Fox News’ senior executives have said they were unaware of sexual-harassment allegations against Roger Ailes before former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against him in July. But those claims are now being challenged by Fox host Andrea Tantaros, who says that she complained multiple times to senior Fox executives in 2015 about Ailes’s inappropriate sexual behavior toward her. Tantaros says that, after she came forward, she was first demoted and eventually taken off the air in April 2016. Fox continues to pay her.
Through her lawyer, Judd Burstein, Tantaros says that both she and her agent told Fox executive vice-president Bill Shine, senior vice-president Suzanne Scott, and general counsel Dianne Brandi about episodes of Ailes’s alleged harassment. “She made multiple harassment and hostile-workplace complaints,” Burstein says. As far as Tantaros knows, Fox executives never investigated her complaints, Burstein says; instead, they claim, Fox sidelined her. “I believe it’s retaliatory,” says Burstein.
Burstein says Tantaros, who is still employed by Fox, knows she is taking a risk in violating her contract’s confidentiality clause. She’s telling her story now, he says, because “she doesn’t have the same fear of being attacked by the Fox PR machine, and the Murdochs have made it clear they want to clean up the place.” Cont.
Story from - New York Magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment