Fox News
- Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott granted a rare interview to The Hollywood Reporter.
- She said she sleeps "well at night" because she compartmentalizes controversy.
- "'We have a lot to do, ignore the noise,'" she quoted Rupert Murdoch advising her.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, one of the most powerful yet stealthy executives in the media business, granted a rare interview to The Hollywood Reporter to tout the network hitting its 25th anniversary.
"I keep my life very simple and structured," she told the outlet. "It is not that complicated outside of [Fox]."
Scott said she tunes out the frequent controversies surrounding the network – particularly its primetime opinion hosts – when it comes to pandemic misinformation and the whitewashing of the January 6 insurrection. Paying attention to the criticism would interfere with her ability to "get my job done," she said.
After deflecting over whether Tucker Carlson's anti-vaccine rhetoric bothers her, Scott recalled advice she got from the network's founder and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul whose empire of conservative news outlets spans the English speaking world.
"Five years ago, I remember going to Rupert's office and talking about the future and he just said, 'We have a lot to do, ignore the noise,'" Scott told The Hollywood Reporter. "And that's been my mantra, really."
"If I wasted any time reading stories about myself or social media posts or what have you, I wouldn't be able to get my job done," she continued. "And you know what I always say? I sleep well at night."
After facing mounting public scrutiny and an explicit callout from President Joe Biden over its pandemic coverage, Fox mounted an all-out blitz to promote the safety and efficacy of vaccines over the summer. Carlson contradicted his colleagues later the same day, telling his viewers to ignore "medical advice on television."
Polling has found conservative men and Fox News viewers to be more skeptical of coronavirus vaccines compared to the general population, though that skepticism eroded somewhat over the course of the summer.
Scott said she is vaccinated, and Fox Corp. has implemented a quasi-vaccine passport system in its Manhattan headquarters despite several of its top hosts railing against such procedures as an authoritarian overreach.
Reporting to Murdoch's son, Lachlan, Scott explained how she sold him on creating a streaming platform to bolster the cable network, which has a large but ageing audience.
"The early conversations with Lachlan were about, how do we fit into the ecosystem of New Fox, how do we drive corporate priorities, how do we collaborate?" Scott said. "He is a loyal boss, but he's also a smart dealmaker."
Lachlan declined an interview for The Hollywood Reporter's profile of Scott, but said in a statement that she's a "dynamic and innovative" leader as well as "a wonderful mentor."