Gagging on hate
Fox seeks to hide Black Lives insults in job suit
FOX NEWS has circled the wagons and won’t turn over records involving a Fox News vice president accused of mocking Black Lives Matter.
Former Fox News Controller Judith Slater allegedly derided black men and wondered why there wasn’t a “White Lives Matter” movement.
Two current employees and one former staffer, who are all black, claimed in a lawsuit filed in Bronx Supreme Court that Slater subjected them to “plantation-style management.”
The lawsuit demands all emails and other communications that mention police abuse victims “Akai Gurley, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Ferguson (Missouri), Tamir Rice, Amadou Diallo, Manuel Loggins Jr., Ronald Madison, Kendra James, Sean Bell, Michael Brown, and/or Alton Sterling.”
“Given the allegations of how often and frequently (Slater) said disparaging things about the Black Lives Matter movement, it would be relevant if we could get more specific details,” said atorney Jeanne Christensen, a partner at Wigdor, the firm handling the suit.
Slater’s attorney, Catherine Foti, said the allegations against her client “are completely baseless. There’s not going to be any documents in response to these requests.”
The media company, in court papers filed earlier this month, said the request is part of a “fishing expedition” by attorney Douglas Wigdor that is “obscenely overbroad and purposely designed to be vexatious and harassing.”
Slater worked for the cable news outlet for nearly two decades and last oversaw the company’s accounting department.
She was fired after the network conducted an internal investigation and announced “There is no place for abhorrent behavior like this at Fox News.”
The suit brought by Tichaona Brown, Tabrese Wright and Monica Douglas in March alleged that Slater called payroll the “urban payroll department.”
Brown was fired after filing the lawsuit, but Wright and Douglas remain at the company, Christensen said.