Fox News agrees to pay New York City $1 million for a "willful and wanton" pattern violating the NYC Human Rights Law

The Daily Beast

The cable news network agreed to pay the civil penalty over allegations of a toxic workplace culture and sexual harassment. "The settlement agreement, reached last week with the human rights commission, contains the largest-ever financial penalty assessed in the agency’s six-decade history, and also requires Fox News to remove mandatory confidential arbitration clauses from the contracts of on-air talent along with other employees and contributors for a period of four years when they file legal claims under the city’s human-rights law outside of the company’s internal process," reports The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove. The settlement “also demands immediate changes to policies surrounding reporting sexual harassment, retaliation, training, and compliance with the NYC Human Rights Law." Among the policy changes required by the Commission, the network has agreed to provide all employees with a clear definition of “retaliation” and training for bystanders to intervene in incidents and to properly report any witnessed misconduct.