***Who Should be Donald Trump’s VP? Click here to take the poll now!***
The Fox sex scandal story isn’t going away. This week in New York Magazine, Gabriel Sherman reports that six other women have come forward with allegations of sexual harrassment by Fox CEO Roger Ailes. Sherman notes:
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson may be the highest-profile woman toaccuse Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, but she is not the first. In my2014 biography of the Fox News chief, I included interviews with four women who told me Ailes had used his position of power to make either unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate sexual comments in the office.
And it appears she won’t be the last, either. In recent days, more than a dozen women have contacted Carlson’s New Jersey-based attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, and made detailed allegations of sexual harassment by Ailes over a 25-year period dating back to the 1960s when he was a producer on The Mike Douglas Show. “These are women who have never told these stories until now,” Smith told me. “Some are in lot of pain.” Taken together, these stories portray Ailes as a boss who spoke openly of expecting women to perform sexual favors in exchange for job opportunities. “He said that’s how all these men in media and politics work — everyone’s got their friend,” recalled Kellie Boyle, who says Ailes propositioned her in 1989, shortly after he helped George H.W. Bush become president, serving as his chief media strategist.
Six of the women agreed to speak with New York publicly for the first time. Two spoke on the record; the others requested anonymity for reasons that include shame and fear of retribution. “I didn’t tell my husband, it was so mortifying,” said Marsha Callahan, a former model who says Ailes harassed her in the late ‘60s, shortly before he became Richard Nixon’s media adviser.
Sherman’s entire piece lays out stories by the six different women. Fox host Maria Bartiromo came to Ailes’s defense:
And now, speaking for the defense: Maria Bartiromo.
The veteran business-news journalist joined a number of employees of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network who have stepped up to support Roger Ailes, the chairman and chief executive of Fox News, in the wake of stunning allegations of sexual harassment leveled in a lawsuit by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, and, earlier today, by six women who spoke of their experiences with the executive several decades ago.
“Nobody wants to see anybody have any bad experiences,” said Bartiromo of the allegations, during an interview with Variety. “It’s just not in keeping with what I know, and my experience at Fox.”
Bartiromo has longstanding ties with Ailes, who hired her in the mid-1990s when she was an off-camera producer at CNN, and gave her what has been the opportunity of a lifetime: He sent her to cover the stock market live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for CNBC, making her the first person to do so on camera. “It really helped to demystify what was going on, and enabled regular people to have a clear idea of what was happening with their money,” she recalled. Her time there sparked a career that has granted her access to CEOs and heads of state. In a sign of how much a part of popular culture Bartiromo became during her tenure at the NBCUniversal-owned network, she became widely known as “The Money Honey,” and was even the subject of a song by punk-rocker Joey Ramone.
We will have more on this story as it develops.
POLL: Who should be Trump’s VP?
AAN Staff
The staff at American Action News are consummate professionals, who when not producing original, hard-hitting content, are scouring the internet to bring you the unfiltered news that matters to you! Our mission is to maximize your experience on our website. If we can ever be of assistance, please do not hesitate to let us know!
