Bill O’Reilly: An awful, awful man - Washington Post
As Fox News last year was plowing through the sexual harassment scandal involving now-former network chief Roger Ailes, King of Cable News Bill O’Reilly couldn’t have been more dismissive of the victims. “In this country, every famous, powerful or wealthy person is a target. You’re a target,” O’Reilly said in a July appearance on “Late Night” with Seth Meyers. “I’m a target. Anytime somebody could come out and sue us, attack us, go to the press or anything like that. … I stand behind Roger 100 percent.”
Roger was the wrong man to stand behind.
Subsequent events would say why: An internal investigation of Fox News turned up a series of complaints regarding Ailes’s conduct toward women. Former host Gretchen Carlson, who kicked off all the action with a lawsuit against Ailes in early July, received a settlement worth $20 million plus a no-nonsense apology from Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox. Ailes was ousted, though he denied the claims against him.
Months after lamenting his status as a “target,” we are learning that O’Reilly was speaking from deep experience.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that about $13 million has been dished out over the years — by O’Reilly and his employer — to resolve complaints from women regarding O’Reilly’s antics. The claims shed light on just why O’Reilly and his former boss Ailes fashioned a mutual protection racket on the premises of Fox News: They both needed someone who’d have their back.
Reporting by the New York Times builds on an existing docket of allegations against O’Reilly. We already knew, for instance, that former producer Andrea Mackris had filed a sexual harassment suit against O’Reilly in 2004, alleging all manner of lurid conduct against the top host. She came away with a $9 million settlement, according to the Times. And news broke earlier this year that former employee Juliet Huddy had secured a settlement over O’Reilly’s alleged sexual advances toward her “in 2011, at a time he exerted significant influence over her airtime,” reports the New York Times.
That there’s more to this pattern should surprise no one who has observed O’Reilly’s incorrigibility over 20-plus years on Fox News’s airwaves. As the New York Times reports, O’Reilly in 2002 “stormed into the newsroom and screamed at a young producer, according to current and former employees, some of whom witnessed the incident.” That woman, Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, subsequently received a settlement.
Two others — Rebecca Gomez Diamond and Laurie Dhue — also received settlements in 2011 and 2016, respectively. In the case of Diamond, her settlement was paid by O’Reilly himself, as was Mackris’s. Dhue worked as an anchor at Fox News from 2000 to 2008 and cited sexual harassment allegations against both O’Reilly and Ailes.
Nor is that all. In her 2016 lawsuit against Fox News, former host Andrea Tantaros cited alleged sexual advances by O’Reilly, though she did not name him as a defendant in her civil action. Here’s the key paragraph about O’Reilly’s efforts:
[C]ommencing in February 2016, Bill O’Reilly (“O’Reilly”), whom Tantaros had considered to be a good friend and a person from whom she sought career guidance, started sexually harassing her by, inter alia, (a) asking her to come to stay with him on Long Island where it would be “very private,” and (b) telling her on more than one occasion that he could “see [her] as a wild girl,” and that he believed that she had a “wild side.”
More alleged sleaziness rounds out the O’Reilly file. As reported by the New York Times, former “O’Reilly Factor” guest Wendy Walsh claims that O’Reilly made the moves on her in 2013. Per the story: “Ms. Walsh said that she met Mr. O’Reilly for a dinner, arranged by his secretary, at the restaurant in the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. During the dinner, she said, he told her he was friends with Mr. Ailes, and promised to make her a network contributor — a job that can pay several hundred thousand dollars a year.”
After the meal, O’Reilly invited her to his hotel suite; Walsh refused to go, and insisted on hanging at the hotel bar. There, O’Reilly behaved like O’Reilly: “He became hostile, telling her that she could forget any career advice he had given her and that she was on her own. He also told her that her black leather purse was ugly.”
Not long thereafter, as the New York Times reports, Wendy Walsh disappeared from “The O’Reilly Factor.” She became a former guest, just the way Diamond became a former Fox Business host, just the way Mackris became a former producer for “The O’Reilly Factor,” just the way Dhue became a former anchor, just the way Huddy became a former on-air talent, just the way Bernstein became a former junior producer.
Through it all, O’Reilly remains the current King of Cable News. Nightly he spins whatever arguments are close at hand to make excuses for the actions and behavior of a friend and inveterate misogynist — the president of the United States. He promotes his serially mediocre books, including the recently released “Old School: Life in the Sane Lane,” which goes after “snowflakes,” a.k.a. people who come forth with grievances. And he rules the ratings.
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O’Reilly will continue in his dual role as the network’s greatest asset and liability, all wrapped up in one self-important package. If nothing else, these latest revelations flesh out the deep affinities that he shares with his vanilla-milkshake-drinking buddy President Trump, who has his own patented ways of approaching women. When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced last October, O’Reilly declined to air the most damaging part of the dialogue between then-businessman Trump and Billy Bush — that quip about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Why leave that out?
“I’m not going to play too much of it, because it’s crude guy talk,” O’Reilly told his viewers.
Here’s an anchor who shouldn’t be trusted to share space with his colleagues, nor to report on women and men. He is an awful, awful man.
