, worried about my going to jail — I was the original target of Kenneth Starr’s investigation, threatened with 27 years for having been accused of signing a false affidavit and other alleged crimes — or worse, me taking my own life.”
“Meantime, Mr. Ailes huddled with his employees at Fox News, dictating a lineup of talking heads to best exploit this personal and national tragedy,” she added.
The Lewinsky scandal broke in the early years of Fox, and the channel’s executives have publicly acknowledged their decision to aggressively pursue the story, which translated into cable news ratings dominance.
Ailes was ousted as Fox’s CEO last year amid accusations of sexual harassment. Lewinsky acknowledged the “irony” in her op-ed.
“As the past year has revealed, thanks to brave women like Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, it is clear that at Fox, this culture of exploitation wasn’t limited to the screen,” she said. “The irony of Mr. Ailes’s career at Fox — that he harnessed a sex scandal to build a cable juggernaut and then was brought down by his own — was not lost on anyone who has been paying attention.”
