O'Reilly, Fox paid out $18.5m to five women

Fox News star Bill O’Reilly and the network have paid out some US$13 million ($18.5m) to five women over the past 15 years to settle a series of harassment allegations, according to the New York Times.

The settlements were in exchange for the women’s agreement not to sue the company, which has been beset by other claims of sexual harassment by its former chairman, Roger Ailes. Ailes was ousted by 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, last year.

O’Reilly — the top-rated attraction on cable news for many years — generated lurid headlines in 2004 for his dispute with Andrea Mackris, who alleged that he had harassed her while she was a producer of his programme The O’Reilly Factor. Macris settled her claims for a reported payout of US$9 million in 2004. In January this year, O’Reilly settled another harassment claim, lodged by former Fox News presenter Juliet Huddy, for an undisclosed sum. But the New York Times found three other complaints and payouts involving O’Reilly. Fox settled two, and O’Reilly settled a third.

The payments by Fox are the focus of an investigation by the US attorney general’s office in New York. Prosecutors are probing whether the company made adequate disclosures about them to investors.

Both 21st Century Fox and News Corp are controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family. Murdoch is a longtime friend of President Donald Trump, who fired the federal attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, in March.