Gretchen Carlson filed suit against Roger Ailes last summer — and started an avalanche.
Less than 10 months later, two of the most powerful men in media, Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, have been knocked off lofty perches at Fox News.
And the world is suddenly a different place for women who’ve experienced sexual harassment in their workplaces.
.. Ailes vehemently denied the charges, but Carlson, who reportedly had tape-recorded evidence on her side, eventually got a $20 million settlement and a public apology.
.. “Gretchen started the public avalanche, and Megyn continued it internally,” Maynard said.
.. “We found out, in all of this, that if you speak up, there will be action, and that there’s strength in numbers,” longtime media executive Vivian Schiller said Wednesday.
That’s especially true, of course, when one of those employees is a major star.
.. Of course, plenty of women have complained in the past, in companies and organizations, to no avail. Some have been retaliated against. Others ignored, mocked or silenced.
.. Next step, she said: Women should demand that Congress pass the Fairness in Arbitration Act to stop silencing victims of discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
The Trump-Ailes Buddy Act
Mr. Trump even went on TV to accuse Ms. Carlson of being a fabulist. (Maybe he didn’t know that Ms. Carlson had a year’s worth of audio recordings of Mr. Ailes’s lewd remarks.)
.. in June in an article in Vanity Fair. Connecting the dots, the article surmised that Mr. Trump’s reality-TV outrageousness, the billions in free coverage he’s generated, his 11 million Twitter followers, and his die-hard base of white supremacists, could all be used to form an alt-right TV powerhouse.
.. Mr. Ailes, the man whose behavior forced Fox to make this apology last week: “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.”
Fox Settles With Gretchen Carlson Over Roger Ailes Sex Harassment Claims
a person briefed on the settlement said that it amounted to $20 million. The person also said that Mr. Ailes was responsible for a portion of the payment, but Susan Estrich, Mr. Ailes’s lawyer, wrote in an email, “Mr. Ailes is not contributing anything.”
.. In its statement, the company apologized for the behavior, saying, “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.”
Mr. Ailes resigned from Fox News on July 21, two weeks after Ms. Carlson filed her suit. He received a $40 million settlement when he left.
.. The evidence that Ms. Carlson had in her sexual harassment case was damning, according to another person with knowledge of the settlement. For a year and a half, she had been recording her meetings with Mr. Ailes on her cellphone (in an interview with The New York Times in July, Ms. Carlson said she had been in “between six and 10” meetings with Mr. Ailes where he made provocative comments).
The Carlson Camp
Inside the team of lawyers and P.R. agents strategizing former Fox anchor’s battle against Roger Ailes
Carlson had not given Fox a heads-up, or even announced publicly that she had been terminated from the network.
“Ailes and Fox have a very heavy hand in media relations. What’s important [is] no one had known up until the suit was filed that Gretchen had been fired,” Ripp Media founder Allan Ripp told POLITICO.
.. As someone who knows Smith’s firm well, Reis said she believes they wouldn’t have taken the case without assiduously vetting the claims.
.. Carlson and her lawyers knew that it wouldn’t be enough to fight the case in the courts; they also had to have a good P.R. strategy. That’s where Ripp Media comes in.
.. Most major national news outlets covered the suit. The most conspicuous outlier was the New York Post, which is owned by 21st Century Fox sister company News Corp. As of Saturday morning, the tabloid hadn’t published anything about the case in print or online. The Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by News Corp., reported the allegations on Thursday in a story on page B5, which was blurbed on the front page.
.. “There’s some allegations that have not even been included yet that may come out in discovery. … Not everything that could have been in the complaint was included in the complaint,” he said.
Carlson’s representatives have said that her aim is to air her complaints in a public jury trial, that settlement is not an option. Of course, that’s what complainants always say at this stage of the game.
Carlson would seem to be well situated to make good on her pledge to bring this matter to trial. Her husband, Casey Close, is one of the richest sports agents in professional baseball, with a client list that includes Derek Jeter and Clayton Kershaw.
.. “Gretchen believes she’s representing a long list of women who have faced similar issues and harassment,” Ripp said. “And she wants to take this to the very end. So she’s happy and fully prepared to go to trial. That could be a long time away.”