How is it Bill O’Reilly hasn’t been fired into the next century? For the second time, Fox News has settled a major sexual harassment claim against him by one of their employees.
This time it was from former anchor Juliet Huddy, who I worked with and knew for years. She was a rising star at Fox until she was suddenly yanked off the network and sent to local Fox 5 News in New York– at 4:30 in the morning.
Now thanks to LawNewz website, we know what happened. When Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly overturned Roger Ailes, and Fox made reparations to female staff with claims against the network, Huddy finally came forward.
I wrote about Huddy’s departure, and suggested there was a lot more to it. I asked Juliet about it, but she couldn’t say more than it was “a challenging 20 years” and that she was going to write about rock music now that she’d left the network.
Huddy made claims against O’Reilly and now news chief Jack Abernethy. According to the reports, Fox paid her, and no money came from either employee.
You may recall that a few years ago O’Reilly– whose contentious divorce has been well chronicled in New York’s tabloids– was involved in another sexual harassment case. Fox News was rumored to have paid off $10 million in that case. When you leave here, go check that link.
O’Reilly must be a pain in the side for James and Lachlan Murdoch. After Ailes, he’s FoxNews’s most egregious star. Are his ratings really worth these huge embarrassments? And unlike Greta van Susteren and Megyn Kelly, if O’Reilly leaves he won’t be heading to NBC or a major network. The end of his career is in sight.
