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Last Sunday, Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz assured viewers that he and his business partner, Lauren Ashburn, would discuss “a biography of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes by a New York Magazine reporter” on next’s week show because “it been getting plenty of media attention.”

The MediaBuzz anchor was referring to The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman. And, a week later, he chickened out.

As Variety columnist Brian Lowry noted on Sunday, Kurtz made no mention of the very book he promised to discuss—a book that supplies a deep though often unflattering portrayal of his head boss, Roger Ailes, who was driven crazy by the fact that someone he did not control was writing about him. But Ailes controls Kurtz, whose flailing career Ailes rescued in 2013. And coercing his newest anchor to renege on an on-air promise is an elegant way of demonstrating who owns whom.

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