You better be camera-ready when you meet with Roger Ailes. Yesterday we learned that the Fox News president offered to pay a CNBC producer for on-demand sex—one of the more lurid revelations of Gabriel Sherman’s upcoming Ailes biography. But in Ailes’s first act of defense, a...respectful interview and photo shoot published by The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday morning, he unwittingly supplied photographic evidence of his infamous paranoia.

As you can see in the photo above, Ailes installed an unusual device in his office at Fox News: What appears to be a prominent video camera aimed directly at whoever’s sitting across his desk (in this case photographer Matt Furman). Apparently it is very important that Ailes be able to record (nearly? every?) interaction that takes place in his office.

“I didn’t notice it during the shoot,” Furman told Gawker. “There was no mention of us being recorded.”

Remember, though: Ailes is the guy who tried to spy on several reporters at Putnam County News & Recorder, a small newspaper he and wife own in upstate New York.

Roger Ailes is a totally normal human being.

Update: Some commenters are contending that the device in the photograph could be a computer speaker, which obviously did not occur to us but seems plausible.

Also: In the THR interview, Ailes claimed that "Random House refused to fact check the content [of Sherman's book] with me or Fox News; that tells you everything you need to know about this book and its agenda."

Random House just sent out a statement from Sherman disputing that claim: "During two and a half years of reporting, I made a dozen requests both in writing and in person to speak with Roger Ailes about every aspect of my book, The Loudest Voice in the Room. A team of two fact-checkers spent more than 2,000 hours vetting the manuscript before publication. Roger Ailes declined every request to discuss the reporting with me."

To contact the author of this post, email trotter@gawker.com

[Photo via The Hollywood Reporter]