Subscribe to Women Rule on Apple Podcasts here. | Subscribe via Stitcher here.
In the #MeToo era, Alisyn Camerota, a former Fox News anchor, says her advice for women who are being sexually harassed has drastically evolved.
“The sands have shifted beneath our feet, and so it’s a whole new ballgame, new rules,” Camerota said in the latest episode of POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast. “So the new rules for young women making their way in this business or all businesses is: You don’t have to take it.”
“Tell someone. Go to HR,” she said. “If for whatever reason you don’t get satisfaction there, tell everybody. Tell everybody that you can. Tell the person who is doing it: ‘That’s not cool. That makes me uncomfortable. Don’t do that again.'”
Camerota – now a co-anchor on CNN’s “New Day” program and the author of a new novel, “Amanda Wakes Up”-admits that it’s not what she did when, she says, she was victimized by former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, who died in May 2017.
Instead, facing Ailes’ advances, Camerota said, she just “kind of demurred and tried to keep it light.”
For the journalist and author, who had worked at Ailes’ network for 16 years, it was like “living on tenterhooks for a while” because her job was on the line.
Camerota detailed one episode in which Ailes tried to tie her career advancement to having intimate relations with him.
“When I was trying to get more opportunities and become an anchor, he sat me down and said, ‘Well, that would require me working very closely with you.’ And I said, ‘OK,'” Camerota recounted. “He said, ‘And people would get jealous and that would require nobody to know about it.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ And he said, ‘And it would also probably require us getting away from here, getting away from the office, and we could meet someplace out of here, maybe at like a hotel.’ And, you know, that’s just-it just couldn’t be any plainer at that point.”
Ailes’ lawyer, Susan Estrich, had previously denied Camerota’s claims about her interactions with the former Fox News chairman.
“These are unsubstantiated and false allegations,” Estrich said in a statement to CNN last year. “Mr. Ailes never engaged in the inappropriate conversations she now claims occurred, and he vigorously denies this fictional account of her interactions with him and of Fox News’s editorial policy.”
At the time, Camerota recalled thinking: “How do I get out of here? And what am I going to do when I get out of here, because this is my livelihood?”
But since Gretchen Carlson and others have come forward with their own allegations of harassment against powerful men, Camerota’s advice is now: “Speak up immediately. You don’t have to suffer in silence with this.”
To hear more from Camerota about her journalism career, her dealings with President Donald Trump, and her new novel inspired partly by her time at Fox News, listen to the full podcast here. Women Rule takes listeners backstage with female bosses for real talk on how they made it and what advice they have for women looking to lead.
Be First to Comment