Fox News just can’t catch a break. Not only have they been knee deep in discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits, but now the conservative news network is the “subject of an investigation by the New York State Division of Human Rights.” Why? Well, according to Lisa Bloom, an attorney and a spokesperson for the agency, the investigation is going to look into the “numerous and very public sexual harassment complaints that have been plaguing the company for well over a year.”
Fox News just can’t catch a break. Not only has the network been knee deep in discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits, but now Fox News is the “subject of an investigation by the New York State Division of Human Rights.” Why? Well, according to Lisa Bloom, an attorney and a spokesperson for the agency, the investigation is going to look into the “numerous and very public sexual harassment complaints that have been plaguing the company for well over a year.”
Already the New York agency has spoken to a couple clients that Bloom represents in relation to the harassment accusations, and it plans on interviewing more down the road. But why, after nearly a year since the harassment accusations began flying around Fox News, is the agency suddenly interested in launching an investigation? Well, it actually decided to launch an investigation after Bloom requested one back in April of this year, citing “Fox News’s culture of repeated sexual harassment as the reason” for the request. She also called Fox News’s culture “the worst corporate culture I’ve heard of in 30 years as a civil rights attorney.”
Another reason why Bloom and her law firm decided to request the investigation was because many of the women who are or have accused the news network of harassment have “signed confidentiality agreements or are otherwise unable to raise complaints of sexual harassment with the state agency themselves,” so the law firm filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights “on their behalf.”
According to Bloom and her firm, their complaint “presents a clear timeline of the decades of institutionalized harassment at Fox News, starting with Fox’s hiring of predator Roger Ailes and working its way through the various women who have gone public with their cases in the past year, starting with Gretchen Carlson filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes in July 2016.” So basically, while Fox News had a rocky start to 2017, it looks like things might get worse before they get better for the news network.
But what type of complaints have plagued the network so far this year? For those who don’t know, earlier this year, the cable-news outlet let go of it’s most popular anchor, Bill O’Reilly, amid a barrage of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior allegations. On top of that, “11 current and former employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the network accusing it of racial discrimination.” To make matters worse for the conservative news network, “federal investigators are examining whether Fox News made payments to former employees without disclosing them appropriately to investors in its parent company.”
It will be interesting to see how all of these investigations and lawsuits will affect the news network, and whether or not Fox News will be able to survive.
Sources:
Fox News under investigation by New York State Division of Human Rights, attorney says
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