Settle for More

by Megyn Kelly

  And so for the next several months, I did my best to avoid him. I offered excuses for why I couldn’t swing by his office while in New York. I dodged his phone calls and then returned his messages after hours, when I knew he wouldn’t be there. Major would see my phone repeatedly light up with the boss’s name—me, a second-year reporter—and we’d share a look of astonishment. I threw myself into work in the DC Bureau (and there was plenty of it—this was around the time of the Duke lacrosse case) and tried to be so good that Roger couldn’t ignore me—professionally—even if he felt spurned personally. By the following summer, the stalker had entered my life, and on that matter Roger was appropriate and supportive. I also met and fell in love with Doug, a fact I was sure to mention to anyone who asked—including Roger.

  By the fall of 2006, the Fox management team held that off-site meeting, and Roger’s top executives proposed pairing me with Hemmer for America’s Newsroom. Lo and behold, Roger offered me the job. I moved to New York in January 2007, and Roger never sexually harassed me again. For the next nine years, we had a professional relationship in which he was, for the most part, a supportive boss, who mentored and looked out for me. He gave me the chance to prove myself. He promoted me during my maternity leaves. He and his wife, Beth, had me and Doug to their home for dinner parties. I got to know his son. And I filed his earlier behavior away as a passing infatuation by a man who I assumed had been having some marital difficulty.

  As time went by, I always wondered if there were other women who’d had similar experiences with Roger. Years later, I met one. A friend confessed that Roger had come on to her during her job interview, not long before my own exchange with him. She did not submit to his advances and, as in my case, he did not retaliate—she got the job. She had moved past the incident, and certainly did not want it revealed or turned into a legal matter. But I resolved then and there that if I heard of him doing this to another woman, I would again come forward.

  In 2012, I learned that a reporter for New York magazine was writing a book about Roger. This reporter was no fan of Fox News, and certainly not of Roger’s, and Roger became very focused on the project. He seemed to live in constant fear of it. He was so agitated about the book, I began to wonder whether he had something to hide—whether the harassment my friend and I had experienced was perhaps more pervasive. I discussed the issue with Brian Lewis, then the head of Fox PR and an executive vice president at Fox. I knew I was not at liberty to discuss my friend’s incident, so I was careful in my choice of words. I confided to him that I believed Roger might have been inappropriate with women at Fox. Brian had never heard of such a thing. When the book came out, it hit Roger on every subject imaginable, but included only one notable reference to an inappropriate incident with a woman—from thirty years earlier. Even a reporter devoted to exposing Roger offered no hint that Roger was a serial harasser. I felt reassured that he wasn’t what I’d feared, that my superior’s defense of him years earlier was sound.

  In the years that followed, Roger hit his mid-seventies, fell into ill health, began using a walker for a time, and was in and out of the office for medical treatments. When I saw him, our conversations revolved mostly around my show or our families. My life was busy, and I never gave much additional thought to the matter. However, in the back of my mind, I still wondered whether another woman might someday come forward. Then came Gretchen’s lawsuit.

  When I first saw her complaint, despite my having been targeted by Roger, I felt ambivalent. I knew enough about Gretchen’s tenure at Fox to know that executives other than Roger had long had issues with her performance, fairly or not. I wasn’t discounting the possibility that she may have been harassed, but I wasn’t entirely sure what to believe. Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, quickly weighed in, announcing its “full confidence” in Roger—which came as no surprise. It also said, however, that it would conduct a review of the allegations. The scope of that review, and who would be performing it, was not addressed.

  Almost immediately, three other women came forward to the Daily Beast—which identified them only as former Fox News employees. The details of their stories rang disturbingly true to me—I felt sick upon reading them. The questions pulsed through my mind: Is this who he is? Did he truly never stop? And: How many others are there?

  Roger denied the allegations, and immediately began getting his ducks in a row—commencing an intense campaign inside Fox News to get the talent to speak out publicly on his behalf. I was approached several times, and several times I refused. There was no way I was going to lie to protect him. When I refused, he engineered hit pieces about me online, which cited “Fox News insiders,” to suggest that I was being “selfish” for not defending him or looking to improve “my brand” by having a “feminist moment.” It wasn’t true, and it didn’t work.

  I understood my colleagues’ wanting to defend Roger, since loyalty was an absolute job requirement. So was saying nice things about Roger (indeed, failing to compliment him enthusiastically in any press interview would always result in a rebuke). Many, including me, had experienced years of kindness from him—Roger was very good at cultivating the fealty he demanded. Most genuinely did not believe he was capable of that kind of behavior, although they did not know the experiences others had been subjected to behind closed doors.

  The biggest downside to the PR campaign was the pressure it put on the victims—to whom the message was loud and clear: We’re with Roger. If you speak out, no one will believe you. They were already afraid of Roger, and now they were worried about the major talent too. Would they be booked on this person’s show again? Would they publicly be branded liars or ingrates by some of the best-known names in news? And what about Roger? What stories would he engineer about us? How would he try to discredit us? How would he punish us, without putting his fingerprints on it? When the allegations hit, no one thought Roger would get fired—including me. Crossing him was a major risk. Especially because Roger’s emissaries were telling us we need not participate in the investigation, and made it clear we were facing “a loyalty test.”

  I was aware that my silence would speak volumes. But there was no way I was going to lie—especially when I might be called as a witness in the lawsuit against him or questioned in an internal review. I also wanted women who may have experienced similar behavior from him not to feel alone, or feel pressure from someone like me. Some would later tell me they felt relieved I did not speak out in his defense; it gave them permission to make the same choice.

  This was an intense time: information was breaking daily—my phone was ringing nonstop, with colleagues trying to get my take, provide information, or pressure me into publicly backing the boss. I was still doing my show nightly, preparing for the conventions, finishing this book (or so I thought), and taking care of my children. The developments came rapid-fire, and I felt desperate for a quiet moment to gather my thoughts and decide what my next steps would be.

  I spoke to my friend at Fox who’d also been harassed. She was as resolved as I that she would not lie. She and I agreed to quietly get the word out to other women who hadn’t spoken out that we were prepared to go on the record with the investigators, so they would not fear standing alone. This took a lot of guts from my friend, who has little power at Fox. If she confided in the wrong person, her “disloyalty” would surely have gotten back to Roger. She was a fearless soldier in what would become an underground army of women—those resolved to be honest about his behavior. Still, resolving to tell the truth and actually doing it were two different things. The stakes were very high; our jobs were potentially in danger, and Roger was digging in for a fight.

  And then, something critical happened: a source informed me that Roger was working to limit the review to just a small circle of staffers—those who had worked directly with Gretchen. He wanted the net cast very narrowly, to exclude virtually all of the Fox News talent. I knew what that would likely mean.

  It was then that I realized I had a choice t
o make. I could sit back, let the process play out—limited though it might be—and keep my mouth shut. Or, I could ensure that the owners of Fox News Channel—Rupert Murdoch and his sons—understood they might actually have a predator running their company, and that a full-throated review was necessary.

  It may sound like a no-brainer now, with 20-20 hindsight, but in the moment, I felt more anxious than I’d imagined I would. Telling the truth to an investigator who might come to me was one thing; ensuring the investigators got to me (and to other Fox talent) was another. The passive role felt more obligatory; an active one raised the stakes considerably. As of that early date in the process, I had my suspicions, but I didn’t actually know what the truth was. The allegations online at that point were anonymous and undated. I knew of my story and that of my friend, but these were events from a decade earlier. Was I really prepared to get him in trouble for something we had long since gotten past? To undermine this man who had done so much for my career, and who had my back in some ugly situations? I didn’t want to hurt him. But could I stay silent? What if there were other victims? What if—God forbid—he was still doing it to someone? The choice became clear: honor my ethical code, or abide by my loyalty to Roger. There was no way to do both.

  I had a long talk about it with Doug, who supported my coming forward but made clear he was with me whatever my decision. And then I spoke with Dana Perino, who had just finished an advance copy of this book.

  “What did that cameraman Bond Lee say to you in Chicago?” she asked.

  “Pay it forward,” I told her.

  “Pay it forward,” she repeated back to me.

  I put down the phone, and sat there for a long time. I glanced over at the draft manuscript: Settle for More.

  The next morning, as I sat on my porch swing on the Jersey shore, I looked at some pictures of my children. There was one of my favorites of Yardley. In it, she is on top of a jungle gym, wearing a big smile, a white dress with red polka dots, and sneakers. Her long hair is falling forward, her blond summer highlights shining in the sun. A month earlier, she had fallen off the monkey bars and gotten stitches in her head. But she had conquered her fear and gotten back up there. My child, who will take this world by storm. My girl, who I pray will not have to make the same choices I did. My daughter, who deserved to have her mother stand up and say, This man will not do this to another woman at Fox News. Ever.

  I picked up the phone and called Lachlan Murdoch. “You need to get your general counsel on the phone,” I told him, “I have something to tell you.” And he did. And then I told them the truth about what had happened to me all those years ago. It was hard—I was not looking to ruin Roger, but it was obvious this information would be damaging to him. In the end, however, I concluded that if Roger were taken down by an honest review of his conduct, it would be his responsibility, not mine. If mine were an isolated incident, he likely had nothing to fear. If it were part of an ongoing pattern, he would have only himself to blame for his undoing. Twenty years after I had refused to copy another case at Bickel & Brewer, I had again run headfirst into the realization that I had just one path forward.

  Within days of that call, to its credit, 21st Century announced that it had hired the well-respected law firm of Paul Weiss to investigate Roger’s conduct. As soon as Paul Weiss commenced its work, I was asked to and did appear at their law offices, where I told my story to the lawyers—the harassment during that six-month period at Fox, and the nine years of support and mentorship that followed. I wanted them to have the full measure of the man—the good along with the bad. Soon after, Roger was informed that I had gone on the record against him, something I had accepted would happen. By that point, I had become aware of many other victims—the underground soldiers were finding each other—including some women who were still being harassed by him in deeply unsettling ways. I figured if sharing my name with Roger would help the others stay anonymous, so be it.

  The next thing I knew, someone leaked my name to the press as one of Roger’s accusers. It was stunning and alarming to see such a private matter splashed all over the Internet. I had no wish to make my situation a public matter. Simultaneously, Roger tried to discredit me, getting the Drudge Report to print the lie that my complaint was all about a “hug [I] didn’t like.” Some of my colleagues, who loved Roger, felt angry, believing that story, believing I (and only I) had chosen to hurt him over what he claimed was nothing. I stayed silent, trusting that the truth would soon come out, and knowing that even if it didn’t, I had followed my conscience. The upside of being “outed” was that more women reached out to me—current and former employees with nearly identical texts and messages: Megyn, it happened to me too.

  Getting on the wrong side of Roger was nerve-racking—I was well aware of his vengeful streak. But the truth is, I was lucky—by this point in my career, Roger could not destroy me. That was not necessarily true for the other women who went on the record, all of whom were incredibly brave. Most were current Fox News employees, still dependent on him for their paychecks, many with families to support. Some were very young and very scared, with little ability to fight a smear campaign, or to move to a new shop—which is especially tricky in TV news. They, too, had been pressured to protect Roger. And yet somehow, they found the courage to risk it all. They want their anonymity, and I will respect their wishes, but as a result, they will never get the credit they deserve. All I can say is, I am incredibly proud of each and every one of them.

  On July 21, 2016, as I sat in Cleveland, preparing for the Republican National Convention, I learned that Roger Ailes had been effectively fired—twenty years after he co-founded Fox News. Just like that, this man—who, to me, had been such a confounding mix of supportive, generous, infuriating, and cruel—was gone. Rupert Murdoch took over as acting chairman with his sons, Lachlan and James, at his side. And the Fox News Channel, in a way, began anew.

  My colleagues at the convention were stunned and upset by the news. I was surrounded by turmoil, and some resentment. I was also surrounded by security guards, who escorted me in and out of the convention hall quickly and without stopping each night. The evening of the Ailes announcement, a woman and her daughter happened to catch my eye. The security tried to press past them, but I wanted to stop. The mother told me her daughter was a big fan. I put my arm around the young teen for a picture, only to realize she was crying, overwhelmed. I turned and held her for a long time—tears spilling from her eyes and, then, welling up in my own. I don’t think I realized how much I needed that reminder that, while there may be an obvious cost to doing what you think is right, there are also real—though perhaps less visible—benefits.

  My relationships with a few colleagues changed after these events. But for the most part, once people found out what Roger had been doing to the women of the company—which, as has now been publicly reported, was far more serious, sustained, pervasive, and disturbing than I could have imagined—many reached out to me. I was touched but not surprised. My friends at Fox are decent and kind. Most didn’t mean to join some pressure campaign—they just misjudged a confusing situation. I received many messages—from friends and colleagues, including, once again, my beloved audio tech, Dion, who wrote me before anyone else did. I felt especially close to the victims, with whom I had an unusual bond. We had all been through it. We had all felt powerless to stop it. And eventually, despite enormous pressure, we had all told the truth.

  I wish I could tell you I now have the solution that would prevent this from happening at another company. But I don’t have it all figured out. One thing I would like to see is every corporation with a compliance director who does not depend on the CEO for his or her paycheck, who could receive reports about the boss like these. An ombudsman of sorts. But would that make the victims actually call? I honestly don’t know. I want to believe the answer is yes.

  I think the culture is changing a bit—it’s already different from how it had been a decade ago, when Roger was harassing me. Bac
k then, the papers were full of reports like that of the American Apparel CEO who had severely sexually harassed his female staff and, after paying off a few lawsuits, was allowed to run the company for another ten years. In 2016, when Roger’s behavior was brought to their attention, the Murdochs acted quickly and honorably. Despite Roger’s attempts to prewire it, the Paul Weiss review was not a whitewash. They were genuinely searching for the truth. When they found it, they knew Roger had to go. Sure, he was promised a separation payment, but he was cut loose and, more important, cut off from the women of Fox News. (Roger’s harassment of women wasn’t a deal breaker for everyone—it was widely reported that Trump used him as a campaign adviser.)

  Many reporting on the Roger situation seemed to revel in the fall of a conservative giant. Some also seemed to forget about the humanity of his victims, resorting to victim blaming or shaming. Perhaps it was the Fox News connection, but questions surfaced a little too frequently, asking why these women didn’t just quit. Why it took them so long to come forward. And why, for that matter, they chose to look so alluring on the air. This was infuriating to many of us. Aren’t we well past the days of her-skirt-was-so-short-she-invited-her-own-harassment drivel? Most of the women in TV news are attractive, wear form-fitting dresses, and have their hair and makeup professionally done. Some wear no sleeves, dresses above the knee, and false eyelashes. That doesn’t make them partners in their own harassment, as some suggested; it makes them broadcasters who want to look great when appearing in front of millions of people.

  For what it’s worth, when I was being harassed, I was still wearing my Jones Day outfits—navy, black, and gray business suits with long sleeves and pants. And when I got bolder in my wardrobe choices? Roger never bothered me.