It's a Race to the Bottom Between Fox News and Harvey Weinstein

Fox News has been hammering "Hollywood" over the huge number of women that Harvey Weinstein has harassed and assaulted. But they've been downplaying their own sex scandals, in which many women were harassed and assaulted by several Fox executives, including Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes, resulting in numerous large payouts.

The New York Times broke the Weinstein story, and now they've broken another story about Bill O'Reilly:

Last January, six months after Fox News ousted its chairman amid a sexual harassment scandal, the network’s top-rated host at the time, Bill O’Reilly, struck a $32 million agreement with a longtime network analyst to settle new sexual harassment allegations, according to two people briefed on the matter — an extraordinarily large amount for such cases.

Although the deal has not been previously made public, the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, acknowledges that it was aware of the woman’s complaints about Mr. O’Reilly. They included allegations of repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her, according to the people briefed on the matter.

It was at least the sixth agreement — and by far the largest — made by either Mr. O’Reilly or the company to settle harassment allegations against him. Despite that record, 21st Century Fox began contract negotiations with Mr. O’Reilly, and in February granted him a four-year extension that paid $25 million a year. 

Get that? Fox News renewed O'Reilly's contract right after they paid $32 million to a woman to settle sexual harassment claims. And then they fired him a couple of days later. Not only are the guys at Fox totally devoid of any sort of morality, they're terrible businessmen to boot.

Naturally, O'Reilly claims he's completely innocent. He says he settled to save his teenage children terrible embarrassment. Those would be the same children who wanted to live with their mother after O'Reilly dragged her down the stairs by the neck. The court unanimously voted to grant the mother full custody.

More to the point, companies don't pay eight-figure settlements unless the allegations are substantial and well-documented. So there's no doubt O'Reilly is lying.

So, who's winning the settlement race: Fox News or Harvey Weinstein?

The disclosure of Ms. Wiehl’s settlement follows a wave of public accusations against the Hollywood studio mogul Harvey Weinstein, which has increased scrutiny of sexual harassment in the workplace. The Times reported this month that Mr. Weinstein had reached at least eight settlements with women, most of whom received between $80,000 to $150,000.

Ms. Wiehl’s $32 million deal dwarfs other previously known sexual harassment settlements at Fox News. The largest of those was the $20 million payout the former host Gretchen Carlson received after she sued Mr. Ailes in July 2016.

The settlement with Ms. Wiehl was more than three times the amount of any of Mr. O’Reilly’s previously known deals; in 2004, he had settled a lawsuit with a producer, Andrea Mackris, for about $9 million. Publicly known harassment settlements involving Mr. O’Reilly have totaled about $45 million.

It looks like Weinstein has paid out about a million bucks, while Fox News has probably exceeded $100 million.

So Fox News wins, by two orders of magnitude! Of course, it's a team effort with Fox, so Harvey never really had a chance.