O’REALLY?!
‘Horrifying’ that Fox re-signed predator Bill after his $32M payoff to squelch sex-harass accuser
FORMER FOX NEWS anchor Gretchen Carlson called the network’s decision to allow Bill O’Reilly to remain on the air “horrifying and outrageous” after he settled a whopping $32 million sexual harassment lawsuit.
Carlson slammed her former network a day after The New York Times reported executives were aware of the settlement when Fox re-signed the sincefired O’Reilly in February to a four-year, $100 million deal.
“It’s horrifying and outrageous that any company, after dismissing somebody for allegations such as that, would not only re-sign a contract but allow that person to come back on the air,” Carlson told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” during an appearance Sunday.
Lis Wiehl, a former legal analyst for Fox News, claimed O’Reilly would message her sexually explicit material, including gay pornography, and that she was pushed into a sexual relationship with him, the Times reported. Wiehl was fired by Fox News in April after 15 years as an analyst.
According to the Times, O’Reilly repeatedly made the case to her that Wiehl was indebted to him for getting her the job.
“You owe me,” O’Reilly said, according to the newspaper. “You owe me big.”O’Reilly settled the Wiehl case in January, just 15 days after her lawsuit was drafted.
The reported $32 million payout to Wiehl is steeper than the $20 million paid out to Carlson, who sued Fox News in July 2016, alleging founding CEO Roger Ailes sexually harassed her.
Ailes later parted ways with Fox News — with a golden para-
chute worth tens of millions of dollars — and died in May.
Carlson, who’s gone on to pen a book about sexual harassment, condemned companies for settling claims or building arbitration clauses into an employee’s contract in case a legal issue arose.
“This is covering up, this is enablers, this is shutting up the victims,” she said. “I think it’s absolutely horrifying that we’ve allowed this to go on for so long in our corporate culture.”
Carlson also said it created a false sense of security.
“We’re fooling society into thinking that we don’t have a problem with this issue anymore,” she told CNN. “Why? Because we don’t hear about these cases.”
She said the numerous women who have come forward about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein are a sign women are standing up against harassment.
“That is what’s been so heartening over the last couple of weeks, seeing the Weinstein story develop and so many others, is that women are saying, ‘We’re not going to be silenced anymore,’ ” she said. “We are going to be fierce.”
Despite its own sexual harassment issues, Fox News was among the outlets criticizing Weinstein — and the Democrats, like former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — who took his money.
Fox News representatives didn’t return a request for comment on Carlson’s remarks.
O’Reilly was among a handful of high-profile personalities to be accused of sexual harassment at the network. In September, Fox News host Eric Bolling was fired after being accused of sending sexually explicit photos to three female colleagues.
Also last month, a former Fox commentator, Scottie Nell Hughes, accused a Fox Business News anchor, Charles Payne, of raping her and said the network retaliated against her when she reported the attack. Fox News nudged O’Reilly out in April after a bombshell report he settled lawsuits, totaling $13 million, with five accusers over the years. Multiple advertisers started to pull out of his top-rated “The O’Reilly Factor” show.
He briefly returned to Fox News in late September, when he was a guest on Sean Hannity’s show.