Another Head May Be About To Roll At Fox News (TWEETS)

By
Darrell Lucus
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It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad April for Fox News Channel. The fair and balanced network was all but forced to fire its longtime star, Bill O’Reilly, amid a furor over the millions it paid to settle claims that O’Reilly sexually harassed women. One of its former personalities, Andrea Tantaros, sued her former employers, alleging that agents acting on their behalf targeted her with criminal harassment and cyberstalking.


Now comes word that the man who has been operating head of the network since the ouster of founder Roger Ailes is concerned that he may be next. When Ailes was forced to resign amid overwhelming evidence that he harassed dozens of Fox News’ female staffers over the years, Rupert Murdoch promoted senior vice president and programming chief Bill Shine to succeed him. Shine had been Ailes’ right-hand man since 2012. Officially, Shine serves as co-president of Fox News alongside Jack Abernethy, who oversees Fox Broadcasting’s owned-and-operated stations. However, Shine runs Fox News’ news and programming operations–the network’s cash cow.

Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine, who has broken nearly every major story about the scandals surrounding Fox News in the last two years, reported that Shine fears that Murdoch and his two sons, Lachlan and James, no longer support him. Lachlan is co-chairman of Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, alongside his father, while James is CEO. Rupert seemed to voice confidence in Shine when he treated him to lunch on Monday at the Marea seafood restaurant in Midtown Manhattan–just down the street from Fox headquarters. Abernethy was also on hand.

However, Shine privately expressed misgivings that Rupert Murdoch wasn’t willing to fight for him in the press in the face of the intense beating Fox took over the O’Reilly saga, and wanted his sons to step in with a guarantee of support. James and Lachlan turned the request down.

Publicly, both the Murdochs and Shine deny that Shine made such a request. But apparently there is a lot of unofficial talk that Shine may indeed be on the hot seat. The loudest sign came from Sean Hannity, who is now the network’s longest tenured primetime host with O’Reilly’s departure.

Shine began his Fox career as Hannity’s producer, so naturally the talk that Shine could potentially be gone hit Hannity from somewhere around thread level on the floor of his office. Hannity was notably silent when O’Reilly came under fire, but has loudly rallied to Shine–even going as far as to start a hashtag campaign to support him.

It didn’t take long for others on the right to take up the cry–most notably, Sarah Palin.

Both hashtags–“#IStandWithBill” and “#IStandWithShine”–are heavily trending on Twitter this weekend.

However, Hannity, Palin, and others would probably think twice about defending Shine if they knew some of the stomach-churning allegations surrounding him. Specifially, he has been accused of being well aware of Ailes’ debauchery and either doing nothing to stop it–or worse, actively covering it up.


Tantaros, for instance, contends that Shine worked hand in glove with a number of other senior Fox News executives to cover up Ailes’ harassment of her–even going as far as to remove her from “The Five” in February 2015, and yanking her off the air altogether two months later. Shine is a defendant in Tantaros’ sexual harassment suit against Ailes and Fox News, as well as in a federal suit Tantaros filed earlier this week alleging that Fox waged a staggering campaign of cyberstalking and harassment against her. Before then, former booking director Laurie Luhn claimed that Shine actually passed on messages to her that Ailes wanted to see her for “booking meetings” that were actually trysts.

Small wonder that a number of female employees saw Shine’s promotion as proof that the horribly misogynistic culture that had been in place at 1211 Avenue of the Americas for two decades would continue unabated. However, the Murdochs have been loath to cut ties with him. Shine is widely seen as providing a stable hand, and there is no credible successor. Sherman also reports that Murdoch doesn’t want to be seen as publicly throwing Shine to the wolves.

Another factor that may be keeping Shine from the chopping block–at least for now–is that Fox is currently the target of a federal grand jury investigation into its business practices under Ailes. One network insider told Sherman that Shine still has a job in part because “fired executives take immunity deals.” This isn’t idle talk; former CFO Mark Kranz is singing to the FBI after taking an immunity deal.


If Shine is indeed on the rocks, it can only be a good thing. The Murdochs may have finally realized that their cash cow is a toxic waste dump, and nothing less than a total housecleaning will fix it.

(featured image courtesy David Shane, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

Darrell Lucus
Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.

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