The last week has not been kind to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Reports surfaced last weekend that O’Reilly and Fox News had paid out millions to settle multiple sexual harassment complaints over the years, which led to him getting roasted by CNN, being defended by the same president that Fox used as an example of how not to act (via the company’s own anti-harassment seminars), and losing dozens of advertisers.
Hot off the news of yet another sexual harassment claim, Fox announced that it would conduct a full investigation of O’Reilly’s actions. In what could be the beginning of the end of the No Spin Zone, reports surfaced that Fox had hired the same law firm that investigated ousted executive Roger Ailes for strikingly similar allegations in 2016.
“21st Century Fox investigates all complaints and we have asked the law firm Paul Weiss to continue assisting the company in these serious matters,” the company told Reuters. The firm’s previous investigation of Ailes led to his resignation and a golden parachute for the former network chairman.
O’Reilly himself recently said that he had never been the subject of human resources complaints at Fox News, and a spokesperson later said that the firm was already on retainer with the network.
O’Reilly’s newest book, Old School, “a defense of traditional values [that] includes advice on how men should treat women respectfully, not as sex objects,” is set to debut at number one on the New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list next week.
(Via Huffington Post, New York Times, and Reuters)