Greta Van Susteren now admits that she regrets defending former Fox News boss Roger Ailes when Gretchen Carlson accused him of sexual harassment, and she slams Fox News and 21st Century Fox execs who should have “supervised” the former chairman and CEO.
“I read Geraldo’s FB post in which he said he regretted not believing Gretchen Carlson’s claim of sexual harassment,” Van Susteren wrote on Facebook. “We all regret it – I made my regret self evident in my GretaWire posting about 3 weeks ago which ended with this: ‘Gretchen, you go girl.’ That said it all.”
The former Fox News host, who left the network earlier this week, continued, “It is indeed true, when I read the complaint written by lawyers – I never spoke to Gretchen as she was long gone from Fox – I found it inconsistent with what was my experience and information at the Fox News Channel, admittedly working 200 miles from the ‘scene of the crimes.’ It was hidden from all of us.”
Van Susteren and Geraldo Rivera were two of the prominent Fox News personalities to initially defend Ailes when he was accused of sexual harassment by Carlson. But in the past two month, numerous women have come forward with similar claims, Fox News settled with Carlson and additional details of Ailes’ shady past continue to become public.
Van Susteren wrote that she has “regrets beyond Geraldo’s and beyond not believing a civil complaint written by lawyers.” Some of these regrets have to do with extremely powerful people at Fox News and it’s parent company, 21st Century Fox.
“I regret that Roger Ailes was not supervised by those in a public corporation who had the duty to supervise him,” she wrote. “This included his seniors, the CFO’s of both Fox News Channel and 21CF (and its predecessor NewsCorp), the Board of Directors and what I assume this public corporation had, outside auditors. Checks written that were suspicious should have been spotted.”
Meanwhile, Van Susteren thanked Fox News for returning personal photos and video shortly after admitting her regrets. The network removed her blog, GretaWire, without notice on Tuesday and Van Susteren had been lobbying the network to return personal content from the site.
Thank you to Fox News. They have agreed to return my personal pics and video from GretaWire. I greatly appreciate it.
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) September 9, 2016
On Tuesday, Van Susteren shocked the media landscape when she abruptly left Fox News, writing on Facebook that the network “has not felt like home to me for a few years.”
She had a clause in her contract that allowed her to leave the network if Ailes was no longer the boss and she decided to take advantage.