Ailes Scandal Grows – Yet Another Murdoch Scandal

Speaking of rogue companies, let’s not forget the scandal over at Fox News which has been overshadowed in the news by the two national conventions. Apparently, at least 25 women have now come forward to speak to the outside lawyers hired to investigate the charges of sexual harassment against Roger Ailes. In addition, there are rumors that perhaps a dozen more women are also prepared to recount their harassment by Ailes and others within the organization. Yesterday, two other Fox News executives who were loyal to Ailes were also fired but sources inside the company report that they were not directly implicated in any inappropriate sexual activity. According to Gabriel Sherman, who was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air today, what they did have in common was that they were apparently vastly overpaid for the positions they were currently holding, which certainly raises the question of what exactly they were being paid for.   Forcing women to wear miniskirts on the job, interviews where candidates are asked to pose and twirl like beauty contestants, and outright propositioning of sex for increased pay or better job opportunities all appear to commonplace at Fox News. Clearly, there was a culture of sexual harassment throughout the entire organization, starting from the top and filtering down.

And let’s not also forget that this is not the first outrageous scandal at a Murdoch-owned entity. The 2005-2007 phone-hacking scandal in the United Kingdom led to the jailing of one employee and the resignation of the editor of the News Of The World, a Murdoch-owned entity. Although that appeared to be the end of the scandal, it actually erupted again in 2011 due to a number of civil lawsuits and further investigation. As it turned out, the paper had been conducting phone hacking on a nearly industrial scale and engaged in numerous other illegal activities such as bribing the police. The resulting investigation led to the arrest of over 90 people and charges leveled against 16, virtually all of them employees of Murdoch-controlled entities.

I am not a big fan of the NCAA, but they do have the power to administer a so-called “death penalty” on university sports programs that are continual violators of NCAA rules, having famously done so to the SMU football program. I really think that we might need a similar sort of power to deal with these companies that continue to violate the law. Yes, occasionally some employees are fired or jailed, but the company often continues in its illegal behavior. Shutting down the company for one year might actually get companies to cease the behavior before it begins.