A former Fox News contributor who accused an executive at the network of sexual misconduct last year, said that company founder, Rupert Murdoch “ruined my life.”
Tamara Holder made the accusations on this weekend's "Reliable Sources" which airs on Fox News competitor CNN.
"I don't have a job in TV anymore because the place that he has secured down like Fort Knox allowed abusive predators to prey on women who just wanted to work," Holder said during the interview.
She was responding to comments made by Murdoch during an interview with Sky News, where Murdoch said that the sexual misconduct accusations were nonsense.
“It’s all nonsense. There was a problem with our chief executive, sort of, over the years, isolated incidents,” Murdoch said. “As soon as we investigated it he was out of the place in hours - well three or four days. And there’s been nothing else since then.”
After the comments, Fox issued a statement to Huffington Post and other media outlets saying that Murdoch "never characterized the sexual harassment matters at FOX News as 'nonsense.'"
"By his actions, Rupert has made it abundantly clear that he understands that there were real problems at FOX News," CNN reported the statement as saying. "Rupert values all of the hard-working colleagues at FOX News, and will continue to address these matters to ensure FOX News maintains its commitment to having a work environment based on the values of trust and respect."
Roger Ailes resigned as Fox News' chief executive after Gretchen Carlson, an anchor at Fox News, accused him of harassment. The network also lost Bill O'Reilly after an investigation by the New York Times found settlements from other harassment allegations.
Both he and O’Reilly denied the allegations.
Holder was a lawyer who left her law firm to work for Fox News. She left the news network after she accused company executive, Francisco Cortes, of sexual misconduct that happened in 2015. Cortes was the vice president for Fox News Latino and was fired after Holder made the claims in September, CNNMoney reported.
21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, paid Holder $2.5 million, which she accepted in exchange for an agreement to not talk about the allegations and to not apply for a position at a Fox-owned business, CNN reported.
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