A Onetime Leader of Fox News Returns to the Murdoch Fold
David Rhodes, a former Fox News executive who also led CBS News, has quietly begun consulting for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Mr. Rhodes has been working on projects connected to News Corp. in the United Kingdom, according to a company spokesman, Jim Kennedy. The reunion has provoked speculation within the empire that Mr. Rhodes could return to Fox News in some capacity.
His return to the Murdoch fold comes at a time when Fox News has faced questions about its coverage of the coronavirus crisis.
News Corp. controls Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, as well as News UK, the company behind The Times of London. The chairman of News Corp. is Rupert Murdoch and the co-chairman is his elder son, Lachlan. The company is run separately from Fox News.
Mr. Rhodes spent 12 years at Fox News, where he led the network’s news coverage — but not its higher-rated opinion programming — through the 2008 election. His brother, Ben Rhodes, was an adviser to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign and, later, in the White House.
David Rhodes left Fox News to lead Bloomberg Television and became the president of CBS News in 2011. During his eight years in that job, he pushed “CBS This Morning” to be newsier. It was a bumpy tenure: In 2017, the network fired the “CBS This Morning” co-anchor Charlie Rose after several women had accused him of sexual misconduct. In 2018, the CBS Corporation chief executive Leslie Moonves was ousted after numerous accusations of sexual misconduct.
Mr. Rhodes stepped down from the network at the start of 2019, turning the reins over to Susan Zirinsky, who became the first female president of CBS News. More recently, he has worked as an adviser at Boston Consulting Group and has consulted for Spotify and The Los Angeles Times.
Fox News lost a powerful leader with the forced departure in 2016 of its co-founder, Roger Ailes, who has been accused of sexual harassment. Suzanne Scott, who had worked at the network since its founding in 1996, became its first female chief executive in 2018. In that role, she oversees the Fox News Channel and its sibling, the Fox Business Network.
Mr. Rhodes did not respond to an inquiry about his role and plans.