The first call came from a woman at Fox who I believe was the HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel). She stated that she had met with O’Reilly and Bill Shine, who was the Co-President of Fox News. She said there was a sensitive matter that they wanted my ex to speak with O’Reilly about, confidentially. I don’t think anyone would decline when the head of their company made such a "request"....
[O'Reilly] explained that a new accuser was suing him for sexual harassment. This latest victim was someone my ex knew, and lived in the same complex. He got to the point immediately: give me anything you have on this woman, which we “can use against her.”
He asked if anything was known about her sex life. He asked if she used any illegal drugs. He also asked if anything was known about her financial situation and marriage. In essence, the leadership of Fox, including their “HR” head/counsel and O’Reilly, who held my ex’s career in their hands (and whom O’Reilly was also harassing) was demanding information to attack another victim.
Think about that in light of him stating that very few women ever went to HR to complain about him, and how hollow those words ring....
October 26, 2017
"Bill should be aware that not everyone is bound by a non-disclosure … I am not."
Writes Michael Panter, whose ex-girlfriend has settled a case against Bill O'Reilly. He describes phone calls he was in a position to overhear:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
52 comments:
Due diligence. What do we know about this woman.
You are not doing a very good job of shilling for Fox News!
The bombshells keep coming. More frequently and more devastating.
If this keeps up and I suspect it will, there will be shortage of qualified employees in the entertainment/political fields.
she’d come home stressed and reference O’Reilly, and only after some prodding would she reveal that he asked her out, adding that she should not tell anyone - that other women at the network would question it or be jealous.
He asked her out?
Does anybody have any finer details about what specifically O'Reilly actually did? Let me be clear here, I'm not trying to defend the guy (I never liked him as a talk show host) I just want to know what he did so I can get a better idea of how he ranks on my personal badness scale.
Well. Soon, I expect, lots of people who are not bound by non-disclosures who know things will start leaking openly and secretly about things.
Makes me wonder what the value of a non-disclosure agreement is if the person can simply put your calls on speaker phone while someone else listens and what the value of a settlement is if you'll be presumed guilty.
I imagine you'll be seeing a lot less of both in the future, and maybe it is a good thing to not allow those tools to protect the guilty.
"Blogger Humperdink said...
The bombshells keep coming. More frequently and more devastating.
If this keeps up and I suspect it will, there will be shortage of qualified employees in the entertainment/political fields."
There has always been a shortage of qualified employees in the in the entertainment/political fields. It never stopped them in the past.
Notice how Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Harvey Weinstein fade into the crowd.
Also Ted Kennedy, JFK, woody Allen, David Letterman, Bob Packwood, Roman Polanski, and Fatty Arbuckle.
I wouldn't talk that way about anyone who gets millions to hire lawyers.
You know he's coming after you, and his lawyers are going to leave you with nothing but a cereal box with a negro janitor.
Ugly as all this is, what's really so surprising as to what people will do when cornered?
Reminds me of laws and sausages, often attributed to Bismarck. "Laws [and settlement agreements] are like sausages. You should never watch them being made."
Have we ever lived in a time more saturated with unequivocal truth than this October? I think not.
This must have been what it was like deseminating self-evident, unbound truths in ancient Greece as well:
"Verily, it is so. Just as with Stavros' girls, all six of them, my daughter Adlea Roundheelopolous, too, was made great with child when Zeus descended in the form of a swan and took her. But what could she do, and how could anyone doubt? We all know what Zeus is like."
In other news, the WSJ is calling on Mueller to resign. As much as I enjoy reading about sexual harassment, I am more interested in the developments coming out of Washington DC. It seems there may be some truth to the deep state paranoia on the Right. The dossier was a dirty Democratic political trick, aided by the Russians, and which has resulted in numerous resignations, recusals, and an independent counsel investigation -- and now the independent counsel himself may have to resign. Thanks, Hillary.
the assumption is that O'Reilly's victim was a victim.
How do we know this?
He asked if anything was known about her sex life. He asked if she used any illegal drugs. He also asked if anything was known about her financial situation and marriage.
It seems to me that O'Reilly himself was conducting the investigation of the accusation against him.
I probably agreed with about 90% of what O'Reilly said and with about about 95% of what Hannity says, but I can't stand watching either one of them.
Both of them interrupt their guests way too much.
God's really on a tear!
The key point is the involvement of the Fox News officials — "HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel)" — in the first phone call.
Fox News is relying on saying it wasn't involved.
$32 million is a lot of money and O Reilly probably didn't even get any.
Probably rubbed it out for himself.
$32 million says it all. O'Reilly is finished in broadcasting. His next book will be Killing My Career.
HR is a joke in most companies
I think the $32 million was paid to protect his reputation. Unless he killed and ate her children, no crime is worth that much. His book sales and tv show, however, depended on his reputation and were worth far more than the millions he paid out.......Money down the drain, This new revelation makes him look bad and is designed to make him look bad. You can bet all his sins will be well publicized.,....When it comes to bribery, adultery, pedophilia, sexual harassment and male pattern baldness, such crimes are not dependent on political ideology. Where the left has the edge, however, is when it comes to publicizing these crimes and demonizing the sinner. They really excell at that.......I think O'Reilly's sins are far less than the crimes of Weinstein, but by the time this is over, their names will be interchangeable when it comes to sexual harassment.
They can plead ignorance. It worked for the New York Times. It will probably work for CNN and so on and so forth.
I couldn't stand O'Reilly. Never saw him as having a coherent political philosophy. He was essentially a pinball and reacted erratically and then explained himself in a condescending manner. I don't know whose use of folks was more annoying, O'Reilly's or Obama's. Both of them were about as much men of the people as Gore Vidal. While I'm glad to see O'Reilly gone, I regret the manner of his leaving. If he was worth $32 million to Fox to be rid of him, I'd think there was more to it than unwanted requests for dates.
I am Canadian and a few years ago, Jian Ghomeshi who worked at CBC Radio and was one of country's most popular celebrities, was brought down by rape allegations. Ghomeshi was into BDSM, people with strong urge into kink or fetish, and women claimed rape or sexual harassment while Ghomeshi said everything was between consenting adults and his employer knew about his kink tendencies. Fired from his job but was found not guilty by jury.
There should be more discussion of in/out groups and how that makes people behave. I bet a lot of people protecting these predators consider themselves pro-woman, or as good people in general, but their morals can disappear when your job/income is threatened. Tribalism and prospect of losing job can make people behave in ways they don't imagine of themselves.
$32 million is nothing for Fox. Maybe CNN would balk at that figure, as their ratings aren't as good. Studios, networks, are usually indemnified against lawsuits, and they have in-house legal teams, which cuts some of the atty fees. I truly believe the money wasn't the problem. Their reputation was the main reason he was fired, and Fox's need to pacify viewers by trying to hold on to any last vestiges of a squeaky-clean image.
But Wait!
The line I read yesterday, all day, was that "opposition research is normal, valid, legal, and perfectly ethical!" Sure that was in the context of a political campaign but why would things be any different for opponents in a lawsuit?
Oppo research is OK when it's Dems colluding w/foreigners to get dirt on a Repub, but it's wrong for a defendant in a lawsuit to get on the plaintiff...is that it? Or it's just always wrong to get on Dems/people of whom Leftist approve?
Just kidding, we all know the answer. I just get a little sick of the "how dare you fight back!" attitude you see in the Media all the time. I am perfectly willing to believe O'Reilly is a jerk/is guilty on this, but even guilty people get to do their best in court.
"The key point is the involvement of the Fox News officials — "HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel)" — in the first phone call."
Considering his near verbatim memory of the call it's odd that he is uncertain of the identity of the first caller. But to your point, wouldn't the claim by the "victim" have been against her employer (Fox) along with O'Reilly personally? And wouldn't this justify corporate involvement?
Ann Althouse said...The key point is the involvement of the Fox News officials — "HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel)" — in the first phone call.
Fox News is relying on saying it wasn't involved.
Yeah but that's an easy needle to thread.
"Our HR department was made aware of allegations of a personal nature and took calls made by O'Reilly on this and related matters. Mr. O'Reilly may have asked for the intervention of our staff but as in all matters we acted in strict accord with our ethical and legal obligation and did not involve ourselves in any way in his private legal affairs." I mean, did Fox corporate settle with this person, or other people? Did Fox corporate/legal take any official action in court (responding to the suit, countersuing, whatever)?
Just from what's presented here (that O'Reilly talked to his company's HR head and O'Reilly wanted to dig up any dirt on the person suing him) I'm not sure there's much to impeach Fox's assertion. So far, anyway.
Weinstein was a close personal friend of the Clintons, raised millions of dollars for them, and masturbated in front of most major motion picture stars. That statement should precede every comment and discussion of O'Reilly's flaws.
Trial (or divorce) by media.
So anyone can say anything with NO STANDARD at all.
> Hearsay is any information gathered by one person from another person who has first-hand knowledge of the information. This information may involve a condition, event, or object of which the person gathering the information has no first-hand knowledge. In other words, the person did not have any direct or personal experience and cannot testify in court about it. Information that is second-hand is typically not admissible in court unless it falls under specific exceptions.
The job of a Fox corporate attorney would be to gather information for a defense.
Everyone has the right to a defense.
Accuser is not a victim yet.
how do you overhear a phone call then report in great detail years later?
Matthew Sablan said...Makes me wonder what the value of a non-disclosure agreement is if the person can simply put your calls on speaker phone while someone else listens and what the value of a settlement is if you'll be presumed guilty.
I imagine you'll be seeing a lot less of both in the future, and maybe it is a good thing to not allow those tools to protect the guilty.
Yeah I was thinking about the economics of that, myself. There are a lot of people online now saying that NDAs (as part of settlements) "hurt women/victims" because it allows abusers to keep abusing. There's truth to that, of course, but the ability to get an NDA probably makes up most of the value of those out of court settlements. That means for any individual victim (or alleged victim) not being able to GIVE an NDA means you won't be able to get as big a settlement (why settle big if you're still going to get slammed in the press, etc).
On a first pass it seems like that change would benefit potential (global) future victims at the expense of current actual/alleged (individual) victims. It's a tradeoff worth considering, anyway.
Planned Disclosure. Anything less is not viable, and does not enjoy quasi-constitutional protection.
New harassment lawsuit hits Artforum magazine, with immediate repercussions. This will spread.
Does anybody have any finer details about what specifically O'Reilly actually did?
I don't know what he did, but he had to pay out a 35 million dollar settlement. O J Simpson had to pay out about that for killing 2 people. I can't imagine what he did for that kind of pay out.
"and sadly I’ve had several ex-partners who were victims" - Michael Panter may not like the ways those dots could be connected.
Here's another great picture that doesn't put Michael Panter in the best light:
"I was also there on several occasions when a late night call would come from O’Reilly, which would create tension and make her clearly uncomfortable (I believe she later said in her suit that she believed he was masturbating). All as she was laying next to her boyfriend, and worried what hanging up could do to her career."
But I love the way the O'Reilly is being McGowaned by his own NDA. O'Reilly can't directly respond to that without breaking his side of the bargain, and that would open the floodgates. He can only do oblique denials. It's asymmetrical warfare.
But it's wrong to think O'Reiily didn't get value for his NDA.
There's been a lot of "why don't the women speak up?" Well, HR tends to look at people who complain as the problem. Once they complain, it's not uncommon for them to be targeted and fired. Why don't the women post something on twitter? Talk about it in public? What about their friends? They are vulnerable to legal charges of slander. A lot of people don't want to believe that a perfectly normal looking guy could assault someone.
Predators don't act like predators to the general public. They act like Ted Bundy. "What a nice guy!" Bundy worked at a crisis center and fooled everyone. He pretended to have a broken arm and asked women to help him. That's how he found his victims -- through that sort of trickery and disguise. It's how hunters often find their victims -- by hiding until they attack.
Ann Althouse said...
The key point is the involvement of the Fox News officials — "HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel)" — in the first phone call.
Fox News is relying on saying it wasn't involved.
Althouse is right, but her response needs to be expanded (actually I think it is all in her posting, and in the previous O'Reilly reporting and Althouse's blogging, bet here goes:
O'Reilly has stated publicly, on the record, on numerous occasions, that the claims he settled were in the manner of nuisance suits, and that no one has ever gone to HR at any of the places that he worked, and never has he been the subject of any HR inquiry anywhere he worked.
Megyn Kelly said that is a lie; she knows because she went to Fox's HR. And now this guy is confirming high-level (the HIGHEST LEVEL) HR involvement. Others have confirmed the same; so it is a case where we don't even need to know the details, or to resolve the truth of the substantive allegations. O'Reilly is simply lying, when he claims that he's never been the subject of HR claims/investigations.
Perhaps, an O'Reilly fan will say, "But still nobody has proven that O'Reilly did anything wrong!" And I say that we just need to give O'Reilly some more rope with which to hang himself, as he did with this one initial lie.
Again I say about that $32 million number, which may or may not be accurate...
~It may be a structured settlement, for which the actual cost is far less than $32m. And with future payments still in the pipeline to her, she is not going to violate the confidentiality agreement that the money is buying.
~It almost certainly cannot represent actual damages for Lis Wiehl; it might well represent the cost of her silence with regard to something that O'Reilly would feel $32 million worth of humiliation.
Michael Panter badly needs a name change. He is neither bound by a non-disclosure agreement nor is he confined to tell the truth under oath in a courtroom.
According to Bill Reilly's friend, Glenn Beck:
“We worked closely with Bill on the road and he had access to very beautiful women on our staff. And he worked closely with very beautiful women on our staff,” Beck explained. “We never saw him utter a word that was even blue humor. He was so buttoned-up when he was around us that I find these charges hard to believe.”
They can plead ignorance. It worked for the New York Times.
Lol! That's not for the likes of you lot! Or as a Chinese dissident is reported to have been told when she quoted the Little Red Book, "Red Book not for you!"
Chuck said...
Again I say about that $32 million number, which may or may not be accurate...
~It may be a structured settlement, for which the actual cost is far less than $32m. And with future payments still in the pipeline to her, she is not going to violate the confidentiality agreement that the money is buying.
~It almost certainly cannot represent actual damages for Lis Wiehl; it might well represent the cost of her silence with regard to something that O'Reilly would feel $32 million worth of humiliation.
10/26/17, 1:53 PM
Since you are easier to believe as an ambulance-chaser than an election lawyer, I am prepared to take you seriously in this case, even given your obvious rancor. Tell us, would this be a record settlement of its kind? All HW's payouts together plus fines to TWC would not seem to approach $32 million. I mean, what could this piece of crumpet be worth? I should expect to be able to blow up a schoolbus full of nuns and orphans for that amount. BOR certainly could have had her killed for less.
~It almost certainly cannot represent actual damages for Lis Wiehl; it might well represent the cost of her silence with regard to something that O'Reilly would feel $32 million worth of humiliation.
Seriously, what could be the secret? We know about loofahs and falafel and chocolate. Is he gay? Is he a serial killer, I mean outside of books?
"“Because,” Wolfe went on, “he is rendered incapable of further mischief anyway; and even if you regard the criminal law as an instrument of barbarous vengeance, he is going to pay. What is it that he has been trying so desperately to preserve, with all his ruthless cunning? His position in society, his high repute among his fellow men, his nimbus as a master biped. Well, he will lose all that, which should be enough for any law." -- Rex Stout, The Rubber Band
HR is not there to help the victim. HR is there to protect the company and extinguish problems with people.
O'Reilly paid the $32 million out of his own pocket. Fox didn't pay Wiehl anything.
Bad Lieutenant said...
...
Since you are easier to believe as an ambulance-chaser than an election lawyer, I am prepared to take you seriously in this case, even given your obvious rancor. Tell us, would this be a record settlement of its kind? All HW's payouts together plus fines to TWC would not seem to approach $32 million. I mean, what could this piece of crumpet be worth? I should expect to be able to blow up a schoolbus full of nuns and orphans for that amount. BOR certainly could have had her killed for less.
I don't know. I wish I knew more about the details. I hope we do know more someday.
gadfly said...
Michael Panter badly needs a name change. He is neither bound by a non-disclosure agreement nor is he confined to tell the truth under oath in a courtroom.
He will be, if he is ever a defendant in an O'Reilly-initiated defamation action. I doubt that there will ever be one. Ya know?
According to Bill Reilly's friend, Glenn Beck:
“We worked closely with Bill on the road and he had access to very beautiful women on our staff. And he worked closely with very beautiful women on our staff,” Beck explained. “We never saw him utter a word that was even blue humor. He was so buttoned-up when he was around us that I find these charges hard to believe.”
Well, uh, there are the Andrea Mackris tape recordings. So there's that, yeah.
@Chuck:
You know, I'm perfectly willing to believe that you are a lifelong Republican if you say so. I don't find it hard to believe that you are a member of the GOP Establishment. But it just seems weird that anytime a Rightwinger is being savaged in the news, you are willing to pile on, and whenever a Leftwinger is being attacked you either come to their defense or attempt to deflect attention.
I can understand not defending those on the right that you disagree with...for instance I never attempt to defend Ryan or McConnell. But I rarely ever attack them, and usually only when someone else is attempting to shift the blame for their failures onto someone else. Though come to think of it, you do seem to believe that everything is Trump's fault, and thus whenever anyone gets blamed for anything your reaction is..."But that's Trump's fault"...so i guess i do understand...but it is still weird.
Harvey molested and even raped some of the most famous women in the world and did this over a period of decades. He was able to keep this on the qt for most of his life and paid minimal, if any hush, money. O'Reilly did some wrong things (though I wouldn't guess they were anything comparable to Harvey), paid handsomely for his NDA's, and now, despite that, most details of the scandal will be soon forthcoming........The entertainment and news media are comparing Harvey to O'Reilly and Trump. Can anyone see anything wrong with this comparison and how the media ferrets out a story.
You know why BOR paid retail for his bootleg cooze? I bet he was drunk, when she called him on it, and he babbled and said Don't tell, I'll do anything, I'll give you half of everything! And So, at settlement time, Bill was worth $64 million, therefore she got $32m. Or, as Chuck says, it could be an annuity and he paid I to the annuity half of whatever was his net worth.
Post a Comment