Tuesday, as talks between Ailes and FNC’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, continue, it was widely reported that Fox News host Megyn Kelly told investigators she was sexually harassed by the CEO about a decade ago. Drudge subsequently deleted that image and replaced it with a statement made on Ailes’ behalf, but not before the initial report was aggregated by several other outlets.
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The Ailes ouster story took a confusing turn Tuesday afternoon when The Drudge Report first published an agreement indicating that Ailes would walk away with million and then pulled the supposed agreement.
The conflicting reports on Tuesday came hours after claims surfaced that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly said she had been sexually harrassed by Ailes 10 years ago.
The story about Kelly comes a few weeks after Carlson, a mainstay of the network for 11 years who left Fox News on June 23, filed a lawsuit against Ailes.
It will be very interesting to see what the future could look like for Fox News without Ailes or their star anchor Kelly. Ailes has denied the charges, saying she was let go because of performance issues. Drudge reports that network stars Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, along with the hosts of Fox & Friends and The Five are scheduled to meet to discuss the possibility of a walkout in support of Ailes.
She confirmed that “there’s lots of cross-talk, but no agreement has been reached”. “The only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement”.
Such allegations provided a foundation for Lachlan, 44, and James, 43, to press for Ailes’s ouster, according to people at Fox and 21st Century Fox. Representatives for Ms. Kelly didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. Since the lawsuit was filed July 6, a succession of Fox employees have come forward to publicly defend him, but they notably did not include Kelly.
In Cleveland, the site of the Republican National Convention, Ailes’s fate was a ubiquitous topic of conversation. They have avoided making any changes at Fox News because it has been such a reliable profit center – generating more than $1 billion in profit annually.
Carlson filed her suit against Ailes on July 6, nearly two weeks after she left Fox News. Fox News is the nation’s most-watched cable news network, and has tremendous influence among American conservatives in particular. That had given Ailes power in some corporate scrapes he had with Rupert Murdoch’s sons. Lachlan and James serve as News Corp.co-chairman and CEO of 21st Century Fox, respectively, and they have little affection for Ailes, who treated them with contempt earlier in their careers.
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Ailes defended her and in a statement at the time said she “is an excellent journalist and the entire network stands behind her”. It’s refreshing news that the exec will no longer run Fox News, but the fact that he’ll be payed to leave taints the bit of progress achieved.
