In light of Bill O’Reilly’s removal from Fox News Channel (FNC), CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Sarah Palin about her former role as a contributor at the “fair and balanced” network.
Tapper framed the allegations against O’Reilly as indicative of a national problem of widespread sexual harassment of women, saving his inquiry for the end of the interview (emphasis added):
“I have to ask you a question, and it is kind of sensitive, but you are in a unique role in being a strong woman who worked at Fox News Channel as a contributor. I normally don’t cover a lot of media stories, but obviously the upheaval going on there with the CEO and its biggest star ousted because of sexual harassment, not just an issue at Fox News Channel but an issue across the country, and it seems to be with what happened with Bill O’Reilly, really a change in corporate culture in terms of what is tolerated. What do you make of it?”
Palin accepted Tapper’s premise that FNC’s “culture” needed to change, adding a caveat of criticism for female FNC employees who only criticized their former colleagues following their departures from the company (emphasis added):
“I used to be with [FNC]. Corporate culture there obviously has to change. You know, women don’t deserve – they should not ever have to put up with any kind of intimidating workspace. At the same time if a woman believes that she is being intimidated and harassed, she needs to stand up and do something about it, not stick around for a paycheck for years and years and years, and then after the fact complain about what she went through. As a strong woman, I say, you know, we should be – feel more empowered than that and we should, you know, take a stand and get out of the place or, you know, blow the whistle on whoever is the perpetrator doing the bad stuff so that the culture will change. But, yeah, obviously things are changing quickly at [FNC].”
Tapper then asked if Palin had ever experienced or witnessed sexual harassment at FNC, to which Palin nebulously answered in the negative.
In July of 2016, FNC’s former chairman Roger Ailes resigned from the company he helped found amidst a swarm of allegations that he had sexually harassed female employees. Female employees including Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, and Andrea Tantaros accused him of sexual harassment following their departures from the company.
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