{"id":26566,"date":"2017-04-20T14:07:48","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T19:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=26566"},"modified":"2017-04-20T14:07:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T19:07:49","slug":"bill-oreilly-fox-news-does-money-matter-more-than-doing-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2017\/04\/bill-oreilly-fox-news-does-money-matter-more-than-doing-the-right-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill O\u2019Reilly & Fox News: Does Money Matter More Than Doing the Right Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Yesterday, Fox News ousted Bill O\u2019Reilly, who for two decades was the top-rated host<\/a> with his show, The O\u2019Reilly Factor. O\u2019Reilly\u2019s blustery on-air persona\u2014which inspired Stephen Colbert to create ultraconservative pundit Stephen Colbert<\/a> on the Colbert Show\u2014minced no words, ever.<\/p>\n

As a result, he often said outrageous, offensive, if not downright inaccurate<\/a> things on the air. For example, he said<\/a> that the slaves who built the White House were \u201cwell-fed and had decent lodging provided by the government.\u201d He called<\/a> child hunger \u201ca total lie,\u201d and said<\/a> that feminists should not be allowed to report on Trump \u201cbecause Trump is the antithesis of\u201d feminism. He\u2019s also been known to make inappropriate comments<\/a> to women on the air.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Reilly\u2019s personal conduct (like that of his former boss Roger Ailes<\/a> before him) apparently has been similarly offensive. Over the course of his time at Fox News, O\u2019Reilly has been accused of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior involving both women at the network who worked for him and women who appeared as guests on his show. According to The New York Times<\/em><\/a> (NYT), there was a pattern to O\u2019Reilly\u2019s conduct, a pattern not unlike Bill Cosby’s<\/a>, who similarly has been accused of sexual harassment (and sexual assault). That is, O\u2019Reilly would appear as a mentor to women, offering advice to women and saying he could help them professionally. Then he \u201cwould pursue sexual relationships with them, causing some to fear that if they rebuffed him, their careers would stall.\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 1, 2017, the NYT reported that they had discovered five women had received settlements either from O\u2019Reilly or 21th Century Fox (the parent company for Fox News), totaling $13 million. Two of those settlements came after Ailes was fired from Fox News last summer after his own sexual harassment scandal. Aside from the five women who received settlements, the NYT reported that two other women \u201chave spoken of [O\u2019Reilly\u2019s] inappropriate behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article notes that Fox has known of O\u2019Reilly\u2019s inappropriate conduct since at least 2002; additionally, the network adopted an aggressive strategy in dealing with women who might be considering filing sexual harassment lawsuits against the host. In 2004, Fox and O\u2019Reilly sued a woman for allegedly seeking to \u201cextort\u201d O\u2019Reilly \u201cin return for not going public with \u2018scandalous and scurrilous\u2019 claims about him.\u201d O\u2019Reilly hired a public relations firm to \u201chelp shape [his] narrative,\u201d with \u201c[t]he goal [of] depict[ing the woman] as . . . promiscuous . . . , deeply in debt, [and] trying to shake down\u201d O\u2019Reilly. The woman filed suit against O\u2019Reilly anyway, and the two sides eventually settled, with the woman receiving about $9 million.<\/p>\n

Within days of the NYT story, the advertisers<\/a> started to flee The O\u2019Reilly Factor. At one point, more than one-quarter of the show\u2019s airtime was purchased by advertisers. But by Friday, April 7\u2014nearly a week after the story broke\u2014advertisers purchased only seven minutes of airtime. In all, more than 50 advertisers<\/a> pulled their ads from his show.<\/p>\n

Finally, yesterday, Fox News dropped the axe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an appropriate but long overdue move. When confronted with Ailes\u2019 sexual harassment scandal last summer, the network was already aware of O\u2019Reilly\u2019s issues. But, it seems, so long as those settlements\u2014and any new ones\u2014stayed under wraps, everyone could quietly look the other way. The network could purport to create the culture of respect it said it would following the Ailes scandal. And it could keep its cash cow, O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

Once those settlements and the stories of other women were exposed, the public was aware\u2014and outraged. Yet it seems it was the loss of revenue (in the form of fleeing advertisers) that finally pushed the network to release O\u2019Reilly, who continues to deny any wrongdoing. It would have been nice, though, for the network to have decided years ago that continuing to employ someone with a continuous string of sexual harassment allegations was not the right thing to do, not because advertisers pulled their ads but because they respected their female employees and guests more than they desired the revenue. Because no one\u2014woman or man\u2014should have to work in what one writer called<\/a> a \u201cculture of predatory harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the plus side, at least O\u2019Reilly (and Ailes before him) was fired. But maybe we\u2019ll get to point where we will eliminate the root problem not because not doing so hurts the bottom line, but because we respect the people in the environment enough not to subject them to the problem in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Fox News ousted Bill O\u2019Reilly, who for two decades was the top-rated host with his show, The O\u2019Reilly Factor. O\u2019Reilly\u2019s blustery on-air persona\u2014which inspired Stephen Colbert to create ultraconservative pundit Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Show\u2014minced no words, ever. As a result, he often said outrageous, offensive, if not downright inaccurate things on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,86,66,76,122,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-feminism","category-human-rights","category-media-journalism","category-public","category-tort-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}