Women coming together is certainly a force to be reckoned with and Fox News has justifiably been getting the brunt end of it lately. Since former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against founder Roger Ailes on July 6th 2016, many women came forward with similar allegations, shaking the highest-ranked cable news network to its core. Carlson’s lawsuit included quotes from tape-recordings she had been taking in meetings for years.
This past Tuesday, parent company 21st Century Fox settled with Carlson for $20 million dollars and they have settled with at least two other women since then as well. CNN has called Ailes the “corporate version of Bill Cosby” but instead of drugging women, he “hung their jobs over their heads.”
Gretchen Carlson is not the only big name coming to light in the midst of what is apparently a sexual harassment trend that dates back decades. Star anchor Megyn Kelly accused Ailes of harassment as well and her contract expires next year. After the news broke, Greta Van Susteren announced her resignation, effective immediately.
Van Susteren also took to Facebook in support of Carlson and wrote on her personal blog, “Gretchen, you go girl.” On Facebook, she spoke on behalf of her coworkers saying “we all regret it,” and that “Roger Ailes was not supervised by those in a public corporation who had the duty to supervise him.”
Geraldo Rivera, an attorney, author, reporter and talk show host, took it to another level when he posted on Facebook that if the allegations are true, “the man we knew as the blustering genius who invented our mighty Fox News Channel is a deceitful, selfish misogynist” and that shame and banishment of him would be “well earned.”
Back in July, however, Rivera was quick to tweet “don’t believe the crap about #RogerAiles,” saying that it was only spoken by people who hate the network. In his recent Facebook post, Rivera also suspiciously makes the excuse that “news is a flirty business.”
New York Magazine has published the accounts of six other women who can attest to the flirtatiousness of powerful men in the business. Kellie Boyle met Roger Ailes when she was about to sign a contract with the Republican National Congressional Committee back in 1989. She remembers him inviting her to dinner and saying “if you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys,” and that she “might have to give a blowjob every once in a while.” As an aspiring media consultant, Boyle had idolized Ailes up until actually meeting him, which she left scarred by. “I was really lost for a few years,” Boyle said. “I had my career taken away from me.”
Marsha Callahan, a former model, was asked by Ailes “to go to bed with him” during her audition for “The Mike Douglas Show,” which he was producing back in the late 60’s. Callahan recalls, that it was so mortifying, she couldn’t even tell her husband.
Roger Ailes took advantage of young professional women longing to advance their careers and with time we are likely to hear of more instances of such workplace harassment. It affected each woman differently and many were able to press forward and continue to leave their marks on the world of television and media. In a statement on Tuesday, Carlson said she is “ready to move on to the next chapter of my life, in which I will redouble my efforts to empower women in the workplace.”
As for Roger Ailes, you ask? The founder of the network that has driven the Republican Party agenda for decades has become active in Donald Trump’s campaign, advising him on the upcoming presidential debates ever since news of the scandal broke in July.