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Rieder: What happens next at Fox News?

FOX agreed to pay $20 million to former broadcaster Gretchen Carlson to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit she filed against former FOX News CEO Roger Ailes.

 

By moving to settle (for a cool $20 million) the sexual harassment lawsuit by former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson that cost longtime Fox CEORoger Ailes his job, the network took a major step toward putting the incendiary scandal behind it.

A trial would have meant a thorough public airing of what no doubt would have been a humiliating litany of allegations, a damning indictment of the network's culture described in a suit by another former Fox host as one that "operates like a sex-fueled Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny.”

Tuesday was a big day for Fox news: Just after the settlement surfaced came word that a Fox mainstay, On the Record host Greta Van Susteren, was departing after 14 years.

Moderator Greta Van Susteren speaks onstage during the 2016 Forbes Women's Summit at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers on May 12, 2016, in New York City. (Photo: Slaven Vlasic, Getty Images)

But the really big news about Fox lies ahead.

Two important questions need to be answered: With the stunning, unceremonious departure in July of Ailes, the conservative network's founder and all-powerful potentate for 20 years, what happens to Fox's content and programming and to that testosterone-fueled culture?

And we're not talking about just any network here. Under Ailes' direction, Fox became not only the nation's dominant cable news network. It also became an important cultural force, one as crucial to the identities of its devotees as NPR is to those with a very different world view. It became a powerful force in Republican politics as well as a comfortable landing pad for unsuccessful GOP candidates. And it became a cash cow par excellence: Fox News brought in a whopping $1.5 billion in profit for Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center. That's real money, even for Rupert.

Murdoch's sons James and Lachlan, now powerful figures in the company, had issues with Ailes, long protected by his close relationship with the boss. Carlson's lawsuit gave them the opening they needed. Rather than circle the wagons and fight back furiously as might have been expected from Fox, the company announced it took the matter quite seriously and brought in New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to investigate.

The result? A parade of other women came forward with harassment allegations, none of them more significant than Fox News megastar Megyn Kelly. Soon Ailes, synonymous with his creation since its debut two decades ago, was history.

So the table has been set for change. But how deep will that change go and what shape will it take? Fox News' extreme profitability, not to mention Rupert's world view, suggests it's unlikely the place will be blown up and rebuilt in Rachel Maddow's image. The rise of Fox showed that there is a substantial market starving for TV news and opinion with a conservative tilt.

But it would be really refreshing to see a new Fox that continued to bat right but spent far less time ballyhooing such faux issues as the Obama birther controversy and other nonsense.

As it is, Fox is hardly a monolith. There's a very long distance between the antics ofFox & Friends, the Donald Trump cheerleading of Sean Hannity, on the one hand, and more traditional news figures like Chris Wallace and Bret Baier on the other.

As close as Rupert Murdoch was to Ailes, the boss is said to be bothered by the role Fox played in fueling the rise of Trump. So maybe there is potential for a Fox trimmed of some of the wretched excess.

The selection of two longtime Fox insiders, Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, as co-presidents in the post-Ailes era hardly suggests dramatic change is in the offing. But this could simply be a holding pattern as the Murdochs contemplate the future.

But one thing is certain: The culture depicted in the lawsuits by Carlson and former Fox host Andrea Tantaros (which is still hanging out there), as well as other allegations that have been revealed by Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman in New York magazine, has got to go. In addition to the rampant harassment charges, Sherman writes of Ailes running Fox as a personal fiefdom, one in which he used company funds to wage public relations and surveillance campaigns against his foes inside and outside the company.
 

A fresh start on that score is essential.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on Twitter @remrieder

Source: USA Today:

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