A female TV producer was once offered $100 extra a week for sex by Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, a damning new book alleges.
While negotiating her salary at NBC in the 1980s, Randi Harrison claims Ailes offered her the raise "if you agree to have sex with me whenever I want," UK MailOnline reported.
Gabriel Sherman, a contributing editor at New York magazine who's charted the 73-year-old's life from his childhood in Ohio to one of the most powerful positions in television, reveals a slew of eye-raising claims in a biography called "The Loudest Voice in the Room."
The allegations have been denied by Fox.
In another anecdote, Ailes was reportedly so dismissive of even his best talent that he referred to star host Bill O'Reilly as "a book salesman with a TV show."
Under his leadership at Fox News Channel, the network now regularly pulls in more viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined, according to the New York Times which was given early access to the book.
With annual earnings of around $1 billion, the channel has also become the most profitable division of 21st Century Fox, according to UK MailOnline. In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, the book claims Ailes was so eager to influence national politics that he told fellow Fox News executives that he wanted to "elect the next president."
Despite being unsatisfied with many of the Republican candidates, Ailes sought to promote Mitt Romney on his programs, Sherman said.
According to UK MailOnline, the 560-page biography also points to a four-minute video criticizing Barack Obama which incited outrage from the left. At the time, the network publicly stated that Ailes was not involved in the broadcast, aired on Fox and Friends. But the book claims it was actually his "brainchild."
According to the book's website, Sherman "chronicles the rise of Ailes, a sickly kid from an Ohio factory town who, through sheer willpower, the flair of a showman, fierce corporate politicking, and a profound understanding of the priorities of middle America, built the most influential television news empire of our time."
With primetime host Sean Hannity describing Sherman as a "phony journalist" on Twitter, some Fox employees are already dismissing the book.
"While we have not read the book, the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News," a Fox News spokesperson said.
The book is due to be out on Jan. 21, UK MailOnline reported.
