When national TV news anchor, Juliet Huddy, came forward with sexual harassment accusations, it ultimately ended her 20-year career with the Fox News Channel.
“I was scared to come out,” she said to Brad Bernstein on Brad Show Live. “When I finally did, they [Fox] didn’t want to hire or protect me, they wanted to scoot me out of there and shut me up…”
In 2017, Huddy settled a lawsuit with 21st Century Fox alleging sexual harassment against longtime Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly. Letters from her lawyers also noted that longtime Fox executive, Jack Abernethy, professionally retaliated against her after she made it clear she was not interested in a personal relationship with him either, the New York Times reported.
“I knew that if I went to human resources immediately, I would have had a target on my back, and they would be shooting bows and arrows at me,” she said.
Huddy became the second of five women to monetarily settle with O’Reilly on accounts of sexual harassment, according to the New York Times.
The anchor started her career at Fox News in 1998 as a Miami correspondent. She later transferred to Los Angeles, then to New York where she hosted weekend episodes of “Fox & Friends.”
Despite her breadth of experience, the allegations affected Huddy’s career, and she was reassigned to a local Fox affiliate station.
“While I was there, they basically weren’t letting me do any other shows, or anything else. It was very clear that they were trying to get me to quit.”
Looking back on her long career at Fox News, Huddy told Brad Bernstein she can distinctly point out a clear transition of the network’s prerogatives. Over time, she saw Fox become a mouthpiece of right-wing political agenda.
“There always seemed to be a little bit of agenda from 1998 until 2007 when I left. When I came back (2009)… that is when I noticed things had really changed…by Barack Obama’s second term, it seemed like they had gone off the charts….”
Huddy departed the network, but not the entertainment industry. She now co-hosts NYC-based talk radio show, Curtis Sliwa & Juliet Huddy, airing weekdays on 77 WABC Radio.
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