{"id":105150,"date":"2016-09-02T05:10:38","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T13:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105150"},"modified":"2016-09-02T05:10:38","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T13:10:38","slug":"the-women-who-recruited-for-roger-ailes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=105150","title":{"rendered":"The Women Who Recruited For Roger Ailes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Sherman writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. \u201cHe asked, \u2018Am I in a relationship? What are my familial ties?\u2019 It was all to see how stable or unstable I was,\u201d said a former employee. Megyn Kelly told lawyers at Paul, Weiss that Ailes made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2006 when she was going through a divorce. A lawyer for former anchor Laurie Dhue told me that Ailes harassed her around 2006; at the time, she was struggling with alcoholism.<\/p>\n

Ailes\u2019s longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza \u2014 who became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive \u2014 seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts. According to Carlson\u2019s attorney, in 2002, Laterza remarked to a college intern she saw on the elevator about how pretty she was and invited her to meet Ailes. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, \u201cYou look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.\u201d She cut short her internship. (Laterza did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

I spoke with another Fox News administrative assistant who said Laterza invited her to meet Ailes in 2004. The woman, then 25, told Ailes that her ambition was to do commercials. Ailes offered to pay for voice lessons (she declined) and helped her land an agent at William Morris. A few months later, Ailes summoned her to his office for an update. She told him how excited she was about the opportunities, and Ailes invited her for a drink. She suggested happy hour, but he demurred. \u201cFor a man in my position, it would have to be alone at a hotel,\u201d she recalls him saying. \u201cDo you know how to play the game?\u201d She tried to get out of the situation as tactfully as possible. \u201cI don\u2019t feel comfortable doing this,\u201d she said. \u201cI respect your family; what about your son?\u201d She remembers Ailes\u2019s reply: \u201cI\u2019m a multifaceted man. That\u2019s one side of me.\u201d As she left the office, she says, Ailes tried to kiss her. \u201cI was holding a binder full of voice-over auditions that I put between us. I was terrified.\u201d She says she never heard from the William Morris agent again.<\/p>\n

The fact that these incidents of harassment were so common may have contributed to why no one at Fox came forward or filed a lawsuit until now. Ailes\u2019s attitudes about women permeated the very air of the network, from the exclusive hiring of attractive women to the strictly enforced skirts-and-heels dress code to the \u201cleg cam\u201d that lingers on female panelists\u2019 crossed legs on air. It was hard to complain about something that was so normalized. Other senior executives harassed women, too. \u201cAnyone who claimed there was a hostile work environment was seen as a complainer,\u201d says a former Fox employee who says Ailes harassed her. \u201cOr that they can\u2019t take a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

… Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, told me she grew suspicious when Fox anchors came to see her before private meetings with Ailes to have their makeup done. \u201cThey would say, \u2018I\u2019m going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!\u2019\u2009\u201d she recalled. \u201cOne of them came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Sherman writes: According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. \u201cHe asked, \u2018Am I in a relationship? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fox-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t