Politico reports that 15 advertisers have canceled their sponsorship of The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News’s most important show. See www.politico.com/… The list now includes Mercedes Benz, Lexus, BMW, T. Rowe Price, and Allstate. MIDNIGHT UPDATE, CNN has the number at 21 advertisers. See money.cnn.com/...
This is just three days after the New York Times published an expose of Mr. O’Reilly’s practices as a serial sexual harasser of women who work for Fox News. See www.nytimes.com/... The Times reported that some of the victims state that during the phone calls, O’Reilly does more than talk, that he masturbates. See photo above.
This is a big deal, a major development, as just last night Lawrence O’Donnell was reporting just one advertiser had fled, Mercedes Benz. Another 14 in just 24 hours! Of course, the Murdochs will go a long way to protect their #1 revenue producer, but as they proved in the case of Roger Ailes, they will only go so far. It will be interesting to see if O’Reilly survives this. Might he confess in the manner of Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart and ask for forgiveness? I doubt it because that would blow away his potential defense to future charges and future law suits as more victims come forward; it may even blow his insurance coverage, such as it may be, and blow any indemnification rights he may have at Fox.
If O’Reilly does not survive this, it will change Fox News forever, though I said that when Fox sacked Roger Ailes.
O’Reilly’s defense is that he is a news celebrity and therefore a target. Wait, Mr. O’Reilly, you say all celebrities become targets? How come I never heard allegations like this against Bob Schieffer or Chuck Todd or the late Tim Russert or Lester Holt or Wolf Blitzer or Bill Moyers or Sean Hannity or even the mildly leering Chris Matthews?
And, Mr. O’Reilly, Dante should write into The Inferno, in its next edition, a special place in hell for the likes of you and Roger Ailes and, yes, Donald (“And When You’re a Star They Let You Do It”) Trump. But Dante is not apt to, so I sincerely hope you have a happy retirement and may it begin forthwith.