John Finley, executive vice president for development, had been with Fox News for 20 years.
The Washington Post has the deets:
Finley, who helped develop many of the network’s biggest shows and had once been Sean Hannity’s executive producer, was put on leave from his role as executive vice president of development in recent weeks while an investigation was conducted by an outside law firm. He was fired by the network Friday based on the firm’s findings.
“Fox News Media and John Finley have parted ways after an independent investigation concluded that he had violated certain standards of business conduct,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.
Although Fox did not say what violations Finley had committed, a source told The Post that he “used his position to benefit someone over whom he had influence.”
Given what we know of Finley’s record, it looks like there were red flags about his behavior going back as far as 2011.
In 2019, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Finley’s then-newly launched Fox Nation streaming service was “beset by internal conflict and controversy, putting Finley’s leadership under a microscope.”
That was a reference to a claim by Britt McHenry that she had been sexually harassed by “Tyrus,” her former cohost. She alleged he had sent her unsolicited, lewd text messages. Fox News said it had “independently investigated” the matter and considered it “resolved.” McHenry sued Fox and, two years later, the suit was settled. McHenry left Fox at that time.
Tyrus, on the other hand, got his own Fox Nation show. He now appears regularly on the “Gutfeld!” show and contributes elsewhere on Fox News.
In 2021, a different executive was assigned to oversee Fox Nation, WaPo noted, “though Finley continued developing programming for the service.”
But wait, there’s more. That 2019 Hollywood Reporter article referenced some sexual harassment trouble for Finley, himself, in 2011. At the time, while Finley was executive producer of the Hannity show, Fox investigated a producer’s claims and “ultimately cleared Finley after finding insufficient written evidence of misconduct, though the network turned up one problematic email chain as part of the investigation.”
Asked about the allegation made against Finley, the network provided this statement: “This 2011 allegation of misconduct was immediately reported to the Human Resources department with a request for an investigation. Although no evidence was found to back up the claim, further steps were taken to ensure the comfort of the staffer, including the implementation of a new reporting structure.”
In response, a former Fox News producer with firsthand knowledge of the situation believes that whatever changes were implemented had no practical effect in alleviating the situation.
Two former Fox News producers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the woman told them at the time that she felt pressured to leave the network after the investigation concluded. According to the former producers, she felt that her professional progress at the network was being hindered and that she was being unfairly singled out for trivial infractions, such as tardiness. “They started calling her out for what was basically routine behavior,” one of the former producers said. (The network denies that the woman was pressured to leave.)
It looks like Fox News remains a cesspool of sexual misconduct. That’s not counting the fact that it’s an even bigger cesspool of dangerous lies, propaganda and disinformation, too.
(Image is of Fox News in Boston, by mroach from Malmö, Sweden, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, slightly cropped)