BICH HA PHAM (HOST): Pam, can you give us, for the folks who haven't been watching any news in the last couple of weeks, give us a brief background on this Bill O'Reilly sex harassment scandal.

PAM VOGEL: Sure. So I think it's really important to say right at the top that there are two aspects of this particular news that are important to highlight. There's a resulting advertiser boycott against Bill O'Reilly, but there's also what it means for tackling systemic sexual harassment, as you mentioned, during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, that goes beyond Bill O'Reilly and even beyond the toxic culture at Fox. So what happened recently is that on April 1, so about a week ago, The New York Times reported that O'Reilly and 21st Century Fox -- which is Fox News' parent company -- has paid out like $13 million in settlements to at least five women who have reported instances of sexual harassment that involve O'Reilly. And since that report, again about a week ago, a number of advertisers have moved to remove their ads from running during O'Reilly's show. This has been in part due to an advertiser boycott pressure campaign that was actually launched by Media Matters' president, Angelo Carusone. We're lucky that Angelo is a veteran in this type of boycott work. So, he also was the leader of the “Stop Beck” campaign, which pressured advertisers to remove their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox show in 2009. But what's important to note is that the Beck campaign was different, it wasn't about sort of systemic, possibly illegal actions like we're hearing about now with Bill O'Reilly. And that campaign was successful because advertisers left the program to the point where its ad rates couldn't recover, and we're starting to see that now play out with Bill O'Reilly as well.

PHAM: Yes, and I read today that there was an article about that his show ended oddly, like 15 minutes early, I believe it was yesterday -- and without really any explanation and questions about whether maybe there weren't enough advertisers to carry it through. 



VOGEL: Yeah. We've been tracking the numbers for his advertising. It's happened so rapidly and so publicly that the numbers are constantly changing, but as of last night's edition, I can tell you that it's gone from about 35 ads during his show in a single program down to about 12. And the show has gone from about 18 minutes in advertising down to about 6. So, it does absolutely make sense that the show, the timing's been off. Tthere have been weird cut-ins. The advertising has -- it's very noticeable how much it's shifted just in the last week.



PHAM: And let's talk about the role of Fox News, his employer, and most people know that if an employer can be held liable if -- for the sexual harassment and discrimination actions of their employees if they basically allowed it to happen. And Fox News, in the New York Times article that really goes into a lot of details, an investigative piece on the complaints that have been filed and the settlements that O'Reilly or Fox News paid out to keep these women silent. One of the cases they talk about is a woman employee who sued Bill O'Reilly and Fox News for this sexual harassment, and Fox News hired a private investigator to go and get -- dig up dirt on her, and then released -- and then there were all these negative articles in conservative papers about her, like trying to paint her as being sexually promiscuous and other negative things. So this is -- it's one thing -- you may hear more cases where the employer turns a blind eye and tries to deny it -- but this is such, I hate to say the word, but sort of proactive bad work, bad activities by Fox News. What are your thoughts on that?



VOGEL: Well, exactly. I think that gets sort of at the second aspect of this particular story, which is that the New York Times article had new information, but O'Reilly's had a public track record of abuse for years, and Fox News has been complicit in it for years. They just renewed his contract through 2020 last week, when they knew about these settlements. They personally were paying millions as a company to settle with these women out of court. And we've seen other reports recently about Fox News and its decades-long culture of not just silence, but retaliation, victim blaming. We've seen reports in the past few weeks about black women at Fox who experienced racial discrimination and harassment, and of course, we remember last summer when former Fox chairman Roger Ailes left the company amid numerous reports of widespread sexual harassment. Just this week Fox host Julie Roginsky filed a new lawsuit naming Ailes and saying that Ailes sexually harassed her, and her lawyers are taking it a step further and are actually calling for the New York Human Rights Commission to investigate Fox News. 

We've worked really hard to assemble a timeline at Media Matters with all the public reports of sexual harassment from women employees at Fox beginning in 2002. It shows really, as I said, a decades-long pattern in corporate retaliation and victim blaming. Many of the resulting lawsuits name Ailes, or they name O'Reilly. They also name other executives who are still working at Fox, some who have been given more power since Ailes left, like Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, who are the current presidents now. They were complicit and active in some of these cases as well. Many of the cases have yet to be litigated or settled, but a lot of others have also resulted in million-dollar payouts for silence. So it's really about a larger culture, and I think its something that we're trying to interrogate as well -- is that it's important to know that workplace harassment is endemic and underreporting, it happens across the board. One in three women between the ages of 18 and 34 experience sexual harassment in the workplace. That number goes up to 90 percent when you're talking about women who work for tipped-wages positions in restaurants, and the overwhelming majority, about 70 percent of women who experience workplace sexual harassment specifically, never report it for fear of retaliation. So even in terms of this boycott that's really targeted towards just this specific program as of right now, we'd love to see it broadened out to the network, because it's clear that they need a bigger sign that they have to take this seriously and take actual steps to re-evaluate and change this ongoing, toxic culture of harassment and really set a tone for change.

Related: 

These Are Bill O’Reilly’s Advertisers

Bill O’Reilly Is A Sexual Predator And Fox News Is A Hostile Work Environment. Advertisers Are Fleeing Because That’s A Liability.

The Sexual Harassment Crisis Is Bigger Than Just Bill O'Reilly

The Sexual Harassment At Fox As Reported By The Press Throughout The Years