O’Reilly Factor

Fox Renewed Bill O’Reilly’s Contract After He Settled a Previously Unknown Harassment Claim

In January, O’Reilly agreed to a $32 million settlement with a longtime network analyst, according to The New York Times.
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Bill O’Reilly filming The O’Reilly Factor at the Fox News headquarters in New York, 1999.By James Leynse/Corbis/Getty Images.

Yet another one of Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment settlement payments have come to light. The New York Times reports a sixth known settlement that O’Reilly paid to Lis Wiehl, a Fox News network analyst who accused him of sexual assault, to the tune of $32 million—the largest amount yet.

The Times reports that Wiehl’s claims include “allegations of repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her.” The network’s parent company, 20th Century Fox, acknowledged that it knew about the claims against O’Reilly, but continued to draw up a contract negotiation that saw the former host granted a four-year extension for $25 million a year in February—seven months after Fox News ousted former chairman Roger Ailes over similar harassment claims.

Interviews conducted by the Times with people familiar with the settlement indicate that the company tried and failed to contain the second wave of assault allegations against O’Reilly. Rupert Murdoch and his sons initially wanted to stand by O’Reilly after the scandal broke, even as Fox News was in the middle of convincing its employees that the company had a newer, safer environment following Ailes’s exit. O’Reilly was especially valuable to the network after former host Megyn Kelly left for NBC. But by April, the Murdochs decided to get rid of O’Reilly anyway, following the media attention drawn by the latest allegations against him.

In a statement, Fox News said that it did not know the amount of money O’Reilly and Wiehl had settled on, and “surely would have wanted to renew” his contract anyway, noting that “he was the biggest star in cable TV.” The statement also added that provisions had been put into O’Reilly’s new contract that would allow the network to fire him if problems similar to Ailes’s arose. “The company subsequently acted based on the terms of this contract,” the statement said.