Mar.22

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Trouble in Tuckerland

Tuckersota? Tuckertina? Tuckertucky? Tuckerstan? Tucktarus? Whatever name you prefer for Fox, it's very appropriate that they are in the entertainment business, because things there have turned into a real soap opera.

Everyone knows about the lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic. And most readers probably remember all the sexual harassment lawsuits from a few years back, largely targeting Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly. Well, now we have a lawsuit that effectively combines both of these things. Two lawsuits, actually. Abby Grossberg is a producer at Fox (or, at least, she was), having worked for both Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo. Grossberg just sued the network in both New York and Delaware (and was put on involuntary administrative leave in response).

Among the juicier claims made in the two complaints:

• Carlson is a lech. He has pictures of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit in his office, and he moderated a mock debate among staff members centered on which woman would be a better sexual partner: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) or Tudor Dixon.
  
  
• Carlson and his staff wondered openly if Bartiromo was sleeping with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
  
  
• Fox management regularly referred to Bartiromo as a "crazy bi**h."
  
  
• Fox tried to pin the blame for the Dominion/Smartmatic mess on Bartiromo and Grossberg.
  
  
• Thanks to these behaviors and others, female employees often felt sexually harassed.
  
  
• As a bonus, beyond the sexual harassment, Carlson's staff regularly indulged in antisemitic remarks and jokes.

Keep in mind that these are as-yet unsubstantiated claims from someone who is trying to win a lawsuit. That said, is there a single thing on the list that's even a little hard to believe? Maybe the Pelosi bit, though even that seems par for the course to us. In any event, recognizing that this sort of dirty laundry is not so good for the network's image, Fox is trying to persuade a judge to impose a gag order on Grossberg while the lawsuits are resolved.

Meanwhile, there were a couple of bad polls for Fox this week. The first, from Quinnipiac, reports that nearly all Democrats, but also 40% of Republicans, want the network to pay the price for its lies about the 2020 election. The second, commissioned by Variety, says that roughly half of Fox voters are unaware of the Dominion lawsuit, but among the half who are familiar with the story, nearly half trust the network less. That means that overall, about 21% of Fox viewers have a less favorable view of the network than they did before the 2020 election.

No wonder, then, that Fox isn't covering the lawsuits, and that it's trying to gag Abby Grossberg. Of course, these stories are only going to grow in prominence, and thus in the amount of oxygen they get. So, keeping them secret isn't going to be so easy going forward. On the whole, it's not a great time to be Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. (Z)