Gabriel Sherman at the New York Post says the Murdoch family, which controls the company that owns Fox News, may be gearing up to give Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes the boot.
A lawsuit filed by former “Fox and Friends” anchor Gretchen Carlson alleges Ailes harassed her sexually.
Carlson’s lawyer says her office has been approached by a number of women claiming they too were victims of Ailes’ sexual misconduct.
21st Century Fox, which owns Fox News, has hired outside counsel to look into the matter.
From Sherman’s story:
Executives I spoke with over the past 24 hours said the hiring of an outside lawyer is also an indication that Murdoch’s sons may be capitalizing on the Carlson scandal to achieve a long-held goal: forcing Ailes out. “It’s a coup,” one person close to the company told me. If the investigation into Ailes’s management confirms Carlson’s account, or turns up additional episodes of harassment with other Fox women, it stands to reason the Murdoch children would have the leverage they need to push Ailes aside and install a less-right-wing chief. “This could be curtains for Ailes,” another person close to the company said. Indeed, several months after NBC hired an outside counsel in 1995 to investigate Ailes’s alleged anti-Semitic slur, he left NBC.
In another New York story penned by Sherman , six women tell tales of Ailes' alleged sexual misdeeds.
One story has a 16-year-old model interviewing for a part on “The Mike Douglas Show” (which Ailes was producing as the time). She claims Ailes locked her in an office, pulled out his genitals and said, “Kiss them.”
Another woman who says she interviewed behind an Ailes-locked door says Ailes gratified himself after asked her to don lingerie.
Another then-teen auditioning for the Douglas show claims a similar experience. “He had a room and one by one he would take us behind closed doors. When my turn came I went in and he didn’t waste any time. He grabbed me and had his hands on me and he forced me to kiss him. When I recoiled he said, ‘Well, you know no girls get a job here unless they’re cooperative.’”
Former model Marsha Callahan remembers an encounter with Ailes when she auditioned for the Douglas show: “I recall very clearly, he said he’d put me on the show but I needed to go to bed with him,” she alleges.
Ailes’ lawyer Barry Asen says all six women are liars:
“It has become obvious that Ms. Carlson and her lawyer are desperately attempting to litigate this in the press because they have no legal case to argue. The latest allegations, all 30 to 50 years old, are false.”
Ailes, 76, became the founding CEO of Fox News in October 1996. His current contract expires in three months, on the channel’s 20th anniversary.
Let's hope Fox can settle this sexual harrassment suit in a hurry so Fox can continue its important work fighting the inhumane and costly War On Christmas.
