CNN's New Day was discussing the lawsuit filed yesterday by Jennifer Eckhart and Cathy Areu against Fox New, claiming a range of indignities from sexual harassment to brutal rape.
"But listen to what Cathy Areu said in an interview about the environment at Fox News, about her interactions with the male anchors.
REPORTER: To send pornographic images? They sent you pornographic images?
AREU: Yep.
Alysin Camerota looked back to a 2016 interview with Brian Stetler about the atmosphere under Roger Ailes. (Camerota previously worked for Fox News.)
"You asked me then, is Fox just rotten to the core? And I said something like no, it's not rotten to the core," she said.
"I'd like to amend my answer now if I may. Because given everything that has come out since then, i guess it is rotten to the core. i guess even though there are really good people there who are trying to do their jobs, it's not enough. Because unless you get rid of and stamp out the predators, then of course the culture is still going to be rotten.
"Didn't they know this? When that outside law firm, Paul Wise, did their investigation back in 2016, didn't Ed Henry's name come up? Didn't they know things about Ed Henry and yet they promoted him, and doesn't that tell us all we need to know about the culture?"
"You raised the most important thing there. NPR and others have reported there were reports about Henry and yet he was promoted anyway," Stetler said.
"He was a favorite of the network's president, Suzanne Scott so he was promoted and finally, when the complaints were made, he was fired. It is incredible to think that four years after Ailes was forced out, this is still going on at fox News and yet, the viewership doesn't change. They don't change the channel. Fox's niche is so alienated from the rest of the media, they don't turn anywhere else. There's a reason why in a lot of the interviews I've been doing for a book I'm doing about Fox and Trump, the word "cult" came up over and over again. There's a reason that people describe it as a cult."
"Does any of this surprise you, what you're learning this morning?" John Berman asked Camerota.
"As I said, the Ed Henry -- sexual harassment doesn't surprise me, but the violent rape, yeah. I'm surprised by reports of trying to turn someone into a sex slave and then claiming it's consensual. It's still so -- I know this is morning television, but the stuff in the complaint is so dark and vile, yes, I can still be shocked by these things. But I mean, just as Brian said, I'm sad actually, I'm sad that four years after Roger Ailes was gone that this -- that the young women there feel like they're still having to operate in this culture."
