Fox News, hotbed of workplace sexual harassment, which has also faced serious accusations about the network discriminating against employees on the basis of race and gender, was bailed out by its parent company 21st Century Fox after it reached a roughly $10 million settlement to resolve discrimination suits brought by 18 current and former employees at the network. The settlements include the class action racial discrimination, filed by staff at the Fox News accounting department and a former co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, who was the only black male anchor at the network.
“Also included in the settlement were the race, gender and pregnancy discrimination lawsuit brought in 2016 by a former reporter for Fox 5, the network’s New York affiliate, and a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by a Fox News Radio reporter,” according to the New York Times. “The roughly $10 million agreement, while still a significant sum, is far less than the more than $60 million that Mr. Wigdor had proposed last summer. At the time, Mr. Wigdor had pointed out how 21st Century Fox had paid $40 million to Mr. Ailes and $25 million to Mr. O’Reilly, and said, ‘Outside the context of the mediation, any amount under what Ailes and O’Reilly got in total would be unjust.’”
The terms of the settlement stipulated the employees leave the network and not seek future employment there; it also forbids them from disclosing the amount they were paid, but, crucially, does not bar them from telling their own stories publicly. A pair* of suits were not included in the settlement and remain outstanding, including a defamation and racial-discrimination lawsuit, as well as political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes’ suit that claims she was raped by anchor Charles Payne, who remains on air, and then retaliated against by the network for filing a complaint.
Correction, May 16, 2018: This post originally misstated that several lawsuits were not included in the settlement with Fox News; there were two suits that were not included.
