Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros has charged in a lawsuit filed Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, she was sexually harassed by former network chief Roger Ailes and other top executives.
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O’Reilly, Brown, Fox News correspondent John Roberts, on-air guest Ben Collins and actor Dean Cain made unwanted sexual comments or advances towards her, the lawsuit alleges.
“Ailes then started complaining about marriage in general, and also made off-color jokes about being married”, the lawsuit states, charging Ailes asked Tantaros to turn around “so I can get a good look at you”, but that Tantaros refused.
In particular, Ms Tantaros said that Bill Shine – who was named as Mr Ailes’ replacement earlier this month – warned her to drop her complaints about Ailes at one point.
Fox, for its part, has suggested that Tantaros “concocted sexual harassment claims to gain leverage in the contract dispute”, according to the Times.
Using the strongest language against Fox News yet, former Fox host Andrea Tantaros said that the news network she was employed by was operating as a charade.
In the lawsuit, Tantaros says on August 18 of a year ago, when Brown appeared on her show Outnumbered, he “made a number of sexually inappropriate comments to Tantaros on set”.
Along similar lines, Carlson says Ailes once told her that the two of them “should have had a sexual relationship”.
This latest sexual harassment case against Ailes, along with the many others, shows how misogyny is condoned at Fox News. The names involved in the lawsuit are Roger Ailes, former network head Roger Ailes, host Bill O’Reilly, and US Senator Scott Brown. The host claimed Brown later “snuck up behind” her after the show as she was purchasing lunch and put his hands on her lower waist.
Tantaros, who used to co-host “The Five” and vanished from the screen in April, claims that she was repeatedly told not to wear pants, so Ailes could see her legs, according to the suit.
According to her Fox News biography, Tantaros joined the network in 2010, eventually becoming a host on “Outnumbered” and “The Five”.
Andrea Tantaros doesn’t list O’Reilly or Brown as defendants in the suit. “But now Tantaros” attorney is saying that was a sham, that the real thing that was happening behind the scenes was that Fox News was trying to keep her quiet about this alleged harassment. She says she also asked him about a demeaning interview with the Fox publicity department that she suspected had been arranged to punish her; Shine told her, she says, to “let this one go”. Various other women who have worked with Mr. Ailes in the cable-news industry have since come public with their allegations of harassment.
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Brown has denied the allegations, tweeting, “As a survivor of sexual abuse, I would never perpetuate language or actions as described in FOX complaint”.
