Bye, Bye, O’Reilly!
So it has actually happened – the biggest name on the right-wing Fox News Channel is gone.
Fox’s decision today to kick Bill O’Reilly off the network may be shocking to those who believe that Fox News really is “fair and balanced” and that O’Reilly is as close to a God-like figure as you can find – except, of course, for Donald Trump.
Well, O’Reilly certainly had God-like ratings on the FNC. In fact, he’s had Fox’s largest audiences for years — and never more so than in the past months, coinciding with the election of Trump. And those big ratings attracted many important and lucrative advertisers, as well as generated a giant lead-in audience for other prime-time FNC programs.
But along the way to all this success, O’Reilly had a problem. He apparently could not contain himself when it came to his dealings with women. Numerous women have filed sexual harassment allegations against him – and Fox has had to pay millions of dollars in settlements with those women.
All of that stayed under the radar until the New York Times revealed it a few weeks ago. And that revelation set off the firestorm that would incinerate O’Reilly’s career.
O’Reilly’s supporters claimed – as you knew they would – that he was a victim of a left-wing smear campaign – as if factually reporting sexual harassment settlements is some kind of smear. But his advertisers knew what it all meant, and they fled. They deserted his program – abandoned it – because no legitimate company in the 21st Century wants to be associated with anyone deemed to be a predator.
In addition, women’s rights groups demanded that O’Reilly be fired, and women inside the Fox News organization expressed outage that O’Reilly could stay with the company after another sexual harassment scandal forced the departure of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes last summer.
The Murdoch family – which owns and runs Fox – hired a law firm to investigate O’Reilly. And that investigation helped end his career.
O’Reilly’s departure is unquestionably a big blow to the FNC. But it’s the correct move, and it’s a major win for the 21st Century – where, really, a woman should not have her career threatened or harmed because she doesn’t want to have sex with a man.
Donald Trump’s supporters may not agree with that – after all, they voted for him after he’d boasted during the presidential campaign about what he could do with any woman he wanted.
Fortunately, Fox News has proven, again, to be better than all that.