Former Fox News employees Margaret Hoover and Alisyn Camerota agree that women at the company suffered from emotional harassment under former CEO Roger Ailes.
“Neither of us were ever sexually harassed by Bill O’Reilly. I had an experience, more than one, with Roger Ailes,” Camerota said Thursday on her current show, CNN’s “New Day.”
Camerota continued: “But that wasn’t the half of it. The real harassment was emotional harassment. Roger could be a bully, he would call people names and it was that feeling of not wanting to ever run afoul of him that was really the chilling effect.
Hoover appeared on CNN’s “New Day” less than 24 hours after Fox News parted ways with Bill O’Reilly amid sexual harassment allegations. Ailes, the network’s founding CEO, stepped down in disgrace last year when multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment.
“There was a very clear message about what was acceptable to appear on air, both from what you said at Fox News and what you wore,” Hoover said.
Camerota admitted that she has talked about the situation with Hoover in private but said, “We might as well talk about it in public since we both worked there for a long time.”
Hoover said the “gossipy culture” helped police what Ailes wanted from staffers.
“He really was a bully and enforced a culture that became so toxic that it was hard to feel that you had the ability to say what you wanted to say and to be authentic,” Hoover said.
Camerota went on to say that she met with “sympathetic ears” of management but there was simply nothing they could do.