Bill O'Reilly Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

[on-ramp]

interested to hear your thoughts on this.

maybe there's a good reason this guy gets so many death threats.

[lendaddy]

If it's true, he's got some serious issues. If it's not the chick wins gold digger of the millenium award.

Not enough info yet. At this point I'm leaning gold digger as what kind of person would take and be offended by that many calls without taping one to prove her story.

Either way, couldn't care less. His books are OK though.

[bryanthompson]

Previous thread on this
Better than reading Playboy

Geeze, this place gets as many reposts as slashdot.

[CarreraS2]

He's a pretty preachy guy.

It would be funny if there are tapes of some of these sordid conversations. He's Mr. "Truth and Justice," so if the tapes exist, I'm sure he won't mind them being played for the public.

But, who knows. The timing of the whole thing is suspicious, and it may be 100% made up.

(Is he married?)

[bryanthompson]

He is married.

Look at the woman's history... she's trying to make a buck.

· She worked for Fox, then said she was going to quit if they didnt pay her more money.
· Fox paid her more money.
· She got a higher paying job with CNN and left Fox anyway.
· She calls Bill about how unhappy she is at CNN, so Fox pays her more money than CNN was and she went back to fox.

She went to Fox execs and said, 'Pay me $60 million, or i'm going to say...' Fox gets enough of this crap all of the time. Not willing to take that kind of extortion from their own employee, they sued her first for extortion. Bill has said that all of the money they (Fox) get for winning their case will go to charity.

edit: ack, i hate grammar.

[on-ramp]

can't wait to hear the tapes, as i believe from what's going around, there are some.

[pwd72s]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
He is married.

Look at the woman's history... she's trying to make a buck.

· She worked for Fox, then said she was going to quit if they didnt pay her more money.
· Fox paid her more money.
· She got a higher paying job with CNN and left Fox anyway.
· She calls Bill about how unhappy she is at CNN, so Fox pays her more money than CNN was and she went back to fox.

She went to Fox execs and said, 'Pay me $60 million, or i'm going to say...' Fox gets enough of this crap all of the time. Not willing to take that kind of extortion from their own employee, they sued her first for extortion. Bill has said that all of the money they (Fox) get for winning their case will go to charity.

edit: ack, i hate grammar.

I agree...even if there are tapes, it smells of set-up. But hey, a shame ol' Bill isn't gay. I'm not either, but for $60 million, I'd be glad to talk dirty with him! Wasn't this all just "phone sex"????

[bryanthompson]

No kidding, it wasn't even _real_ sex. For $60 million she should at least give it up. I've seen a few pics of the lady... not too shabby.

Heh, hmmm... i'm reminded of leftie responses when clinton was actually getting umm... 'action'... in the oval office... but i'd never be one to point out leftie hypocracy...

[on-ramp]

if there are indeed tapes showing that he talked to her like that, her being a subordinate, and getting very unwelcomed responses and him persisiting (this a form of sexual harassment), then his career is over.

[bryanthompson]

From the "transcripts" at thesmokinggun.com (if indeed they are transcripts) I didn't see her making an effort to stop it. it says "she felt uncomfortable" and things like that, but hell, lefties make me uncomfortable.

FoxNews has a really tough sexual harassment policy... She could've gone to any of her superiors and gotten this, if there is a this, resolved. and she did come back after leaving Fox... smells reaaaallly fishy.

[on-ramp]

Originally posted by bryanthompson


FoxNews has a really tough sexual harassment policy... . [/B]

and how do you know this?

[lendaddy]

If she has tapes with him working over the little guy while she talked business then he is finished and broke

[bryanthompson]

Drudge posted their policy (http://www.drudgereport.com/fox.htm)

Any form of sexual harassment, whether verbal or physical, will not be tolerated by the Company at any level. Sexual harassment includes repeated unwelcome sexual advances, any requests for sexual favors or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment; (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis of employment decisions affecting such individual; or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an affected person’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.

It is the Company’s policy to thoroughly investigate and remedy any incidents of harassment. In order to accomplish this, however, an occasion of harassment must be brought to the attention of management. Accordingly, employees who feel aggrieved because of harassment have an obligation to communicate their problems immediately. If you feel you have been harassed, you should immediately notify any member of management with whom you feel comfortable discussing the situation or a representative of the Human Resources Department. All complaints will be investigated expeditiously. There will be no retaliation against a person who files a complaint or participates in any way in the investigation of a complaint.

Any employee who after an investigation has been found to have sexually harassed another employee will be subject to appropriate sanctions, which depending on the circumstances, may include being terminated from employment.

If he did it, he's a pig and should be fired. The burden was on her to bring it to the attention of upper management--not to try to extort $60 million.

[bryanthompson]

Bonus, from the Fox Extortion lawsuit:

The claimed damages are also inexplicable given that: (a) Mackris does not allege that O’Reilly ever touched her in any way, much less assaulted her, (b) she does not allege that she suffered any adverse employment action such as a demotion or loss of pay or even threatened with an adverse action, and (c) she does not allege that she complained to Fox’s Human Resources Department about harassment, notwithstanding that Fox and News Corp maintain written harassment prevention policies and complaint procedures. In fact, Mackris did not complain prior to the delivery of the letter, and Mackris acknowledged during the meetings with Morelli and the News Corp and Fox representatives that O’Reilly never touched her in an inappropriate manner.

Lest there be any doubt as to their greed, motivation and intent, at the meeting that Mackris and Morelli held with representatives of News Corp and Fox to discuss their demand, Mackris and Morelli made it abundantly clear that their aim was to extort millions from Fox and O’Reilly by threatening to go public with allegations that would subject O’Reilly to scorn, ridicule and abuse, and that neither Fox nor O’Reilly could afford to defend them.

Indeed, at that meeting, Defendants expressly demanded $60 million to resolve the situation. They have never lowered that astonishing demand. When asked to justify that number, Morelli stated that he considered that amount to be appropriate because it would be less than the revenues that he projected that Fox would lose from the adverse publicity, and that “O’Reilly couldn’t afford to let [the lawsuit] go forward.” Morelli never once tried to justify the demand as being in any way supported by existing law.

[on-ramp]

"There will be no retaliation against a person who files a complaint or participates in any way in the investigation of a complaint. "

LOL!!

[techweenie]

The best stuff is in the taped quotes where O'Reilly explains that no woman can successfully make a complaint against him because he can go to Ailes and Ailes can go to "the top."

And just in case that's not clear, he later explains what will happen to people who piss him off: 'Al Franken is going to answer a knock on the door some day... and his life will never be the same.'

It's worth reading the entire document on thesmokinggun.com

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by techweenie
The best stuff is in the taped quotes where O'Reilly explains that no woman can successfully make a complaint against him because he can go to Ailes and Ailes can go to "the top."

Taped quotes?????????

Man you take alot of liberties.

[on-ramp]

http://thesmokinggun.com/archive/1013043mackris16.html

[bryanthompson]

heh, whoever wrote that stuff probably moonlights as an anonymous naughty book author.

[bryanthompson]

I'm no lawyer, but can you use "on or about late april" or "approximately December, 2003" as a valid date for something to have happened? I would think you need more solid evidence than that. IF she took the effort to tape this stuff, don't you think she'd have kept a log also? Not only that, but look at this on the bottom of page 11:

"O'Reilly vehemently threatened with words to the effect: "

WTF? to the effect? If the conversation had been taped, they would have included the actual wordage and not use "to the effect."

Aaaalso, it mentions that her previous boss at CNN had been fired for sexual harassment. Perhaps she's one of those professional victim types who thinks _everything_ is sexual harassment.