NYT: CBS Fired Les Moonves When They Found Out He Was Being Blackmailed and Was Trying to Get His Blackmailer a Job to Insure Her Silence

MarketWatch digests the NYT's report.

The last straw that led to the ouster of CBS Corp. Chief Executive Les Moonves was not the new claims of sexual assault and harassment in a New Yorker article Sunday, but revelations in August that he was being blackmailed by one of his alleged victims and was trying to get her a job to secure her silence, the New York Times reported late Wednesday. Moonves still had strong support from some CBS board members after the first allegations against him were published by the New Yorker in July, the Times said. But that support reportedly eroded after directors learned one of Moonves' accusers was threatening to go public, and that Moonves was trying to pay her off with a job at CBS. That shattered his credibility regarding his previous denials to the board that he had done anything wrong, the Times reported, and the board started to seek his ouster.

It gets worse for Moonves: The board now takes the position that, owing to Moonves' deception about this matter, they do not owe him the gigantic severance package (worth up to $120 million) he would otherwise be entitled to.

And it gets worse for CBS news, too: 60 Minutes producer Jeff Fager has been fired, due to his threatening email to a reporter to back off of reporting on CBS' own #MeToo problems.

CBS revealed Wednesday that Fager had warned CBS reporter Jericka Duncan, who was reporting on the news division's own sexual-misconduct scandal, to "be careful," adding, "there are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me, and if you pass on these damaging claims without your own reporting to back them up, that will become a serious problem."

The threatened reporter offers a video report below. She was looking into charges that Fager had groped people at company parties.

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:00 PM

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