bankrupt is bankrupt. What difference does it make?

There could be some cynical motive but huge favorite is that she just wants/needs the truth out there.

This is extremely plausible

I'm not upset at all. Fine with me if Ms. Mackris had got $100 million from Murdoch. But I'm not going to cry in my soup for a lady who netted $6 million dollars in exchange for silence.

It's genius. She spent the money then talked.

Well, you're not supposed to feel bad for Fox or Ms. Mackris. You can choose to feel bad for anyone you like.

I certainly don't feel bad for Fox or for Ms. Mackris.

It's genius. They abuse women and then pay them off.

Why am I not supposed to feel bad for her?

It's not a transactional thing where you can do what you like to people and it's okay so long as your lawyers pay them off. It's supposed to be the kind of thing where you don't do it.

lol stop fronting. You’re clearly mad af.

I meant supposed to in the sense of obligated to.

I agree with you 100%.

I suspect that for every Mackris who got millions of dollars, there are a thousand victims who get neither justice nor cash. I do feel sorry for those women.

Huh?

Can't I feel bad for all of them? Granted all things equal I'd feel worse for the one without the $6m but my empathy doesn't end with a pay-off.

At the risk of repeating myself: You can feel bad for anybody you want.

Do we have to do semantics over all the can/should stuff?

Clearly when you say something like this the implication is that it's silly to feel bad for her.

Not for the first time, I hope for trollies sake that I'm right about the 'it's all projection' thingy being silly

I feel bad for anyone who is abused. But, she took the $6M and is now apparently experiencing buyer's-remorse seventeen years later. (After the money is mostly gone, I suspect.)

"The poor dear only got $6 million" doesn't sound like you feel bad for her. It sounds like you're saying she got her hush money and so you don't want to hear it.

Buyers remourse only really applies to freely entered into contracts

Her stated reason for breaking the NDA is to make people aware of the coercion invloved: "I Want People to ‘Understand the Terror’ of Forced NDAs"

Exactly. Which is a legitimate thing to talk about even if she's only doing it out of self-interest. Which takes us (not meaning you) back to: why should I care about her reasons?

Fox probably has a lot of these agreements in place. If they don't want more people violating them, they need to make an example out of this lady.

Also, if she gets away with violating the agreement it's going to make it much more difficult in the future for people who like to sleep with their bosses to bag $6M paydays. We need to think of the other women affected.

campfire:

I'm going to assume your second paragraph was written with tongue planted firmly in cheek. You do bring up a good point though ...

If you listen (carefully) to the interview with Andrea Mackris and her lawyer, you sense that Ms. Mackris has a bit of a sense of entitlement - along with a sense of bitterness and anger over being deprived of her "career" in broadcasting. She speaks of how she had friends working at "other networks" (i.e. ABC) and how aware she was of how her "friends" were doing financially. She appeared to believe that she deserved to be doing at least as well as her friends working at other networks. She even relates how she was considering leaving Fox (and Bill O'Reilly) for greener pastures elsewhere, but, according to Ms. Mackris, O'Reilly "promised" that he would "take care of her" if she stayed with him. So she chose to stay, apparently believing that a great (prosperous $$$) future was guaranteed. A cynic, like me, (taking Ms. Mackris at her word), might think an implied quid-pro-quo existed between Bill O'Reilly and Andrea Mackris.

At the same time, Andrea speaks of her "Christian upbringing" and her strong religious values and how shocked she was being exposed to the male dominated mysogonistic work environment that existed at the Fox News Channel. If Andrea was really in touch with her friends at ABC, they would surely have warned her about Roger Ailes and the kind of attitude (toward women) that he fostered and encouraged.

Former Miss America Gretchen Carlson is married to a lawyer. He was smart enough to advise his wife to "get it all on tape" before she went public with her allegations. As a result, Gretchen walked away with a reputed $20,000,000.00 settlement. After hearing of what Gretchen Carlson got for her silence, Andrea may feel that she was cheated - she was "promised" a rewarding [lucrative] career that did not pan out and now she wants to be justly compensated for her dashed ambitions.

If this winds up in front of a jury, these are the kind of arguments that will be raised. Andrea will try to portray herself as a fine Christian woman who found herself toiling under the oppressive yoke of sex obsessed male bosses while the lawyers for Fox will attempt to portray her as a bitter, money grubbing ex-employee.

I don't feel a lot of sympathy for women who work at Fox. With the reputation that outfit has, any woman who chooses to go to work there already knows what she's getting into. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid rags over in the UK that debuted the famous "Page 3" girls? If true, that right there should give prospective female job applicants an idea of the kind of "work environment" they're likely to encounter at the Fox News Channel.

Let me throw out a hypothetical for you. One so crazy it might just work.

Fox could stop defending sexual harassers and not get sued at all.

Hey chez, you're on the side of the woman who was sexually harassed, right? Cuz it's weird that you're rushing in to defend the guy who fantasizing about punishing the woman.

It is a very tough issue IMO.

Not all NDA"s are bad and some victims legit prefer a quiet settlement, where they find a dollar figure and lack of court exposure to be as about fair as they are going to get for whatever abuse they suffered.

Victims seeking recompense in that way should be able to make that deal.

If we get to a place where anyone can violate the NDA after the fact due to various regrets then lawyers would advise no one to ever settle as what could possible be the point?

I know people reflexively probably won't care about the victims who would want to settle and might end up denied and will only focus on those who decide after the fact, they signed a bad deal, but both groups should matter.

I don't know what the answer would be here.

Yep same as you


I think you would tackle the abuse of NDA's and the victims a tad more if you weren't so intent on the silly name calling thingy.

Obviosuly we disagree on that. I assume you genuinely think it helps with something.

The bolded is a bit loaded.

The point of lawsuits and financial settlements is to deter that behaviour (leaving "restorative" justice to side for this discussion). But when a company can afford to buy silence, and can afford to do the behaviour anyway, and when fighting against them is such an overwhelmingly daunting task, the system has failed. Maybe the NDA can be a benefit to the victim, but Fox aren't putting it on the table if they aren't pretty sure it's even better for them.

If we're going to look at solutions then it's better enforcement of good business practices (perhaps at government policy level), better access to legal resources for workers, representation through unions, better treatment and support for those who pursue cases through the courts, wider public support (like the metoo movement), but it can't allowing companies like Fox to buy indulgences.

From her Daily Beast interview:

For a miserable six months from January to July of 2004, Mackris did leave Fox News for CNN, where she was assigned to work for Ailes nemesis Paula Zahn, who had enraged the Fox News chairman by jumping to the rival network. On the phone, she complained to her former boss, “Bill, I hate it here. This place is a mess. I really want to come back,” and O’Reilly persuaded Ailes to allow it, and sweetened her salary by hiring her for his radio show in addition to her Fox News employment.

Timeline:

O'Reilly sexually harasses Mackris....

Mackris quits FOX...

Mackris gets a job at rival CNN...

After a "miserable six months" working at CNN, she telephones O'Reilly and asks for her job back...

Mackris gets her job back (plus more $$$) working for her harasser...

O'Reilly continues to harass Mackris.....

Mackris walks away with $6M


Given the above, what sympathy I did have for Mackris is now almost non-existent.

(Mackris didn't allege any sexual harassment during her time at CNN.)