Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson is changing the NDA game. Ever since she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against then-Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes in 2016 that helped to accelerate the #MeToo movement, she’s been busy advocating and lobbying for better non-disclosure agreement (NDA) protections for people in the workplace.
After suing Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016, Gretchen Carlson wants to ensure that NDAs don’t continue to stand in the way of exposing workplace misconduct. “At the time I felt all alone, but since then, many more women have found the courage to say enough is enough,” said the former Fox host.
Dropped by agents, careers chopped short, many women who brought harassment suits against the network say they’ve been branded as toxic in TV news and wear a scarlet letter: “I couldn’t bounce back.”
Former Fox News Channel newswoman Gretchen Carlson says she’s asked to be let out of her NDA and talked to other Fox News employees who left with similar settlements about pressing the network to be let out of the agreements. “Companies are saying that they want to be open and transparent and that they have worked tirelessly to make their work environments safer,” she told The Associated Press. “And if that’s the truth, then they should let us out.”
Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, Greta Van Susteren and other leading women in TV news called on Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and the board of directors to launch an independent investigation of sexual harassment issues at NBC News.
Exclusives
Three years after the Fox News settlement she still can’t talk about, Carlson is getting back to journalism, with a dogged focus on stories about women and power.
On March 8, the Radio Television Digital News Foundation will host its 28th annual recognition of First Amendment champions — The First Amendment Awards: Freedom Fails Without A Free Press. This year’s honorees include: NBC’s Meet the Press, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, CBS News’ David Rhodes, Gretchen Carlson and ABC News’ Robin Roberts.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Former Fox News Channel anchor and 1989 Miss America Gretchen Carlson was named chairwoman of the Miss America Organization’s board of directors Monday, and three […]
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who filed that first sexual harassment lawsuit against former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, will be interviewed by ABC News’s 20/20 for a full hour on the subject of sexual harassment. It airs on Friday.
Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson is set for 20/20 on November 18, marking her first television interview since the Roger Ailes debacle.
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who left the network amid allegations of sexual harassment against former network chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, has revealed she will testify before Congress on forced arbitration, a common TV contract clause that legally binds parties to settle resolutions outside of the court system.
For 20 years, Roger Ailes did as he pleased at Fox News. Then former anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment — and suddenly Rupert Murdoch, who’d long had his back, wasn’t there. How the most powerful man in cable news was toppled in 16 whirlwind days.
21st Century Fox and Gretchen Carlson said today they settled the former Fox News correspondent’s sexual harassment suit against the company. Fox’s statement said, in part, “We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve.” No terms of the settlement were disclosed, but a source familiar with the settlement said Carlson was paid $20 million.
Gabriel Sherman’s highly-anticipated (and minutely-detailed) saga of Roger Ailes’ undoing is here, and it’s sure to be the holiday weekend’s mandatory long read for anyone in media. It’s all there: the odious, predatory episodes with young women; a Fox News corporate culture complicit in Ailes’ wanton — and paranoid — behavior; and the certitude, as Ailes now shifts his weight behind Donald Trump’s candidacy, that the last chapters are far from written yet.
In the cable news network’s subterranean newsroom, fear is everywhere. “Hacking was bad,” says one person familiar with the internal investigation. “This is arguably worse.” Perhaps the biggest object of curiosity in the newsroom these days is the internal investigation currently being conducted by the law firm Paul, Weiss. The investigation originally focused exclusively on Ailes, but has expanded to other Fox News executives.
As Rupert Murdoch seeks to stabilize Fox News in the wake of Roger Ailes’s ouster, a crucial question remains unanswered: How was Ailes able to spend millions of dollars to settle sexual-harassment claims without setting off alarm bells? New York magazine says according to three highly placed sources, part of the answer is that there were few checks on Ailes when it came to the Fox News budget.
New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has clearly led the reporting of the harassment claims against the former Fox News chief. Why? Deep sources and dogged persistence.
Some Fox News employees say there is an internal split inside the network, pitting those who support Roger Ailes against those who do not. Looming over the Fox News operations is a battle for succession to Ailes, who over 20 years established his position as one of the most powerful in television.
Roger Ailes has stepped down as chairman of Fox News, but the fallout from his controversial tenure won’t end anytime soon. The swift action to oust Ailes may bring a speedy conclusion to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former anchor Gretchen Carlson. But the move could embolden other women to file complaints against Ailes and expose Fox News to lawsuits over the conduct of the once powerful TV executive, legal experts say.
Now that Roger Ailes has stepped down as head of Fox News, the television news industry is bracing for a seismic shift. But the impact on the nation’s political discourse may be just as significant. Without Ailes guiding the network, conservatives and Republican politicians are left wondering whether the talk might soften under new leadership.
Does it need “a tweak or a transformation”? Might Megyn Kelly be its younger, more feminist-seeming new face? Is it just a tonal shift that’s in order, or does the whole news product have to change? These are among the questions that media analyst Ken Doctor surmises Fox News must be asking itself post-Ailes as James and Lachlan Murdoch look to how far they will fashion their company’s golden goose.
Though Rupert Murdoch has stepped in to run Fox News in the interim, the search is on for a permanent replacement for Roger Ailes. But Murdoch, the 85-year-old executive chairman of 21st Century Fox who hired Ailes to invent Fox News two decades ago, is no long-term solution, and Ailes groomed no obvious successor.Among the names thought to be in the mix: current Fox managers Bill Shine, Jay Wallace and Mark Kranz and Michael Clemente, as well as The New York Post‘s Jesse Angelo.
Fox News is heading into a general election campaign in its customary spot at the top of the ratings, but without the man who sets its editorial tone every day. For now, Rupert Murdoch will fill the spot left vacant by Ailes departure. “I am personally committed to ensuring that Fox News remains a distinctive, powerful voice,” Murdoch says. “Our nation needs a robust Fox News to resonate from every corner of the country,”
As of Wednesday night, negotiations between 21st Century Fox and soon-to-be-ousted CEO Roger Ailes were still unresolved. The New York Times looks at the wider implications of his departure at Fox, including how much of Ailes’ management team will remain, and meanwhile staffers remain in the dark on what’s to happen next.
Fox News’s seemingly unassailable position as the most powerful cable news channel was rocked this week by the news that Roger Ailes, the only leader the network has ever known, was negotiating his exit as chairman after accusations of sexual harassment. But no matter how unseemly his departure, Ailes will leave Fox News in strong shape. Speculation about who will replace him has already begun, with names including Bill Shine, Fox News’s senior EVP for programming; David Rhodes, president of CBS News and a former Fox exec; and Jesse Angelo, CEO of The New York Post, thought to be among the contenders.
The fall of Fox News chief Roger Ailes likely marks the end of the Rupert Murdoch era at 21st Century Fox. “The ouster of Ailes, a sorry PR capitulation in [Rupert] Murdoch’s view, is not just an abrupt end to Ailes’ career at 21st Century Fox, but, in a way that’s hard to miss, rather a Murdoch coda,” according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Michael Wolff.
News of Roger Ailes’ exit from Fox News seems to have been premature. The Fox News chief’s attorney said Tuesday that “there is no agreement,” and CNN’s Brian Stelter and Dylan Byers report that numerous media organizations walked back an initial story, first posted by Drudge Report, that Ailes was in fact out.
Susan Estrich, a lawyer for Fox News head Roger Ailes, released a statement denying reports that Ailes had harassed Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. “Roger Ailes has never sexually harassed Megyn Kelly,” Estrich said. “In fact, he has spent much of the last decade promoting and helping her achieve the stardom she earned, for which she has repeatedly and publicly thanked him.”
The Daily Beast late Tuesday said that 21st Century Fox had confirmed that Fox News chief Roger Ailes, embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal, was leaving the news network. The site later said that Fox News had walked back their confirmation, with the news network issuing the following statement: “Roger is at work. The review is ongoing. The only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement.”
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who has been conspicuously absent among the group of Roger Ailes defenders, has broken her silence, according to a report in New York magazine. According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News chief, Kelly told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about 10 years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox.
“In many ways, [Roger] Ailes is Fox News. So the notion that he could be sacked at the height of a captivating presidential election is even more earth-shaking,” says The Washington Post‘s Callum Borchers. “A change at the top would immediately raise questions about the role of Fox News throughout the remainder of the presidential race … and beyond.”
In response to a New York magazine story that said Roger Ailes was to be removed as head of Fox News, 21st Century Fox said late Monday afternoon that its investigation into former anchor Gretchen Carlson’s accusations of sexual harassment is not over. “This matter is not yet resolved and the review is not concluded,” 21st Century Fox said.
Roger Ailes’s tenure as the head of Fox News may be coming to an end. Rupert Murdoch and sons Lachlan and James — co-chairmen and CEO, respectively, of parent company 21st Century Fox — have settled on removing the 76-year-old executive, according to a report from New York magazine.
In the year since Rupert Murdoch handed over the reins of 21st Century Fox to his sons James and Lachlan, the brothers have been remaking the company. During that time they’ve largely kept their hands off Fox News and Roger Ailes. But as Ailes’ sexual harassment scandal plays out, 21st Century Fox now faces questions about succession planning at the linchpin operation. Analysts say, it has become the Murdoch brothers’ biggest leadership challenge since taking over.
In a filing made in federal court in the Southern District of New York City late last week, Susan Estrich, the attorney for Fox News chief Roger Ailes in the sexual-harassment case leveled against him by former anchor Gretchen Carlson, asked the case be moved for arbitration to New York City.
If former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson’s suit is forced into arbitration, her chances of winning are lessened, and little will be made public about it.
The former Fox News anchor repeated the allegations she made last week against Roger Ailes, her former boss at the news network.
