Megyn Kelly claimed she wasn’t planning on speaking out, but that Bill O’Reilly’s claim “that no woman in 20 years ever complained to human resources or legal about him” isn’t entirely accurate. She said, “I know because I complained.”
She then detailed how, after her book came out with allegations against Roger Ailes, O’Reilly pushed to silence her. We reported, in November 2016, that he told CBS News that he wasn’t interested in “making my network look bad” by responding to Kelly’s claims. He also ranted on his program about how employees shouldn’t abandon the company that pays them in order to air their grievances. In other words, loyalty was supposed to trump being a victim of sexual misconduct.
Kelly then said she wrote a letter to executives at Fox News, arguing that O’Reilly’s push for silence was inappropriate. She said, “Perhaps he didn’t realize the kind of message his criticism sends to young women across this country about how men continue to view the issue of speaking out about sexual harassment. Perhaps he didn’t realize that his exact attitude of shaming women into shutting the hell up about harassment, on grounds that it will disgrace the company, is in part how Fox News got into the decade-long Ailes mess to begin with.” Hence, she said, she complained.
Kelly argued on her new NBC program, “Women everywhere are used to being dismissed, ignored, or attacked when raising complaints about men in authority positions. They stay silent so often out of fear– fear of ending their careers, fear of lawyers, yes, and often fear of public shaming, including through the media.” She emphatically said that “it has to stop.”
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