How Fox News Fired and Silenced a Female Reporter Who Alleged Sexual Harassment
The Murdochs may have ousted Fox News chief Roger Ailes, but he is still working to cover up claims of sexual harassment at the network. A few hours after Rupert, Lachlan, and James Murdoch announced Ailes’s departure on July 21 (with a golden parachute of $40 million and advisory gig through 2018) and pledged their “commitment to maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect,” Ailes’s attorney, Barry Asen, intimidated a former reporter for speaking out about her sexual harassment at Fox.
Rudi Bakhtiar, who says she was fired from Fox News after complaining about sexual harassment, says that Ailes’s attorney left a message for her lawyer on Thursday: “He said he heard that I have an interview with Gabe Sherman. His message said that, ‘If so, you violated the non-disparagement agreement.’” Bakhtiar says her lawyer received the call about an hour after I contacted Brian Wilson, the former Fox News Washington bureau chief who she says made unwanted sexual advances toward her, for comment. Wilson, who left Fox in 2010, denied harassing Bakhtiar.
As the New York Times is also reporting, the incident that Bakhtiar describes allegedly took place around Thanksgiving 2006 at the George Hotel, near the Fox bureau in Washington. At the time, Bakhtiar was going back and forth between New York and D.C. Wilson, who was about to be promoted to bureau chief, asked to meet Bakhtiar — “'off-campus' is how he put it” — to tell her about his new position. In the lobby of her hotel, he said he would make her a full-time Washington correspondent, which was her dream job. “Oh my God, Brian, that’s wonderful!” she recalls saying. “And he says, ‘Well, you know what that means for you.’ I said, ‘Brian, I won’t let you down. I’m going to bust my ass for you. You’re going to be so proud.’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I know. You’re great at that. But you know how I feel about you, right, Rudi?’ And all of a sudden I’m like, Uh oh. I said, ‘Well ... I really respect you, too. I think you’re wonderful at what you do.’ And he says, ‘No, no, no ... do you know how I really feel about you?’ I went from ecstasy to my whole body freezing. I said, ‘No, I’m not following, Brian.’ He said, ‘Well, let’s just say I want to see the inside of your hotel room.’”
Bakhtiar tried to get out of the situation as gracefully as possible.