If you thought the scandal around former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes ended with his ouster last summer, think again. Julie Roginsky, a paid political commentator for Fox News, filed a lawsuit Monday saying that Ailes sexually harassed her, NPR reports. She also claimed that others in top positions at the network aided and abetted Ailes in covering up the harassment.
So many women accused Ailes of harassment last year that the chairman was forced to resign. But he’s still denying that he did anything wrong—even this particular incident has been described by Ailes’ lawyer Susan Estrich in an email to NPR as “total hogwash” and the latest in a string of additions to a “massive character assassination.”
Roginsky claims in her lawsuit that Ailes repeatedly asked Roginsky to have private drinks with him while also talking about promoting her to a permanent host position on the show The Five. When she refused to have a drink with him, he refused to meet with her again—and she definitely didn’t get the promotion, which would have raised her public profile and increased her salary. Worse, she couldn’t even continue to appear as a guest on The Five. Roginsky says when she reported what had happened, Fox News’s president, Bill Shine, and the network’s lawyer, Dianne Brandi, didn’t do anything to investigate.
This suit, along with other recent news, shows Fox hasn’t been able to change its sexist culture for the better. A lengthy New York Times investigation of Bill O’Reilly, a Fox News host, found last week that the network has paid $13 million to settle five sexual harassment suits against him. Advertisers are now dropping out of O’Reilly’s show.
Fox News may have tried to implement new rules to improve the workplace climate, but old habits die hard.